Political observers will attest that the majority of campaign ads are banal rehashings of tempered stump speeches. But we were greeted this week with a pleasant–and yet remotely disturbing–break from that pattern, with the video “Greene is on the scene,” a parody of South Carolina Democratic Senate nominee Alvin Greene’s campaign missteps set to a retro hip-hop tune.

The New York Times reported Thursday the video was, to the surprise of its nearly-18,000 viewers, an official product of the Greene campaign. That report also came as a surprise to the Greene campaign, according to CNN, who said it had no involvement in the video.

“I don’t know who made it.” But, the candidate said Friday morning, “it sounds good. Make sure everybody hears it.”

Notable lyrics include: “Well, Greene’s a new face in politics. And he don’t show porno to college chicks. … Real family values, those are rad. He loves family and lives with his mom and dad! … Alvin Greene is the one for you. He knows how you feel, ’cause he’s unemployed, too!”

That the New York Times would attribute the parody to the Greene campaign is both an indictment of lazy reporting and a testament to the spectacle that is Alvin Greene.

As a professional political consultant, I would hope no candidate would attest to their unemployed status, voluntarily acknowledge they live with their parents, or make a vague reference to felony charges related to pornography in an official campaign production. Of course, I would also hope that no black candidate would show obscene material to a white female college student not-yet twenty in a state with a history of racial tensions, unveil a jobs plan whose central plank was the production of candidate-resembling action figures, or film the campaign’s inaugural interview from a messy den wearing socks and ratted family reunion t-shirt.

But Alvin Greene managed to do all those things. And more.

Rangel, who resigned from his chairmanship of the House Ways and Means Committee in March following a formal admonishment for two corporately-underwritten Caribbean junkets, will appear next week before a subcommittee of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Composed of four Republicans and four Democrats, the panel will consider if sufficient evidence exists to prove the allegations against 20-term legislator.

The adjudicatory subcommittee was last impaneled six years ago, when it was called upon to handle the case of Democratic Congressman Jim Traficant, who served seven years on bribery and racketeering-related charges.

In the same way that Republican ethics violations loomed large in the 2006 midterm elections that saw the House of Representatives change hands, Rangel’s ethics misdeeds threaten to undermine Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s pledge to run the “most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in History.”

But for now, the specific nature of charges against Rangel remain unknown — and will likely remain as such until next Thursday when he makes his case to the ethics panel. In the meantime, a list–that is, unfortunately, in no way comprehensive–of the 80-year-old lawmaker’s ethics lapses:

• Violating New York state and city zoning laws, Rep. Rangel rented in 2008 several rent-stabilized Harlem apartments and used one for a base of operations for his reelection effort.
• Days later it was revealed Rangel had used congressional letterhead to solicit funds for his personal foundation, the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service.
• The following month, in August of 2008, the New York Post reported that Rangel had failed to disclose income from renting his beachfront villa on a Dominican Republic resort. In total, Rangel failed to disclose $75,000 in rental income since 1988. Rangel secured a seven-year fixed rate loan at 10.5 % for the property, but two years later the interest on the loan, which was awarded by a company for which the congressman was an early investor, was waived. Rangel paid $10,800 in back-taxes for his 2004, 2005 and 2006 tax returns for the unreported rental income.
• Rangel violated House rules and failed to report income to the IRS when he left his 1972 Mercedes in a House parking lot for several years without registering the car. The car, without license plates and covered by a tarp, occupied a space for several years valued a $290 per month.
• In November 2008, the Post’s muckrakers discovered that Rangel had improperly received a “homestead” tax exemption on a property he owned in Washington, D.C., while occupying his four rent-stabilized apartments in New York City.
• Rangel secured tax benefits for a company whose chief executive he was courting as a donor for his private foundation.
• And most recently, a House panel admonished the scandal-plagued congressman for wrongly accepting reimbursements for two Caribbean trips in 2007 and 2008.

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Vice President Joe Biden was caught on camera calling a Glendale, Wisconsin custard shop manager a “smartass” after the man asked the White House lower his taxes.

Biden visited Kopps Frozen Custard, a popular Milwaukee-area restaurant the vice president mistook for an ice cream parlor, to chat with employees and patrons. Biden’s rebuke, which was captured on film by a local ABS News affiliate, came after he asked the manager what he owed.

“Don’t worry, it’s on us,” the store’s manager replied to the vice president. “Lower our taxes and we’ll call it even.”

Minutes later Biden is heard chiding the employee, saying: “Why don’t you say something nice instead of being a smartass all the time?”

Some have already said the Kopps manager is to Joe Biden what Joe “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher is to President Barack Obama, who gained national attention after he questioned the Democratic presidential candidate’s tax policies.

The Vice President was in town to campaign for Senator Russ Feingold, who polls show running even with Republican challenger Ron Johnson. At a Friday fundraiser, Biden told a crowd of donors “there’s no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession.”

No doubt Kopps’ manager has some suggestions for the administration.

Sargent, whose muckraking at the Huffington Post and Talking Points Memo made him a daily read for Capitol Hill Democrats or Republican operatives concerned their bosses had again strayed from prescribed talking points, was a natural fit for the Post. Likewise for Klein, whose wonkish, prolific writing often set the tone for progressive domestic policy talk.

Like Sargent and Klein, Weigel was poached from a progressive-leaning online outlet. But whereas Sargent and Klein hard carved out beats that largely matched their ideological leanings, which is to say progressive, Weigel was pitched to the paper’s leadership (by blogging wunderkind Klein) as the reporter best positioned to cover the conservative movement — specifically its more unsavory fringe elements, of which Weigel had become a connoisseur of sorts at The Washington Independent.

As others more acutely aware of the goings-on of the Washington Post newsroom have noted, Weigel found himself in an untenable situation: Misrepresented both by those who lobbied for his employment and later by his new employer, the reporter-blogger had to adopt a nuanced I’m-one-of-you posture. Weigel frequently cited his vote for Ron Paul in the 2008 Republican primary as an indicator of his conservative bona fides, though he less often noted he voted subsequently for then-Senator Obama in the general election.

On Wednesday, a Beltway media-gossip blog published intemperate comments Weigel made on Klein’s “JournoList,” an email listserv housing the discussions of an estimated four hundred Washington reporters, academics and policy wonks. Save for two previous outings of otherwise off the record comments, the intra-liberal exchanges were largely a secret. For the DC intelligentsia it was an exercise in message conformity; for Republicans it was a reminder of the coordinated lengths political operatives and media personalities would go to ensure liberal talking points were appropriately weaved into the day’s news.

Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller published Friday additional inflammatory comments made by Weigel on the one-time-private JournoList. Comments published ranged from banal cheerleading for President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul to personal jabs at Matt Drudge, with whom Weigel had been engaged in a feud over Drudge’s penchant for saucy headlines.

With conservative activists rallying the nation-over in competitive primaries to upend long-time Republican incumbents and establishment favorites, the emergence of the Tea Party as a quantifiable and feared force in Republican politics–which represented a great degree of Weigel’s coverage–is an important beat. But it was a beat that would have bore little fruit, as it had become increasingly apparent that Weigel held mainstream Republican figures in contempt.

The publishing of Weigel’s private conservative lamentations was not the first time the blogger had been thrown into the spotlight. In May, shortly after he was joined the Post’s stable of blogger-reporters, he referred to opponents of gay marriage as “bigots.”

As both a sign of good faith and remorse, Weigel offered his resignation on Thursday evening. In the wake of new emails, the Post was obliged to accept it Friday morning.

The Washington Post’s leadership was correct to remove Weigel from his beat; his blog’s subtitle–”inside the conservative movement”–betrayed him, as few operatives and insiders would now look kindly on his inquiries. But they were in the wrong by nixing entirely his reporting.

While Weigel’s in-person affability for many won’t excuse his unvarnished commentary, it’s clear he appreciates the value of shoe-leather journalism. He was a regular fixture of conservative events and meetings and was not afraid to pick up the phone to chase stories and sources.

As it appears Weigel owes much of his current predicament to false pretenses–that Weigel presented himself as conservative, or that the paper had billed him as such–I compiled a list of reporters and bloggers who the movement would accept without pause (and regard as dyed-in-the-wool conservatives). In no particular order:

1. David Freddoso, Washington Examiner

2. Mary Katharine Ham, Weekly Standard

3. Amanda Carpenter, formerly Washington Times

4. Jim Geraghty, National Review

5. Ed Morrissey, HotAir

6. Jennifer Rubin, Commentary

7. Jim Antle, American Spectator

8. John McCormack, Weekly Standard

9. Caleb Howe, RedState

10. Matt Lewis, Politics Daily

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For Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Tuesday’s victory was bittersweet: She narrowly secured her party’s nomination, though head-to-head polls indicate she will lose six of every ten general election voters to her Republican challenger in November. But for organized labor, who invested upwards of $10 million backing Arkansas Lt. Gov. Bill Halter’s ill-fated primary challenge of Lincoln, it is all bitter.

From the outset of Halter’s bid, public employee unions and progressive groups rallied at the prospect of defeating Lincoln, whose opposition to labor mainstays like the Employee Free Choice Act and the public health insurance option were observed as mortal sins. The White House and Democratic establishment—most notably Arkansas’ favorite son, former President Bill Clinton—instead endorsed Lincoln.

The divergent paths of the White House and labor groups in the Arkansas nominating contest is symptomatic of a long-developing schism in the Democratic Party-organized labor coalition. For all the talk of a Tea Party-induced conservative schism, the movement has, largely, coalesced behind the Republican Party. The case is not so with frustrated labor organizers, as even loyal Democrats have difficulty swallowing the 21st Century union agenda.

