Archive for January, 2010

Incumbent Democrat Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas is likely to have another GOP opponent for her seat in the U.S. Senate by this time next week. U.S. Rep. John Boozman, said today that he will make an announcement Feb. 6 about his political future:

In a news release, Boozman said, “Over the course of the last few weeks, I have been encouraged by many Arkansans who are very concerned about the critical issues facing our state and our nation to consider where I can best serve the people of our state. The response has been overwhelming.

“I will be in Little Rock next Saturday to make an important announcement, and I look forward to continuing these conversations with Arkansans during the weeks and months to come.”

According to the Associated Press, Boozman’s announcement will be his intention to contest the GOP nomination to challenge Lincoln, and he will not seek re-election to the House of Representatives.

Lincoln, who has criticized her colleague Ben Nelson for the sweetheart deal he agreed to for his vote on the Senate version of the ObamaCare bill, nevertheless made herself politically vulnerable by voting for the the health care legislation on Christmas Eve.

When matched against six potential GOP opponents, none of which has the popularity or name recognition of Boozman in Arkansas, Lincoln has polled in statistical dead-heats. More significantly, her poll numbers have been well under the 50 percent mark considered the point at which an incumbent faces a difficult election.

Boozman has been a member of the U.S. House of Representatives since 2001. He represents the conservative 3rd congressional district, in the northwestern part of Arkansas. The popular Republican played football for the Razorbacks at the University of Arkansas. Boozman, an optometrist and a member of the Doctors Caucus, voted against the House version of the ObamaCare bill in November. He serves on the Transportation & Infrastructure, Veterans Affairs, and Foreign Affairs Committees in the House, and Boozman has been an assistant to Republican Whips Roy Blunt and Eric Cantor. His brother Fay Boozman is the Republican candidate who was defeated by Lincoln in the U.S. Senate race when she won her seat in 1998.

- JP

Another day, another Senate Democrat suddenly finds herself in trouble:

Until today, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) seemed safe from the backlash gathering against Democrats. No Republican has managed to win a statewide election for either Governor or Senator in more than a decade, and Washington is a safely liberal cog in the Left Coast machine. However, according to a new poll among registered voters, Murray trails Dino Rossi, who lost two close elections to Governor Christine Gregoire…

After Scott Brown’s big Senate win in Massachusetts, Seattle Weekly’s Caleb Hannan assured his readers that Murray had nothing to worry about. He may have spoken too soon. Chris Grygiel, who blogs for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was more cautious, listing reasons why and why not Murray should be concerned.

Murray is one of the most liberal members of the U.S. Senate, where she is serving her third six-year term. She sits on the powerful Approriations Committee, as well as on the Veterans’ Affairs, Health, Budget and Rules committees. She was a Washington State Senator from 1989 to 1983 and a Shoreline School Board member from 1985 to 1989.

Rossi also served in the Washington State Senate and ran twice unsuccessfully for Governor of Washington. The 2004 gunbernatorial contest was so close (the closest gubernatorial race in U.S. history) that Rossi was officially certified as governor-elect before a second hand recount threw the election to Democrat Christine Gregoire by 129 votes.

- JP

I think this is all voting, not just electronic. What say you?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi voiced her opinion Wednesday that defense spending should not be exempt from any freeze on federal spending such as the one proposed by President Obama in his State of the Union address:

“Everybody has to make a sacrifice,” the San Francisco Democrat said in an interview conducted as part of POLITICO’s “Inside Obama’s Washington” video series. “If you’re asking everybody else in the country who has an interaction with the federal government — and that means our states and cities and all the rest, too — to cut back, then I think we have to subject every federal dollar to the very harshest scrutiny.”

Incredibly, these words are fresh from the lips of a Congressional big spender who insists that she be provided with United States Air Force aircraft for her and other congress critters to use for their junkets. Beltway insiders refer to the Speaker’s use of USAF planes as “Air Pelosi.”

Thursday, Judicial Watch, a watchdog group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, announced that it has obtained documents from the Air Force detailing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s use of such military aircraft:

According to the documents, obtained by Judicial Watch through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the Speaker’s military travel cost the United States Air Force $2,100,744.59 over a two-year period — $101,429.14 of which was for in-flight expenses, including food and alcohol.