But Republicans–and even moderate Democrats who stand in opposition to the union agenda–should not rest on their laurels. Unions organizers are, if anything, innovative agitators:

They tried securing establishment goodwill by subsidizing a presidential bid; they sought to establish their own party; and they attempted infiltrating another. It should be no secret now—labor is an agile beast. And as union organizers’ previous moves show, Halter’s defeat was only a minor obstacle in their greater campaign.

What is most disconcerting here, though, is the labor movement’s dynamic, imaginative tactics. We won’t know just what they’re planning next until we’ve already been broadsided.

Read the article in its entirety at Human Events.

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Romanoff rebuffed the aide’s suggestions to join the administration. In a statement acknowledging the job talk, Romanoff appended an email from White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina proposing three jobs: two senior posts at the U.S. Agency for International Development and a third at at the U.S. Trade and Development Agency.

“In September 2009, shortly after the news media first reported my plans to run for the Senate, I received a call from Jim Messina, the President’s deputy chief of staff,” his statement said. “Mr. Messina informed me that the White House would support Sen. Bennet. I informed Mr. Messina that I had made my decision to run.”

While the White House and Romanoff maintain no formal job offer was made, it is clear the situation in Colorado is far more unseemly than what unfolded in Pennsylvania, where former President Bill Clinton was dispatched an an unofficial envoy to dissuade Representative Joe Sestak from pursing a primary challenge against White House-endorsed Senator Arlen Specter. At present moment, it is unclear the Pennsylvania drama violated any federal law; Colorado, however, is an entirely different, seedy matter, whereby a senior White House official sought to exert influence in an election, presumably at the behest of the president, by means of illegal horse-trading.

On the heels of Romanoff’s admission, the White House press shop, who had come under increasing pressure in recent weeks to offer more details on what possible jobs may have been offered to Sestak, insisted at no point in Messina’s two-part conversation did the senior staffer offer a position to Mr. Romanoff.

“Mr. Romanoff was recommended to the White House from Democrats in Colorado for a position in the Administration,” reads a statement from White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton. “There were some initial conversations with him but no job was ever offered.”

After demurring on the first abject offer, Romanoff said he received a second, more specific message–this time an email–from Messina. The email included detailed, one-page job descriptions of available posts for which White House brass presumably had in mind for Romanoff – should he forgo his campaign.

The jobs were: “Deputy Assistant Administrator for Latin American and Carribean, USAID;” “Director, Office of Democracy and Governance, USAID;” “Director, U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA).”

White House legal counsel say administration officials did not act improperly in the Sestak matter. But today’s revelation of White House electioneering manipulation is far more difficult to sweep under the rug.

Federal statutes prohibits the exploitation of government-funded positions, appointments or contracts to advance partisan interests. 18 U.S.C. § 600 reads in full: “Whoever, directly or indirectly, promises any employment, position, compensation, contract, appointment, or other benefit, provided for or made possible in whole or part by any Act of Congress, or any special consideration in obtaining any such benefit, to any person as consideration, favor or reward for any political activity or for the support of or opposition to any candidate or any political party in connection with any general or special election to any political office, or in connection with any primary election or political convention or caucus held to select candidates for any political office, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.”

It’s become apparent that President Barack Obama’s blueprint to revive the nation’s ailing economy and job market is to save or create a federal job for every inconvenient Democratic primary challenger.

“When Nikki and I held her endorsement rally on the steps of the beautiful and historic South Carolina state house a few weeks ago, I warned her and her family that she would be targeted because she’s a threat to a corrupt political machine, and she would be put through some hell,” Palin wrote. “That, unfortunately, is the nature of the beat in politics today – especially for conservative ‘underdog’ candidates who surge in the polls and threaten to shake things up so government can be put back on the side of the people.”

The decidedly personal attack–one that Haley categorically denied in a statement today–is a “good sign” that the insurgent candidate has her opponents running scared, Palin said.

Professional provocateur and one-time press aide to outgoing Governor Mark Sanford, Will Folks wrote Monday that a network of anti-Haley political operatives were shopping damaging information about an alleged affair he and Haley had to local media. But while Folks insisted “at least one story based upon this information will be published this week,” no reports of Haley’s alleged infidelity have surfaced from mainstream outlets. And there is no indication any will.

Beyond his initial admission–insomuch as one might call Folks’ transparent traffic play an admission of guilt–the blogger said he refuses to comment further, offering no additional details about the relationship.

“I will not be discussing the details of the relationship,” he wrote, “nor will I be granting any additional interviews about it to members of the media beyond what I have already been compelled to confirm.”

Questioning both the timing of Folks’ accusations, which came only days after a poll showed Haley leading in the four-candidate field to succeed Sanford, and his refusal to go on the record about the alleged tryst beyond what is written in his blog post, Palin sought to cast some reasonable doubt on Folks’ claims.

“South Carolina: Don’t let some blogger make any accusation against your Nikki if the guy doesn’t have the guts or integrity to speak further on such a significant claim,” her post read. “For traditional media to rely on an accusation via some blog entry is almost laughable, but I know the seriousness of it because that’s exactly what my family and colleagues have had to put up with, every single day, for the past couple of years.”

Haley, whose endorsers include Palin, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and RedState.com editor-in-chief Erick Erickson, vehemently denied the “smear,” which she said was “South Carolina Politics at its worst.”

“I have been 100% faithful to my husband through our 13 years of marriage. This claim against me is categorically and totally false,” her statement read.

Beyond the former Alaska Governor’s unmitigated support for Haley, South Carolina political observers in Haley’s camp note that Folks’ professional trajectory and personal legal scrapes are not the kind to inspire confidence, or sink a winning campaign.

Folks became a lightening rod in the Sanford administration–in much the same way Vice President Joe Biden is prone to irritate handlers and aides with proclivity to gaffe–by often departing from the day’s prescribed messaging. Two month after resigning from the Governor’s staff in September of 2005, Folks pled guilty to criminal domestic violence for shoving his then-fiancee into furniture over an argument the couple had.

Palin, who endorsed Haley only ten days ago, closed with a word of encouragement to her Palmetto State fans: “South Carolina friends, don’t let ‘em just make things up.”

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California Rep. Darrell Issa, the ranking Republican member of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, said Sestak, who on Tuesday bested Specter by nearly 8 points, must identify the job he was allegedly offered and who in the administration proposed it. Issa has been a one-man firing squad on the point since February, when then-dark horse Sestak claimed in a radio interview an Obama aide had offered him a “high-ranking” federal gig at the onset of his Senate bid.

“Was Joe Sestak embellishing what really happened, or does he have first-hand knowledge of the White House breaking the law,” asked a statement from Issa’s office. “If what he said is the truth, Joe Sestak has a moral imperative to come forward and expose who within the Obama administration tried to bribe him.”

If Sestak and the White House remain mum–and all markers indicate they will–or If the matter is not brought before the Office of Congressional Ethics, the clearinghouse for Capitol Hill ethics probes, Issa warned that he or a fellow member would file an official complaint on July 4.

“I’ve reviewed the capability and appropriateness” of lodging a complaint with the committee, Issa said. “I’m one of many members of Congress considering that it has to be done if he doesn’t come clean.”

If the bribery claim bears any semblance to reality, Issa warned that the White House official who contacted the Sestak may have violated federal law barring election interference and promising employment for political activity.

While President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden congratulated Sestak on his primary victory, the White House’s top press aide demurred on commenting on the controversy, refusing to speculate on the veracity of Sestak’s claims. On Thursday, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs dodged a barrage of Pennsylvania-related questions during his daily briefing, to each he responded: “I don’t have anything to add today.”

Kagan, whose leadership at Harvard Law marked an unprecedented expansion of the program’s faculty, hired 32 tenured and tenure-track faculty. With one exception, all were white; only seven were women.

“Because Kagan does not have a record and because her tenure at Dean is offered as one of her qualifications for the Supreme Court, it is more than fair to ask where racial inclusion figures in her judicial philosophy,” wrote Guy-Uriel Charles, the founding director of the Duke Law Center on Law, Race and Politics. “Kagan’s hiring at Harvard is one of the few data points that we have on how she might think about racial inclusion.”

To be sure, conservatives, who as a matter of principle oppose racial quotas for the purposes of hiring or admitting, will be wary of legitimizing such an attack. But with a limited body of published work to her credit–which is to say, nothing at all–the metrics by which the Senate may judge Kagan’s judicial temperament are limited.

After years of decrying racial politics but having now surrendered to the reality that Democrats will forever claim moral ascendancy over their conservative colleagues, such an offensive would largely fail: After all, who wants to waste their time when they know it would be better spent elsewhere? And so Kagan will get a free pass — from the press, from Congressional Democrats and from the special interest groups who purportedly aim to increase racial, ethnic and gender diversity.

But imagine the political melee had a white Republican president nominated a white Supreme Court justice whose record on hiring showed only 3 percent of all hires were non-whites.

“Demanding accountability about diversity isn’t a one-way street meant only for Republicans,” CNN political contributor and Democratic strategist Roland Martin wrote in an editorial for the network’s website. “Democrats should never get a pass either.”

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“We threw some people out there today because they disclosed the identity of a protected witness,” said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell. “He had been clearly identified as someone who needed to be protected. These newspapers identified him by name.”

Khadr, a Canadian citizen who was taken into American custody at age 15 in Afghanistan, is accused of murdering U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Christopher Speer, whom the Pentagon said died from a hand grenade. Khadr’s attorneys contend he was the victim of abuse while in government custody, a claim for which they called a former military interrogator to bolster.

The witness, whose identity was concealed and identified for purposes of the commission only as “Interrogator No. 1,” recounted a technique he used in 2002 on Khadr. Interrogators, the witness said, told Khadr a “fictitious” tale of a convicted Afghan youth gang-raped “by a bunch of big black guys and big Nazis” in an American prison.

Aghast and perhaps enraged at Interrogator No. 1’s testimony, the press ignored Pentagon protocol mandating that those witnesses awarded a protective order cannot be named in press accounts. Those reporters who disregarded that ground rule were: Carol Rosenberg of McClatchy Newspapers, Paul Koring of the Globe and Mail, Steven Edwards of Canwest Newspapers and Michelle Spephard of the Toronto Star.

Reviewing the day’s events with a gaggle of reporters, the military’s chief prosecutor Navy Captain John Murphy said the protective order was a necessity and that the press been awarded an “extraordinary” degree of access.

“You see so much,” he said. “Our position is, and I hope it would be given a lot of thought, that publishing entities carries some risk and the judge recognizes that risk when he issues these protective orders.”

An hour later, the left-leaning Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman reports, four journos received word from Pentagon brass they had been barred from base, and would no longer be permitted to cover the proceedings on-site.

Khadr’s team of civilian defense attorneys insists his 2002 testimony was coerced by threats of rape and even death.

But Khadr’s case is not one in which a frightened, innocent boy submits to the demands of ruthless military interrogators; he was a trained, active operative of a known terrorist organization who sought and achieved the deaths of Americans. The boy-soldier only alleged abuse when it expedient and apparent he would not be released.

“These statements weren’t wrestled from Omar Khadr,” said Jeff Groharing, a member of the prosecution team, at the outset of the pre-trial two weeks ago. “He talked openly, confidently and comfortably about his knowledge of al-Qaeda.”

The facts:

• At age ten, Khadr was relocated by his father, an al-Qaeda sympathizer, from Canada to Afghanistan. There, Khadr, which even progressive and human rights activists acknowledge, became the object of indoctrination by the local Muslim extremist apparatus.
• Despite his age at the time of arrest, the Canadian government has to-date rebuffed calls for Khadr’s extradition or repatriation.
• According to Department of Defense records, in 2002 Khadr trained for one month under the direction of al-Qaeda operative Abu Haddi in “the use of rocket propelled grenades, rifles, pistols, hand grenades, and explosives.” (You’ll remember it was a hand grenade that killed Sgt. Speer.)
• That same year, Khadr and a group of Al Qaeda operatives converted land mines to improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which they buried in the hopes military vehicles would trigger detonation. (According to the DoD, IEDs are the number one cause of death and injury among allied forces in Afghanistan. It was recently reported the number of IED-related injuries and deaths doubled in the past year, from 249 in March 2009 to 989 in March 2010.)
• On the day of his apprehension, Khadr and associates engaged coalition military forces, resulting in the deaths of two Afghan militiamen. A small-arms fight erupted and American forces intervened, entering the compound from which Khadr was operating. Upon entry, Khadr “threw and/or fired grenades at nearby coalition forces,” which injured many and killed Sgt. Speer.

The real travesty here is not that the press disclosed the identity of a protected witness. It is that their delicate sensibilities were offended more by non-physical, non-threatening interrogation techniques than the torture-worthy murder of an American soldier.

Khadr’s trial is the first major military tribunal for a Guantanamo detainee since President Barack Obama assumed office and is a rehearsal of sorts for his administration.

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A report released Thursday by economic experts at the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) found the new legislation would add 34 million uninsured Americans to the coverage rolls, but at a significant cost — one that neither the president nor his party anticipated as they approach the midterm elections.

“We estimate that overall national health expenditures under the health reform act would increase by a total of $311 billion (0.9 percent) during the calendar years 2010-2019,” the report, authored by the chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, read. “Although several provisions would help to reduce health care volts growth, their impact would be more than offset through 2019 by the higher health expenditures resulting from coverage expansions.”

The memeorandum also warned the spending hike associated with the legislation may be understated, since the cuts in Medicare may be untenable and impractical.

President Barack Obama insisted the nation’s economic recovery and health care system were inextricably linked, and not reforming the latter could further depress the former. We could not afford not to reform the health care industry, the White House said at numerous junctions in the year-long debate.

“Make no mistake: The cost of our health care is a threat to our economy,” he told the American Medical Association. “It’s an escalating burden on our families and business. It’s a ticking time bomb for the federal budget. And it’s unsustainable for the United States of America.”

Per The American Spectator’s Phil Klein:

But for all the talk over the past year about “bending the cost curve down,” CMS, the agency that is tasked with tracking national health care expenditures, has now projected that the new law will actually bend the cost curve in the opposite direction. That is, up.

Not surprisingly, CMS notes that, “Numerous studies have demonstrated that individuals and families with health insurance use more health services than others-similar persons without insurance.” Thus, expanding coverage will mean greater usage of health care services.

Those House Democrats most vulnerable by their votes, include Representatives Brad Ellsworth, Kendrick Meek, John Boccieri, Charlie Wilson, Suzanne Kosmas, Melissa Bean, Joe Sestak, Bill Owens and Chris Carney, all of whom contended, at one point or another over the course of the health care debate, that the legislation would not further saddle the federal government with unnecessary and additional expenses.

Their unfortunate colleagues in the upper chamber, via the Weekly Standard’s Daniel Halper, include Senators Michael Bennet, Barbara Boxer, Russ Feingold, Kirsten Gillibrand, Paul Hodes, Blance Lincoln, Patty Murray, Harry Reid and Arlen Specter.

Suffice it to say: Virtually every Democrat is on the chopping block this cycle.

The assistance–which will consist primarily of money and services dolled out by the Democratic National Committee and the White House’s political operation, Organizing for America–will begin sometime in June, and is intended to foment down-ticket fundraising and voter contact programs in advance of the midterm elections.

First reported by POLITICO and later confirmed by CNN, a senior Democratic operative said the national committee will provide “an unprecedented amount of cash and field, with a special emphasis on base turnout — youth, African-Americans, Latinos and first-time voters.”

Though details remain hazy, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who in 2006 steered the House campaign committee, and his deputy Jim Messina unveiled the program Thursday at a Senate Democratic luncheon. The meeting, Chris Cillizza reports, was the first of a series intended to assuage incumbent fears that support for President Barack Obama’s health care package will be a liability in November.

White House Communications Director Dan Pfieffer, who was also in attendance at the meeting, said the Administration will soon hire a “very senior official” exclusively tasked with running interference on health care, presumably to fill the vacuum created when Linda Douglas resigned earlier this month from her post as communications director of the Office of Health Reform.

The DNC’s effort will augment existing programs by Democratic Hill campaign committees, who in years past had butted heads with the national committee over their perceived focus with presidential politics. In 2006, then-DNC chief Howard Dean apportioned a meager $2.4 million to competitive House and Senate races. By contrast, the DNC spent nearly $300 million on the presidential election two years prior.

Following the passage of the President’s health care overhaul, the DNC reported having raised $13 million in March. The Republican National Committee, who is also expected to invest heavily this cycle, raised $11.4 million.

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“I am not running for the US Senate because I am an adult entertainment star,” Daniels said. “I am not running for the US Senate for the same reason that so many dedicated patriots to not run–I can’t afford it.”

Capitalizing on the news that Republican fundraisers wined and dined would-be donors at a lesbian-themed bondage club, Daniels announced early April that should make a bid for Senate, she would do so as a Republican. The expenditure, over which a senior fundraising aide was fired, was a “frugal investment with a keen eye toward a maximum return,” Daniels said.

Daniels supporters created a bare-bones campaign website last May, asking that she “take the senate by Storm.” But Daniels’ Senate storm, which was from its inception a gimmicky assault on Vitter’s now-infamous prostitution scandal, fizzled before it could do any damage to the status quo.

Vitter’s campaign raised $1 million in the first quarter, and reports having a little over $5 million in cash on hand as he readies for the midterms.

That Vitter had amassed such a warchest, Daniels said, was the primary deterrent to her bid. “The simple fact that David Vitter has $5 million in his back account pretty much says it all. Against the sheer accumulation of special interest dollars, I have no legitimate means of winning a race for the United States Senate under these circumstances,” Daniels statement read. “As a businesswoman, I know that better than anyone.”

A report by the Chicago Tribune revealed in April Giannoulias had authorized a series of loans, totaling roughly $20 million, to two convicted felons preparing to serve time in federal prison. The Giannoulias campaign weathered its first loan-related controversy in the Democratic primary when it was reported the Giannoulias family bank awarded sizable loans to prominent Chicago real estate developer and political bundler Tony Rezko, who in 2008 was found guilty on 16 counts of corruption.

Giannoulias had always declined to publicly provide details of the loan arrangement with Michael “Jaws” Giorango and Demitri Stavropolous, admitting only that he traveled to Miami to inspect property the bank had financed for the dubious duo.

But on the nuances of Giannoulias’ loan operations, shady as they may be, campaign talkers are either dated or factually wrong, as campaign spokeswoman Kathleen Strand insists her boss had “no role with these two individuals” when by his own admission he has.

As a professional spox, Strand does both herself and her candidate a disservice by straying from the campaign’s approved message. But yet she’s just so good at it.

Giannoulias Sunday crashed a fundraiser for school building projects in Central Asia, where he delivered a decidedly political speech, riling many of the attendees who came expecting an academic discussion on the state of education in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Daily Herald columnist Chuck Goudie, who was in attendance at the fundraiser, reports those gathered were “stunned” at Giannoulias’ “largely unforgettable” speech–which Strand no doubt had a hand in crafting.

“Organizers of the event said that Giannoulias had been told politicians were not welcome to make speeches,” Goudie wrote. “It wasn’t that type of event.”

And yet Giannoulias, with Strand in tow, crashed the event like a pair of fourteen-year-old boys at a girls-only slumber party. Strand explained the apparent mix-up as a “failure to communicate” to Goudie.