Every time Speaker Pelosi uses an Air Force aircraft to travel back to her district, it costs the American taxpayers an average $28,210.51 per flight. And when a Pelosi Congressional delegation (CODEL) travels, it travels in style:

One CODEL traveling from Washington, DC, through Tel Aviv, Israel to Baghdad, Iraq May 15-20, 2008, “to discuss matters of mutual concern with government leaders” included members of Congress and their spouses and cost $17,931 per hour in aircraft alone. Purchases for the CODEL included: Johnny Walker Red scotch, Grey Goose vodka, E&J brandy, Bailey’s Irish Crème, Maker’s Mark whiskey, Courvoisier cognac, Bacardi Light rum, Jim Beam whiskey, Beefeater gin, Dewars scotch, Bombay Sapphire gin, Jack Daniels whiskey, Corona beer and several bottles of wine.

So the same Nancy Pelosi who says “I think we have to subject every federal dollar to the very harshest scrutiny” doesn’t blink an eye when she and her Congressional fellow travelers turn military aircraft into flying party barges:

“Speaker Pelosi has a history of wasting taxpayer funds with her boorish demands for military travel. And these documents suggest the Speaker’s congressional delegations are more about partying than anything else,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

The documents obtained by Judicial Watch can be viewed in .PDF format here.

- JP

Add the name of Russ Feingold (D-WI) to the list of incumbents who may be in danger of losing their U.S. Senate seats in the November elections:

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in Wisconsin finds Republican Tommy Thompson edging incumbent Russ Feingold 47% to 43% in a hypothetical U.S. Senate match-up. Five percent (5%) like some other candidate, and four percent (4%) are undecided.

Any incumbent who attracts less than 50% support at this point in a campaign is considered potentially vulnerable.

Thompson, who served as governor of the state from 1987 to 2001 and as secretary of Health and Human Services in President George W. Bush’s first term, is being urged by Republicans to enter the race. However, it remains unclear if he will enter the race. Feingold is seeking a fourth six-year term in the Senate this November.

Feingold’s seat has long been a considered a “safe” one, but in light of Chris Christie’s recent victory in the New Jersey gubernatorial contest and Scott Brown’s stunning upset win in last week’s special election in Massachusetts for a U.S. Senate seat, conventional wisdom has officially been tossed out the window:

Wisconsin could be a big surprise, too. It has sent reliable liberals like Feingold and Herb Kohl to the Senate for several cycles (21 years for Kohl, 17 years for Feingold), but outside of the big college towns, the state is more conservo-populist, not unlike the Dakotas. Feingold has built a reputation for straight talk which has kept his constituents’ respect even when Feingold goes more to the left than they do.

Those days are apparently over. Not only does Feingold trail Thompson by four points, his job approval numbers have gone underwater, 47/48. The voting public has also turned more substantially away from Feingold on policy. Fifty-nine percent want to see tax cuts as a cure for a bad economy, against only 15% for more government spending. Almost two thirds (65%) reject the Democrats’ argument that the economy is improving (41% say worse, 24% says it’s the same), while only 28% believe it’s improving.

Can Barack Obama help Feingold in Wisconsin? Obama won by a much larger margin than John Kerry did in 2004, but he’s not winning any more. His job approval among likely Wisconsin voters has dropped underwater, with a majority disapproving (54%/46%, no one unsure). Furthermore, the Democratic Governor, Jim Doyle, has even worse approval numbers — 36/62. He won’t be any help to Feingold, and may well help stoke Republican and independent turnout in the fall.

Feingold is perhaps best known for the landmark campaign finance reform legislation which bears his name and that of co-sponsor John McCain. The McCain-Feingold Act, as it is commonly referred to, is actually named the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. The bill, which took almost seven years to pass, was struck down in part by a Supreme Court ruling quite recently.