For Republicans, the Giannoulias campaign’s sustained “failure to communicate”–on a bevy of issues, from career-killing loans to mobsters to mundane stories like crashing a non-political fundraiser–means a weakened, off-message opponent this Fall. For Strand and Giannoulias, the non-communicating pair will soon be looking for new jobs.

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Senator John McCain, whose reelection campaign has adopted a decidedly anti-maverick slant, released a new radio ad Wednesday assailing his primary challenger J.D. Hayworth’s proclivity for earmarking while in the House of Representatives.

The 60-second spot features anti-pork crusader Congressman Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, who credits McCain with a career devoted to eliminating wasteful federal spending and aligns Hayworth with big spending Democrats.

“Republicans, including Senator McCain’s opponent, lost their bearings on federal spending,” Flake said. “They loaded up bills with pork barrel projects, and the voters punished Republicans by putting Democrats in charge.”

Hayworth’s earmarking is a familiar refrain from the McCain camp, who last week released a web video highlighting a few of the more outlandish of the Hayworth-endorsed pork projects, including a $5.8 million snowmobile trail in Vermont and the infamous $233 million “Bridge To Nowhere.”

Flake and Hayworth have long been in opposing corners on the practice of pork barrel spending, with the two butting heads in the Congress as member’s of Arizona’s delegation.

Flake introduced an amendment to the 2004 Road bill that mandated all pork barrel spending be subtracted from each state’s individual share of non-discretionary, formula-driven federal funds. But Hayworth rebuffed Flake’s efforts, saying that earmarks “reflect the priorities of local and state officials to help our transpiration infrastructure keep pace with the extraordinary growth we are experiencing in the East Valley.”

A poll by DailyKos/Research2000 released last Friday showed McCain leading Hayworth by a solid 15 percentage point margin.

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In comments posted over the weekend on the website of the Washington Post, Stevens said he “will surely” retire while President Barack Obama is in the White House, calming fears of liberal groups that a future Republican president might replace Stevens with a decidedly conservative jurist.

“I do have to fish or cut bait, just for my own personal peace of mind and also in fairness to the process,” Stevens, 89, told the New York Times. “The president and the Senate need plenty of time to fill a vacancy.”

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who Stevens told last month for a profile in New Yorker magazine that he would resolve on his retirement in a month’s time, predicted the 35-year SCOTUs veteran’s retirement is imminent. Observers of the court expect Stevens to announce his intentions on or after April 28, marking the last argument of the court’s current session.

“We are just about at a month,” Toobin said. “I don’t think he meant that precisely to the day, but I think we will hear in the month of April that he is retiring.”

Stevens, the court’s oldest justice, became the object of intense speculation when it was revealed last Fall he hired only one law clerk for the upcoming session, instead of his customary four.

The Obama Administration’s short list to succeed Stevens is said to include U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan and federal appellate judges Diane Wood and Merrick Garland.

Both Kagan and Wood were among the leading prospects to replace David Souter, who retired from the court in June of 2009, as it was widely expected Obama would nominate a woman. While the two met with Obama for the post, the president ultimately nominated Sonia Sotomayor.

Kagan, who previously served as Dean of Harvard Law School, was only narrowly confirmed Solicitor General on a 61-31 vote. Kagan’s critics raised concern over her lack of judicial or appellate experience, which handicappers say exists as the greatest hurdle to her potential judgeship.

A memo circulated by conservatives before Obama announced the Sotomayor pick assailed Kagan’s lack of bench experience. “It is difficult to see how her experience fundraising for Harvard Law School qualifies her for a seat on the Nation’s high court,” the memo read. It also described her as “disturbingly out of the mainstream” on social issues like the controversial ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the armed services.

But the dynamics of a Wood’s confirmation battle would be far different from a potential Kagan confirmation, as Judge Wood’s long and storied record on the issue of reproductive rights promises to serve as a lightening rod for Senate Republicans.

In 2000, Wood dissented against two state-level bans on partial birth abortions from Wisconsin and Illinois. The Supreme Court ultimately rejected her reasoning in 2007, approving a similar ban.

Most noxious to social conservatives, however, is Wood’s ruling that abortion lobbying group Planned Parenthood could use the “RICO” anti-mob law to sue pro-life protesters. The same conservative memo said Judge Wood “has betrayed a consistent hostility to religious litigants and religious interests.”

In his 13 years on the D.C. Court of Appeals, Judge Garland forged alliances on both sides of aisle and may yet be the most moderate nominee for which conservatives can hope. Garland is, as Ed Whelan describes, among a dying breed of liberal jurists — a member of the “once-dominant species of liberal proponents of judicial restraint.”

Other rumored Stevens replacements include Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein, Stanford Law professor Pamela Karlan and former Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears. Kagan’s successor at Harvard Law, Martha Minnow, is also said to be under consideration by the White House.

Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican from Arizona, said Sunday on FOX News that it is unlikely his caucus would resort to a filibuster, save for extraordinary circumstances, if it disapproved the the president’s choice.

“I hope, however, [President Obama] does not nominate an overly ideological person,” Kyl said. “That will be the test and if he doesn’t nominate someone who is overly ideological, you may see Republicans voting against the nominee but I don’t see them engaging in a filibuster.”

Albert Snyder, whose son Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew A. Snyder died in Iraq four years ago March, learned Friday an appeals court mandated he must pay for the legal fees of professional provocateur Rev. Fred Phelps and his controversial Westboro Baptist Church, with whom he had been locked in a bitter and protracted legal dispute for several years now.

“I think it’s a slap in the face,” Snyder said of the ruling. “It’s like, ‘Sorry Mr. Snyder, you buried your son for us, but we’re going to reverse the decision and we’re going to make you give them money so they can do this to more soldiers.’ I think it’s an insult to every soldier, marine and veteran out there that has served this country.”

Days after Snyder’s death, Phelps and a handful of WBC congregants traveled to the family’s home town of Finksburg, Maryland to share their perverse gospel: God is punishing America for her tolerance of homosexuality, and young Snyder was the latest casualty in a brewing war with Heaven.

Hurling their patented anti-gay invectives just feet from Snyder’s burial service, Phelps and his ilk came with their now-notorious “God hates fags,” “Semper fi fags,” “Fag troops” and “Thank God for dead soldiers” posters. Their signs left little to the imagination; Fred Phelps hate everyone, but few beyond gays and lesbians engender such disdain and hatred in his small black heart.

“It’s pretty bad when you go to your son’s funeral and there are pictures of two men having anal intercourse,” Snyder said recently to Newsweek Magazine, recounting the day of Matthew’s funeral. “It’s hard enough to bury a 20-year-old soldier, but to go through this at the same time is like kicking you in the face while you are lying on the ground.”

No parent should be responsible for burying their own child. Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine another experience more painful, more emotionally wrecking than laying your own child to rest. But doing so within earshot of the stomach-churning rhetoric of a deranged hatemonger like Fred Phelps somehow rises to the despicable challenge like few others can.

“He was the hero and he was the love of my life,” Albert Snyder said of his son. But the last memory of his hero will be of Fred Phelps waving signs that would cause Hugh Hefner to blush.

Snyder sued Phelps and select congregants in civil court for defamation, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The outrageousness of the WBC protest was such that a judge awarded Snyder $11 million in punitive damages, which was later halved and eventually. On appeal, however, the Phelpses argued the First Amendment protected the family from claims of intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED).

Synder said he refuses to pay Phelps until Fall when the case will come before United States Supreme Court, whose jurists, he hopes, will deliver a sympathetic verdict to his still-grieving family.

The First Amendment, which protects the free exercise of religion, speech and assembly, reads in full: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of people to peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Phelps, who was an attorney himself before the Kansas Supreme Court permanently disbarred him in 1979 for a bevy of ethics violations, contends that his message of America’s homosexual-wrought calamity was “preached in respectful, lawful proximity” to Snyder’s memorial.

Phelps’ SCOTUS defense will lean heavily on Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, in which the late televangelist sued porn kingpin Larry Flynt over an unsavory satirical editorial recalling Falwell’s first sexual encounter with his mother. The court held that Flynt’s cartoon was protected speech, and not subject to claims of IIED, because the private citizens must be free to criticize public figures by way of creating a national dialogue. But with a conservative court and broad public opposition, showing that the act of waving offensive posters at the funeral of a soldier–whose family would otherwise not have been thrust into the public spotlight were it not for the WBC’s protest–qualifies as criticism of a public figure is a tenuous case at best.

Snyder’s complaint states five causes of action–all private in nature, all worthy of punitive damages–which were bore out in a civil trial. At issue in Snyder v. Phelps are remarks made by private individuals against other private individuals, made at a private religious gathering.

If the First Amendment has any bearing here, it is such that the Snyder’s rights to hold religious services–in this case a Catholic funeral–were infringed upon by Phelps’ picket.

In the same way they once curtailed speech relating to fighting words, defamation and obscenity, the court should find the obscene practice of hurling anti-gay epithets at slain service members an unprotected form of speech. Screaming “fag” over a reading of Ecclesiastes 3 at the top of one’s lungs simply should not be protected under the First Amendment.

Forty state legislators have now enacted so-called “Rest in Peace” legislation, stipulating that protesters must keep a designated buffer–varying from state to state, typically ranging from 200 to 500 feet–between the picket and the processional, burial and church services.

The United States Congress should pass complimentary, if not more aggressive, legislation shielding our grieving military families from these ruthless, disgusting protests. It’s a win-win for both parties: For Republicans, it wouldn’t hurt to show that the GOP is not reflexively in opposition to the LGBT community; and Democrats are in desperate need of some good will among flag-waving, bible-reading red state voters.

Facing now a mountain of debt, which promise to grow higher thanks in large part to costs associated with filing a brief for the family’s upcoming Supreme Court case, Albert Synder is nevertheless deterred. “As long as we have military people dying, I will fight,” he said.

An online fund for Synder has been established by the family’s attorneys, where those sympathetic to the Snyder’s position may contribute to help defray legal costs.

After a dozen pro-life Democrats hold-outs lead by Michigan Rep. Bart Stupak caved Sunday to increasing pressure from the White House, the House adopted on a strictly party-line vote the Senate’s bill, which now awaits the President’s signature.

Among the most salient of Republican talking points on health care, the poll showed, were the issues of cost and quality, which Congressional Republicans had said the bill fundamentally failed to address.

62 percent believed the new reforms would result in a spike in personal medical expenses, while only 21 percent said they would remain the same. In September of last year, a similar poll found 47 percent believed the President’s plan would increase medical costs; 35 percent said costs would remain the same.

Democrats hemorrhaged support on the issue of quality, too. The number of those who said their families would be better off dropped nominally, while a significant margin shifted their opinion from September that their families would be “about the same” to “worse off.” 47 percent held the view their families would fare worse if the legislation was implemented; 19 percent responded they would be better off; and 33 perecent said they would be about the same.

Most damaging–insomuch as anything apart from constitutional challenges can derail the near-certain implementation of ObamaCare–is that respondents universally held the opinion that the President’s reforms will increase federal deficits. 70 percent said the bill will result in higher deficits; 17 percent said it was deficit neutral; and only 12 percent said it would reduce the nation’s deficit.

Senator Tom Coburn Thursday put his colleagues in the lower chamber on advance notice, vowing to torpedo any promises of patronage made by President Barack Obama to wavering House Democrats.

Coburn promised at a health care presser on Capitol Hill today that he would exercise his senatorial prerogative to hold all nominations of vote-switching House Democrats who lose their reelection bids this Fall. The new maneuver aimed at scuttling Democratic vote whipping efforts sent an unmistakeable message to the White House: Senate Republicans will do everything in their power to prevent the bill’s passage, even if that means preemptively expending political capital.

“I want to send a couple messages to my colleagues in the House. If you voted no and you vote yes and you lose your election, and you think any nomination to a federal position isn’t going to held in the Senate, I’ve got news for you,” Coburn, a physician whose been among the Senate’s most vocal opponents of the bill, said. “It’s going to be held.”

While House Republicans remain publicly confident the caucus will unanimously reject the bill, speculation looms large over Representative Joseph Cao, who is said to be undecided on the legislation. Still, Coburn’s warning has little bearing for Republicans.

39 Democrats voted against the bill last year. Representative Dennis Kucinich became the first Democrat to change course, as he surrendered yesterday to intense White House lobbying to support the bill.

“If you think you can cut a deal now and it not come out until after the election, I want to tell you that isn’t going to happen and be prepared to defend selling your vote in the House,” warned Coburn.

Dashing all hopes of a political resurrection after two failed presidential bids, the affair embroiled Edwards, resulting in the dissolution of his marriage with cancer-stricken Elizabeth, with whom he campaigned all the while during the tryst, and made many a GOP political hands wish they gave then-Senator Hillary Clinton an easier ride in 2008. Through it all–from Edwards’ denial of the affair, to his public apology for it, to his denial of fathering a child with her, to his later admission of paternity–Hunter has maintained her silence, though she said she’s now free to tell her story with a clean conscious, without “emasculat[ing]” her former lover.

“I feel comfortable talking now,” she told the magazine, “because Johnny went public and made a statement admitting paternity. I didn’t feel like I could ever speak until he did that. Because had I spoke, I would have emasculated him. And I could not emasculate him.”

Unlike other actors in sordid story, Rielle never sold her story, and sat for the interview with GQ without “making a penny.”

On keeping quiet, Hunter said it was “very difficult” at times. “It’s been four years. It’s hard to know that people are out there speaking over and over and over again untruths. Lies. Consciously going out there and spinning the truth. Using me and Johnny and our relationship to make themselves look better, to play victim, or to get money,” she said, alluding to former Edwards aide Andrew Young, who recently penned The Politician, a bestselling tell-all memoir on his involvement in the affair and it’s cover-up. “That rubs me wrong in every way possible.”

Though John and Elizabeth Edwards renewed the wedding vows in 2007, at which point John was allegedly aware of the pregnancy, the couple have now separated. Though ‘Johnny’ and Hunter’s relationship have since “evolved into something different” after her “stint as a mistress ended in 2008,” the two “have not spoken about wedding plans.”

Read the entire interview for more on Elizabeth, who Hunter contends enabled the secret relationship by ‘tragically’ ignoring her own shortcomings, and Young, whose decision to claim paternity for the child was due, in large, part, to his “love” for the one-time rising Democratic star.

In other Edwards-Hunter news, The Daily Beast Monday reported graphic details of a sex tape the couple filmed in 2007, for which Hunter is now suing Young to regain possession.

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On his weekly radio show, Massa, one of thirty-nine Democrats who voted against last year’s health care bill, said House leadership was orchestrating a public relations campaign against him for the sake of accelerating his resignation and lowering the number of votes Democratic whips must secure for health care’s passage.

“Mine is now the deciding vote on the health care bill, and this administration and this House leadership have said, quote unquote, they will stop at nothing to pass this health care bill,” Massa said. “And now they’ve gotten rid of me and it will pass. You connect the dots.”

Reports surfaced Wednesday indication Massa was retiring, citing recurrence of cancer, while others still said the freshman Democrat was under review by a House ethics panel for sexually harassing a junior male aide.

At various points in the hour-and-a-half-long broadcast, Massa indicated he would rescind his resignation if the Pelosi-Hoyer power play became national news.

“I’m not going to be a Congressman as of 5 o’clock [Monday] afternoon. The only way to stop that is for me to rescind my resignation. That’s the only way to stop it. And the only way that’s going to happen is if this becomes a national story.”

He acknowledged, however, that reneging on his promise to resign would revive a stalled ethics probe into his reported sexual misconduct with staff.

In response to a caller suggesting he remain in office, Massa said: “That’s very kind of you, but understand what that means for me. It means that a group of lawyers are going to try and rip me and my family limb from limb. And you’ve already seen it in the newspapers. It’s a piranha feeding frenzy.”

Members of Congress “ought to be accountable,” Obama said, according White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, “and that applies to everyone.”

“Rules are put in place for a reason and those rules can and must apply to each and every person,” Obama stressed, said Gibbs.

Rangel, a 40-year veteran of Capitol Hill and founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, was formally admonished Friday by a House ethics panel for taking two corporately-funded trips to the Caribbean.

But Rangel’s problems don’t end at corporations underwriting tropical junkets. The committee is still investigating allegations that Rangel used official stationary to fundraise for a college center which bears his name, as well as discrepancies in financial disclosure forms.

In her weekly press conference, Pelosi said the calls for Rangel’s resignation, which reached new heights when Obama cautiously abandoned the powerful Harlem Democrat, were partisan and said she would not ask that he relinquish his gavel.

“They have said he did not knowingly violate the rules,” she said of the committee’s findings. “They did not take action against him. They just said he did not willfully break the rules.”

“Given that you promised to run one of the most ethical and honest Congresses in history,” one reporter’s question began, and ended prematurely, as he was interrupted by the Speaker. “And we are,” she said, typifying the rhetorical lengths at which Pelosi and other House leaders will take–stopping short of a meaningful censure–to ensure Rangel’s impropriety won’t taint the Democratic brand.

“We are creating a dependence on the government and we are succeeding,” the email, dripping with an rare degree of sarcasm for beltway correspondence, read. “[J]ust look at how great things are one year after Democrats passed the ultra-successful stimulus bill.”

The email, which was also posted to the Committee’s web site, has not yet elicited responses from Speaker Pelosi’s office or their Democratic campaign counterpart, according to an NRCC official.

“Democrats continue to save this country through tax hikes and government bailouts. It worked during the Carter Administration and it is working better than ever now,” the email read, signaling the opening salvo of a narrative–that President Barack Obama is on the precipice of becoming Jimmy Carter–that will likely haunt Democrats in the midterm elections later this year.

While the open rate will no doubt be buoyed by flummoxed Republicans wondering why Pelosi is plaguing their inbox, the snarky fundraising plea is bound to be a hit with conservative activists, thanks in large part to successive shots at Democratic-engineered government largess.

Via Alex Koppelman, a screenshot of the entire email:

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“[A] spate of recent losses in races that Democrats should have won underscores what has been obvious to me for a long time,” Wilder wrote in a column for Politico. “The Chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee is the wrong job for him.”

Wilder, who became the nation’s first black governor in 1990, also had tough words for the President, writing that Obama’s seemingly permanent campaign may be hindering legislative successes.

“Getting elected and getting things done for the people are two different things,” he said. Excelling at the latter, he said, requires overhauling Obama’s team by “replacing the admittedly brilliant advisers who helped elect him with others more capable of helping him govern.”

But if the President hopes to salvage his agenda, and the 2010 midterm elections, he’ll need to do more than fire his hand-picked party chairman: He’ll need to disavow the nepotism that plagues his administration.

“The changes must go deeper. Obama’s West Wing is filled with people who are in their jobs because of their Chicago connections or because they signed on with Obama early during his presidential campaign,” Wilder wrote.

Wilder’s reminder that the “ax is already at the tree” comes after months of muted criticism from within the Democratic ranks that Kaine, who until recently was dividing his time between the DNC and the governor’s mansion, was “not doing either of jobs very well.”

The Republican National Committee today jumped on the opportunity to draw attention to the potential schism, emailing reporters a research memo entitled “The DNC Dud.”