Although known as one of the Senate’s leading liberals, Feingold is one of the most fiscally responsible of those lawmakers on the left, and he has championed making reductions in pork barrel spending, government waste and corporate welfare. He was one of just three Democrats to vote against confirmation of Timothy Geithner to be Treasury Secretary. Otherwise, Feingold’s liberalism is fairly conventional.

- JP

The Associated Press found ten whoppers in President Obama’s State of the Union address. They are detailed here.

Ed Morrissey was surprised, not that AP found errors, but rather that it found “only ten” in the speech:

Maybe the Associated Press got as tired as everyone else listening to Barack Obama’s lengthy State of the Union speech last night and stopped paying attention after an hour.

Or perhaps AP only found ten because it assigned less than half the number of fact-checkers to the task than it detailed to delve into Sarah Palin’s book with a fine-toothed comb. Indeed, Morrissey discovered at least one other whopper that seems to have eluded AP’s crack team:

Obama repeatedly insisted that he inherited massive budgetary problems from George Bush, but the Con Law professor may want to retake his high-school civics class. Congress passes budgets, not the President, and the last three budgets came from Democrats. In three years, they increased annual federal spending by $900 billion, while the admittedly profligate and irresponsible Republican Congresses under George Bush increased annual federal spending by $800 billion — in six years. And during the last three years before taking office as President, Obama served in the Senate that passed those bills, and he voted for every Democratic budget put in front of him.

Erick Erickson showed how Obama’s claim that “We’ve excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions” is pure fabrication:

Eric Holder, attorney general nominee, was registered to lobby until 2004 on behalf of clients including Global Crossing, a bankrupt telecommunications firm [now confirmed].

Tom Vilsack, secretary of agriculture nominee, was registered to lobby as recently as last year on behalf of the National Education Association.

William Lynn, deputy defense secretary nominee, was registered to lobby as recently as last year for defense contractor Raytheon, where he was a top executive.

William Corr, deputy health and human services secretary nominee, was registered to lobby until last year for the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, a non-profit that pushes to limit tobacco use.

David Hayes, deputy interior secretary nominee, was registered to lobby until 2006 for clients, including the regional utility San Diego Gas & Electric.

Mark Patterson, chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, was registered to lobby as recently as last year for financial giant Goldman Sachs.

Ron Klain, chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, was registered to lobby until 2005 for clients, including the Coalition for Asbestos Resolution, U.S. Airways, Airborne Express and drug-maker ImClone.

Mona Sutphen, deputy White House chief of staff, was registered to lobby for clients, including Angliss International in 2003.

Melody Barnes, domestic policy council director, lobbied in 2003 and 2004 for liberal advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the American Constitution Society and the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Cecilia Munoz, White House director of intergovernmental affairs, was a lobbyist as recently as last year for the National Council of La Raza, a Hispanic advocacy group.

Patrick Gaspard, White House political affairs director, was a lobbyist for the Service Employees International Union.

Michael Strautmanis, chief of staff to the president’s assistant for intergovernmental relations, lobbied for the American Association of Justice from 2001 until 2005.

The CATO Institute, in an analysis of Obama’s address, said that the president was using “the fuzziest of fuzzy math”:

Actually, the U.S. economy has lost 2.7 million jobs since the stimulus passed and 3.4 million total since Obama was elected. How he attributes any jobs gains to the stimulus is the fuzziest of fuzzy math. ‘Nuff said.

Even Obama-friendly CNN said that although Obama was technically correct that his White House had posted its visitor logs on the Web, it was forced to do so by a lawsuit:

The release of these logs came only after a legal challenge by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. The group filed suit seeking the logs related to the visits by certain groups. When the Obama administration settled the suit it went further, agreeing to post the logs of all visitors from September 15 onward.

Peter Andrew found 23 sore thumbs sticking out in the speech, including one in the president’s remarks on energy:

Barack Obama is trying to become Sarah Palin! He verbally announced that he basically supports HER energy plan! He claimed he wants to build more nuclear power plants in the U.S.A., drill offshore now and support new clean coal power plants! Those moves, if true, would be wonderful and welcome. I’m not going to hold my breath. This is part of his new “populist” image he is trying to roll out.

- JP