Highlighting Kaine’s impotency on the trail and in fundraisers, the memo said that despite his influence as the out-going governor and Democratic party chief, “Kaine couldn’t even muster” a win for the Democrat in his native Virginia.

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A veteran Democratic bundler, Purdon found a unique affinity with trial lawyer John Edwards, on whose campaign he was a state chairman. According to his firm, Purdon specializes in criminal defense and personal injury lawsuits and possesses no prosecutorial experience, for which the White House is making no bones.

It is, after all, within the purview of the President to appoint persons to fill the 93 U.S. Attorney posts, even persons politically aligned with the administration, but most have at least some prosecutorial experience.

While the White House’s website did not include Purdon’s name among other pending nominations and appointments as of Friday morning, the entire North Dakota Congressional delegation–all Democrats–issued congratulatory statements.

“Tim is an outstanding choice for U.S. Attorney. He is well respected and an example of how dedication, education, and hard work pay off. He has a distinguished record of and proven his ability to enforce the law with conviction and courage,” a joint statement read.

What they failed to mention, however, is how hard Purdon had personally worked for each of their campaigns, in varying capacities, but most notably as the North Dakota Democratic Party Treasurer brokering millions in contributions from out-of-state fellow trail attorneys.

Federal Election Commission records indicate that apart from his positions as treasurer for the state Democratic Party and candidate-associated PACs, Purdon personally donated over $12,400 since 2000, including $2,300 to then-Senator Obama’s presidential bid.

Bill Brudvik, one of a handful of disappointed contenders for the position, said in an interview with local press that Purdon’s Democratic activism and fierce political devotion is reason for concern.

“When President Obama said he wanted to restore the independence and dignity of the U.S. attorney’s office, in light of the Alberto Gonzales fiasco and then appoints a political activist and party fundraiser,” Budrik, a Democrat himself, said, “it seems a little to me more like ‘politics as usual’ than ‘change we can believe in.’”

While Democrats feverishly decried President George W. Bush for allegedly pressuring the Justice Department to pursue politically-motivated investigations into Democrats, similar Democratic charges of politicizing the legal system today, under a Democratic president, for appointing Democratic fundraisers, are hard to find.

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Former Senator Dan Coats is “just alarmed about the country, I can tell you that from talking to him,” Daniels said of Coats, who contacted the governor Monday about his potential challenge to Democratic Senator Evan Bayh.

Many Republicans criticized Coats’ candidacy as a recruiting failure for the NRSC, seemingly buttressed by Daniels’ admission today that, despite leading Bayh by 10 percentage-points in internal polling by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he was not approached about running.

Daniels, who many are hoping will consider a 2012 presidential bid, said he was also unsure who courted Coats.

“I was startled. And I don’t know, I don’t think any of us can tell how it works,” he said.

But Coats’ bid to unseat Bayh, who won the seat in 1998 after Coats retired, “wasn’t his idea,” according to Daniels, saying also, “he has no need to do this.”

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While still married, which the woman characterized as “pretty unbearable,” Cohen took “injectable anabolic steroids, including but not limited to Winstrol, Cretine, and Steen. And as a result, he has an erratic, explosive temper,” his ex-wife testified.

Cohen, who was ordered by Cook County Circuit to undergo steroid testing, is no stranger to episodes of violence against family members, including his son, ex-wife and girlfriend.

After coming homing at 2 A.M. and unable to find his keys, Cohen woke his family by kicking in the garage door, at which point he “began swearing and cussing and an altercation began to ensue between Scott and our son,” the woman alleged. “During this altercation the other kids were upstairs hysterically crying.”

According to the couple’s divorce papers, Cohen, after admitting to numerous extramarital affairs, tried in vain to have sex with his former wife. But “despite my refusals, he tried to force himself on me until I pushed him away and emphatically told him no,” she alleged, noting that she had asked family members to stay with her for several weeks because she was “afraid to be home alone with him.”

Living “in constant fear of him,” she was awarded by the courts a temporary order of protection against her former husband.

The release of Cohen’s divorce records is only the latest piece of bad news for his campaign, which late Wednesday weathered accusations the candidate once held his prostitute girlfriend by knife-point after throwing her into a wall.

Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, who is slated as Cohen’s running mate, asked Thursday that Cohen reconsider running and “step aside.”

Cohen summarily dismissed Quinn’s request, saying he has “no intention of stepping down or stepping aside,” suggesting further intra-party disputes as the Illinois Democratic Party grapples with the optics of a Cohen candidacy in the wake of scandal-plagued Rod Blagojevich.

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Scott Lee Cohen, who allegedly threatened his prostitute girlfriend by brandishing a knife and throwing her against a wall, Tuesday won the Democratic Party’s nomination for lieutenant governor, edging out five other contenders in an upset victory.

Quinn met with state Democratic Chair Mike Madigan to discuss the news of Cohen’s 2005 arrest, but refused to say publicly if he or Madigan had resolved on a contingency plan in the event Cohen voluntarily steps aside, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.

Democrats are said to have launched a campaign within the state party apparatus to compel Cohen not to seek office, if only to ensure the governorship remains in Democratic hands.

Asked if he would run as a third-party candidate in the event Cohen ignores the counsel of Illinois Democratic operatives, Quinn said only that “the situation will resolve itself,” hinting that Cohen will forgo the campaign.

The office Cohen aims to fill has remained vacant since January 2009, when then-Lieutenant Governor Quinn succeeded disgraced and now-impeached Rod Blagojevich.

UPDATE: While Governor Quinn and influential state Democrats are nudging–forcefully pushing, on some counts–Cohen to drop out of the race, the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor said no dice.

“I have no intention of stepping down or stepping aside,” Quinn said in a strongly-worded statement today. “When the facts come to light, after my ex-wife and ex-girlfriend speak, the people of Illinois can decide, and I will listen to them directly.”

But whatever the people of Illinois decide, it’s clear the people of the Illinois Democratic Party have reached resounding consensus: Cohen is a unnecessary burden to Democrats in what most election handicappers project will be a hostile election cycle.

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A Chicago pawnbroker who financed his campaign with nearly $2 million of his own wealth, Scott Lee Cohen Tuesday won the Democratic Party’s nomination for Lieutenant Governor. But with new details of Cohen’s sordid past emerging today, Democratic primary voters will soon be wishing they had given his five rivals a second look.

Cohen allegedly held a knife to his then-girlfriend’s neck in October 2005. Charges were later dropped after the woman, once convicted of prostitution, failed to appear in court to testify against Cohen.

A police report of obtained by the Chicago Sun Times said the woman had scaring and defensive wounds on her hands “from trying to defend herself against the arrestee swinging the knife at her.” Additionally, Cohen “pushed [the] complainant’s head against [a] wall, causing a bump on the back of her head.”

The arrest came only months after Cohen’s former wife filed for divorce and was awarded by the courts a temporary protection order. Cohen’s deep bench of troubles don’t stop at reports of domestic violence, as records also indicate also he had federal tax problems.

Cohen disclosed his domestic battery arrest at the outset of his campaign, but details of the episode–namely, that he wielded a knife against his live-in prostitute girlfriend–surfaced only after voters had gone to the polls.

Pat Quinn, who leads in the count for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination and succeeded disgorged former Governor Rod Blagojevich last January, is keeping quiet on the matter.

At a post-election presser, Quinn fielded questions on his likely running mate, but said he was unaware of the details of his 2005 arrest.

“I don’t know. Any information to come out, people will look at,” he said. “I have no idea. I think the voters voted yesterday. We’ll see what happens.”

UPDATE: Ed Morrissey notes the unenviable position of scandal-plagued state Democrats, whose democratic and senatorial bids have been jeopardized by Wednesday’s revelations.

According to the latest Rasmussen poll, Republican Representative Mark Kirk leads Democrat Alexi Giannoulias by a comfortable six-point margin. And the extent to which Cohen’s scandal will be a drag on Quinn’s candidacy cannot be overstated, and is amplified by near-constant reminders from the ILGOP of Blogojevich’s expulsion from office.

Cross-posted to RedState.

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Expenditures on Pelosi-led CODELs, the group’s report shows, include thousands for liquor, beer and wine. Receipts show purchase of Johnny Walker, Grey Goose, Beefeater, Maker’s Mark, Courvoisier, Dewars, Bombay Sapphire and more, all courtesy of the American tax payer.

During the same two-year period, the entirety of Speaker Pelosi’s travel expenditures, including the use of Air Force aircraft for herself and relatives, cost the Department of Defense $2,100,749.59.

Judicial Watch’s report Wednesday captured the attention of the social conservative American Family Association, who called Pelosi’s expenses an “abuse of taxpayer dollars” in an urgent action alert to supporters.

“While many families struggle to make ends meet financially, the leader of the people’s House is snatching money out of their wallets to treat her guests to the finest and most expensive booze money can buy so they can party down while in the air,” the email read.

“[D]emand that your representative hold [Pelosi] accountable on your behalf. Urge your representative to conduct an investigation into this abuse and report back to you directly.”

On average, the Air Force incurred expenses of $28,000 per flight for Pelosi to travel from Washington, D.C. to her home district in San Francisco. Of the 103 international congressional delegations led by Pelosi, members of the Speaker’s family joined her for 31 trips.

Pelosi “has a history of wasting taxer funds,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “And these documents suggest the Speaker’s congressional delegations are more about partying than anything else.”

Last week, the group named Pelosi among the group’s ten most corrupt politicians for her “sense of entitlement” relating to her “boorish demands for military travel,” Fitton said. The list also included the names of Representatives John Murtha, Barney Frank, Charlie Rangel, Senator Chris Dodd and President Barack Obama.

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Sarah Palin, the mother of young child with Down Syndrome, sharply criticized Emanual’s remarks, writing on her platform of choice, Facebook: “Rahm’s slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities — and the people who love them — is unacceptable, and it’s heartbreaking.”

As a matter of “decency,” Palin said, President Obama must immediately fire Emanuel.

“Yes, Rahm is known for his caustic, crude reference about those with whom he disagrees, but his recent tirade against participants in a strategy session was such a strong slap in many American faces that our president is doing a disservice by seeming to condone Rahm’s recent sick and offensive tactic,” she wrote.

Obama did not–and, by all accounts has no intention to–fire Emanuel, but the second-most powerful man in Washington was forced to apologize.

Emanuel phoned Tim Shriver, who launched a campaign against the “r-word” as Chairman of the Special Olympics, to apologize for the nature of his comments, according to Politico.

Emanuel’s apology was accepted, but Shriver was not the offendee; those present at the strategy meeting–the Democrats he called “f–ing retarded”–and all those living with the reality of intellectual disabilities were.

We have long since exceeded our quota for apologia go-to guys. Still, Obama and Emanuel were intent nonetheless on creating yet another Democratic-sin absolving moral arbiter by offering a sham private apology to Shriver.

Unfortunately, Emanuel’s apology to Shriver was not the first he received from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

In March, 2009, Obama appeared on the “Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” in which he compared his poor bowling performance–an object of great ridicule by his former primary opponent Hillary Clinton–to that of Special Olympians.

“It’s like — it was like Special Olympics, or something,” Obama said of his foray into the world of bowling.

Whatever critiques of Palin exist, it cannot be said the former GOP vice presidential nominee is not consistent, as she quickly decried the President’s comment as insensitive.

“I was shocked to learn of the comments made by President Obama about Special Olympics. This was a degrading remark about our world’s most precious and unique people,” she said, “coming from the most power position in the world. I hope President Obama’s comments do not reflect how he truly feels about the special needs community.”

By now, President Obama no doubt has Shriver on speed dial.

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Senator Arlen Specter and his brash temperament are back in the news.

The incorrigible Republican-turned-Democrat attended a Pennsylvania Progressive forum Saturday, opposite his primary opponent Representative Joe Sestak, where he stormed the stage prematurely during Sestak’s closing remarks.

Explaining why he is best suited both professional and politically for the post, Sestak was unexpectedly greeted by Specter, prompting a moderator to bluntly ask the senator to “get off the stage.”

The forum’s rules were rather strict, holding that each speaker would answer a series of questions while the other was sequestered, according to the blog Pennsylvania Progressive. While the event’s protocol was established at Specter’s request, for whatever reason, he “shredded his own rules,” the blogger wrote.

Two weeks prior, Specter caused a furor on Capitol Hill when he demanded of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann that she “act like a lady” on a joint radio appearance.

Specter’s foes–both Republican and Democratic–are characterizing the episode as his “Kanye West moment,” and further symptomatic of a demeanor unqualified for the United States Senate.

But unlike West, who ungraciously took the floor at the MTV Video Music Award show in September to endorse the efforts of another, Specter’s principle concern is himself. Most damning, though, is that West could give in earnest lessons in civility to the senior Democratic Senator from Pennsylvania.

Gitcho, who held communications posts in the campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney, is the third senior communications aide to depart in two months, fueling speculation of mid-cycle internal strife.

Gitcho is following in the footsteps of former communications director Trevor Francis, who abruptly resigned in November after RNC Chairman Michael Steele became frustrated he was not receiving proper credit for the party’s electoral successes in Virginia and New Jersey. Todd Irons, Francis’s deputy, resigned just one week later.

To compensate for Francis’s departure, the RNC tapped Republican media strategist Alex Castellanos as a senior communications advisor. A frequent on-air political analyst for CNN, Castellanos minimized his role, insisting he was not “replacing anyone,” only “helping out.”

But in the months following the reorganization, the RNC’s press operation has been decidedly less aggressive. And in comparison to the days of compulsive emailer Danny “$” Diaz, the press shop is a shadow of its former hawkish, oftentimes combative self — which inundated reporters with negative press clippings and research memos.

The search to fill the top two–now three–communications posts at the RNC remains underway, and unsuccessful, I’m told.

UPDATE: I would be remiss if I failed to mention that without communications staff, the RNC must rely on Steele to get its message out. And we all know how fantastic he’s been on that front.

[Disclosure: I was the RNC's Online Communications Manager when Diaz served as Communications Director]

Mitt Romney’s Free and Strong political action committee raised just shy of $3 million and contributed $120,000 to Republican state and federal candidates in 2009, according to a year-end finance report released Friday by the group.

Handicapped by late entry, Tim Pawlenty’s group, Freedom First PAC, raised only $1.28 million last year. Pawlenty aides note, however, the committee was organized in October and fundraising totals account only for the fourth quarter, whereas Romney’s committee has been fundraising all year.

In the fourth quarter, Pawlenty transferred $395,000 to Republican candidates — a figure more than double what Romney’s PAC contributed over the entire year.

Fox News Channel personality Mike Huckabee’s Huck PAC performed far worse than expected, reporting Saturday the group raised a meager $800,000. The year-end finance release failed to mention how much, or little, the committee had contributed to GOP candidates and causes, but according to OpenSecrets.org, the group had contributed only $10,000 by January 10, 2010.

Unlike the committees of Huckabee’s likely rivals, Huck PAC’s value is found not in its war chest, but in its expansive and ever-growing network of volunteers, who made more than 60,000 voter contacts for PAC-endorsed candidates, according to the committee.

While PAC expenditures are regarded by would-be nominees as a necessary investment in their eventual campaign, such as the situation is for Pawlenty and Romney, Huckabee’s early pockets are surprisingly shallow, which, ultimately, will inhibit his ability to curry favor with party faithful.

PAC operatives for each committee will argue the metrics for judging each committee differ, but the ultimate arbiter in politics is cold, hard cash; who has it, who knows how to get more of it, and who shares it will win the popularity contest we have come to know as the presidential nominating process. On this count, Pawlenty is, hands down, the front-runner.

UPDATE: An informed reader emails to say I have conflated Pawlenty’s operating expenditures with his political disbursements, noting that the Minnesota Governor only contributed $16,800 to federal candidates in 2009.

Presently, it’s unclear if that figure accounts for monies contributed to state candidates, state Republican parties and GOP causes. It is worth noting, though, that of Romney’s $120,000 in contributions, 56% went to state candidates, parties and causes, so a similar trend may exist in Pawlenty’s reporting.

I have requested clarification from a Pawlenty aide and will update further when appropriate.

UPDATED II:Pawlenty aides do not dispute the $16k figure, but hasten to point out that the committee was formed in late in 2009 with a balance of 0.

While the PAC has already contributed (significantly less) to many of the same candidates as Romney, including Doug Hoffman, Rob Portman, Scott Brown, and the Minnesota Republican Congressional delegation, they intend “to support many other candidates as we get into election season this year.”

Apart from those candidates endorsed and supported by the committee, aides offered this interesting caveat: Pawlenty headlined numerous Republican fundraisers for candidates and committees — none of which would be represented in the report. While his team asked supporters to donate directly to Brown’s campaign, TPaw himself held events for the Iowa, South Dakota, Michigan and Ohio state Republican parties.

O’Keefe and three accomplices aimed to wiretap Landrieu’s phones, but the ACORN antagonist’s ill-conceived plot ran afoul when a Government Services Agency (GSA) employee asked for the men’s credentials, who, of course, were unable to provide them. The four, according to an FBI affidavit, were charged with entering federal property under false pretenses with the objective of committing a felony.

The cavalcade of partisan-tinged responses from Democrats–each more crass than the last, though equally revisionist–are symptomatic of an ideology bereft of intellectual honesty. Whereas Republicans openly criticized the one-time rising conservative star O’Keefe, Democrats doggedly insist the ‘unoffending’ community organizers are innocent – despite unassailable evidence proving otherwise.

Contrary to the narrative ACORN allies are so keen on supplanting, O’Keefe has found little to no support from those conservatives who once hailed his work as unbelievably courageous. O’Keefe erred, in part, because he became what he was targeting, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin said on her website.

On MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews,” former Reagan adviser Pat Buchanan characterized tampering with Landrieu’s phones as “an absurd action.” “Look, we’re hearing from David [Corn], ‘We hope the right-wing covers this.’ I’m sure the right-wing will give this a little more coverage […] than the left-wing gave to the ACORN scandal,” Buchanan said, underscoring a point many Democrats would prefer to discount in the coming days.

Democrats, who benefitted by untold sums over the years from ACORN’s voter registration campaigns, quickly called into question O’Keefe’s scruples as means by which to exonerate the now-tainted community organizing group.

Democratic responses ran the gambit from sensational and melodramatic to deranged and preposterous.

Louisiana Democratic Party Chair Michael McHale equated Tuesday’s events with the infamous burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters by GOP operatives, saying in a statement that O’Keefe’s actions constituted “a Louisiana Watergate.” The comparison is found lacking, of course, when one considers that O’Keefe and his compatriots were acting of their own accord and were not emissaries of the official Republican Party apparatus.

And despite casually dismissing O’Keefe’s ACORN exposé last September as the inane musings of a rabid conservative, the liberal blog DailyKos demanded an “immediate, aggressive open investigation” of the filmmaker’s Louisiana exploits. If O’Keefe’s antics go unanswered, the tortured logic held, America may yet be on the cusp of another domestic terrorist attack.

“The last time right-wing terrorist nuts were ignored two of them ending [sic] up blowing up a building in Oklahoma City and killed 168 innocent people including 19 children,” wrote the delusional and copy-editing challenged DailyKos blogger.

ACORN’s chief executive Bertha Lewis, who reemerged after months of lurking in the shadows, recited those talking points already refined by liberal bloggers and commentators. O’Keefe’s arrest, she said in a statement, “is further evidence of his disregard for the law in pursuit of his extremist agenda.”

The organization’s official Twitter account, which has been dormant for the previous six weeks but resumed active posting yesterday in the hopes of stirring the pot, also commented on the arrest, writing that it “couldn’t have happened to a more deserving soul.” That “deserving soul,” for those keeping track, was made such for exposing ACORN’s corruption and complicity in child prostitution and tax evasion.

While no Republicans rushed to O’Keefe’s aid in the hours following the bungled caper, it was virtually mandated of Democratic surrogates that they defend ACORN in the days and weeks following the infamous sting. For Democrats, it is, ultimately, preferable to cursorily omit their own indiscretions if it means amplifying those of their rivals.

How amusing it is that ACORN, who once argued O’Keefe’s investigative work was wholly undeserving of media attention, is most aggressively propagandizing the news of his arrest.

A sampling, though do read it in its entirety.

Drowning in a sense of political deja vu–the fear that burgeoning anti-incumbent sentiment is sweeping the nation in the same devastating fashion as it did in the 1994 midterm elections–one vulnerable Democrat after the next is fleeing to higher ground – preferably ground not occupied by President Barack Obama.

For his part, the President has been assuring wayward Democrats on Capitol Hill the recent losses in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New Jersey hold little implications for the national political landscape. The hope endures and the fight continues, he insists.

According to Representative Marion Berry, who Sunday announced his surprise retirement from Congress after thirteen years in office, Obama is finally laying some personal credibility and political capital on the line in 2010.

The President, in a meeting with White House political brass and Blue Dog Democrats, told Berry the parallels between 1994 and 2010 are overblown and sensational, at best. “The big difference [between] here and in ‘94 was you’ve got me,” Obama crowed, according to Berry.

Indeed, Democrats have got him, but do they honestly want him? If the loss of the late Senator Ted Kennedy’s seat is any indicator of the President’s impotency on the campaign trail, Obama may be a greater albatross than aid for Democrats.

Despite appealing to moderates of both parties in 2008, Obama has, in short order, become the most politically divisive figure in American politics. President Obama’s job approval index ratings among Democrats and Republicans has reached an all-time high for first-year presidents, according to a new Gallup poll released Monday, which found a 65 percentage-point gap between Democrats and Republicans.

MORE.

Vying for the $35 billion contract for 179 tanker planes are the Washington-based Boeing and the Toulouse, France-based European Aeronautic Defense Space Company (EADS), though the former has threatened to withdraw from consideration if the Pentagon did not significantly alter their request for proposals (RFP) to fit the capabilities of their plane.

Among EADS’ complaints was the Pentagon’s fixed-price contract provisions, which they maintain heightens financial risk for bidders. Boeing, who is rumored will propose a tanker based on their 767 platform, however has voiced little public concern with the fixed-price approach.

Pentagon acquisitions chief Ashton Carter defended the fixed-price terms last November, when the initial RFP was released, noting that the tankers would be developed with existing technology and would not warrant substantial research and development.

For their bid which fell outside the fixed-priced terms, many suspect EADS will lose the contract to the more reasonably-priced Boeing. But EADS, to put it mildly, has been on out outs with American government officials for some time.

A September report by the World Trade Organization found that Airbus–the tanker model submitted to the Air Force by EADS–benefited from billions in illegal subsidies from the European Union and its member states. Norman Dicks, in whose district Boeing assembles its planes, insisted the Obama Administration consider the WTO’s findings in the bidding process.

“The U.S. Government cannot reward illegal market actions that have harmed U.S. manufacturers and stolen U.S. aerospace jobs,” he said.

President Barack Obama, who in recent days has reassured the American public of his resolve in creating jobs, spoke Thursday with a group of 225 mayors about his economic recovery plan. Mayor Sam Jones of Mobile, Alabama delivered to Obama a letter in which he urged the President and the Pentagon to be deliberate in awarding the contract. Striking the correct balance, he said, has the potential to create more than 100,00 American jobs.

Obama, after all, would do well to heed Jones’ advice: with the national unemployment rate dangerously hovering at 10%, concern for American jobs and workers should be chief among his priorities. France’s workforce should not even be a close second.

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The pair were invited by Philadelphia-based conservative talker Dom Giordano for a special program marking the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration.

Asked to reflect on the policies she supported over the course of the previous year by Senator Specter, Bachmann said the recipe for economic prosperity would involve cutting the income tax rate to 22 percent and eliminating capital gains taxes and the estate tax. But before she could go any further, Specter interjected and began criticizing the substance of Bachmann’s answer.

“Now wait a minute,” Specter said to Bachmann. “I’ll stop and you can talk. I’ll treat you like a lady. So act like one.”

“I am a lady,” an unphased Bachmann replied.

“My question to you was what did you vote for,” Specter pressed, to which the Minnesota Republican promptly shot back: “I voted for prosperity.”

“She said, ‘I voted for prosperity.’ Well prosperity wasn’t a bill,” crowed Specter.

The Minnesotan’s next question, however, sent Specter reeling. “Well why don’t we make it a bill?” she asked, evidently before the senator had a chance to finish speaking.

“Now wait a minute, don’t interrupt me,” he said. “I didn’t interrupt you. Act like a lady.”

Audio of the exchange was made available Thursday by the Star Tribune.

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“His rhetoric promised ‘Change we can believe in,’” the voice-over said, “but his record delivered disappointment, change we didn’t expect.”

The ad enumerates those offenses observed as most egregious–the stimulus bill, cap and trade, and health care reform–by the Tea Party groups, but makes an assertion many in the conservative grassroots have not yet warmed to: That Republicans would have performed better than Democrats and delivered the change Obama only promised.

“This November the American people will tell the President that Republicans are ones that can enact the change we need.”

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Conservative columnist Fred Barnes Saturday made the case on The Weekly Standard’s website that Kirk would be ineligible after today’s votes have been tallied, writing that Kirk “will no longer be a senator after election day, period.”

With the mobilization of state Democrats to delay Republican Scott Brown’s certification and further the insistence of Democratic attorneys that qualification for the Senate requires certification by state officials, a Brown victory has all the makings of a protracted legal battle. But it’s a battle Republicans are keen on waging if it means denying Democrats the decisive filibuster-proof vote.

Should Brown defeat Martha Coakley tomorrow, the concern among Republicans is that Democrats will force health care legislation through the reconciliation process at a breakneck pace to avoid losing Kirk’s crucial vote before the winner can be certified.

But in the days following the election, it is Kirk’s eligibility, not Brown’s, that matters, according to Barnes, who spoke with Massachusetts election law experts. The attorneys said, for a cavalcade of reasons including state law, Senate precedent, and the U.S. Constitution, Kirk will no longer be the junior Senator from Massachusetts.

Massachusetts election law provides that an appointed Senator remains in office “until election and the qualification of the person duly elected to the fill the vacancy.” Due to the need for counting military and absentee ballots, the winner of tomorrow’s contest may not be certified as such until a month later, during which time Congress is expected to hold key votes on health care.

Senate precedent, however, may provide the most compelling evidence for Kirk’s ineligibility, with striking parallels to the ouster of Senator George Berry, who was awarded a temporary appointment in May of 1973 to fill Tennessee’s vacant senate seat left by the death of Nathan Bachman. While a special election was held in November 1938, the winner was not certified until January 1939.

Much like Massachusetts law, Tennessee law stipulates that appointed senators “shall hold office until his successor is elected at the next biennial election and qualifies,” on which grounds Berry argued for his continued eligibility in the Senate until his successor was formally seated.

Referred to a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Berry’s claim was found without merit. In view of the 17th Amendment, which provides a contingency for governors to appoint temporary senators, the subcommittee concluded, “it seems reasonable to assume that no temporary appointment was to be authorized except for the intervening period between the creation of a vacancy and the day when the people by their votes actually elect a successor.”

Now, the challenge for Democrats, who faced a similar challenge in seating Democratic senator Al Franken of Minnesota last year, will be to disregard state law, Senate precedent, and, perhaps most damning, the will of the voters.

Whether by tomorrow the “duly elected” Senator of Massachusetts is Martha Coakley or Scott Brown, Paul Kirk will no longer represent the interest of Massachusetts in the United States Senate. And if Brown is named senator-elect, as many pollsters and handicappers suspect, Kirk’s vote for Democratic health care reform, on which this election was a referendum, will stand as a wildly inappropriate usurpation of those interests.

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But for all the Congressional jockeying, the repeal may ultimately be stymied by President Barack Obama’s failure to lead on the issue. The onus of repealing the ban rests entirely with the commander in chief, who billed DADT’s repeal as one of his foremost objectives on the campaign trail but has don’t little on the matter since assuming office.

After seventeen years of inaction, though, the LGBT community has good reason to be skeptical of the Democratic Party’s new-found resolve. For fear they may have to take action and expend precious political capital when more pressing and sensational issues lie on the horizon, the guiding principle under which Democrats operated for the last decade was much like the first rule of Fight Club: you do not talk about DADT.

Growing increasingly agitated in recent months for Obama’s leisurely pace in fulfilling campaign pledges to those who voted en masse for Obama’s presidential bid, the LGBT community wised up and began withholding contributions to the national party. “Don’t Ask, Don’t Give”, as they dubbed their pocketbook boycott, was predicated on the understanding that money motivates politicians. Finally, not for principles but concern a rebellion of wealthy gay donors was at hand, Democrats gave the gay community a pittance.

Democrats in the House Armed Services Committee last Monday suggested they may include language in the upcoming defense authorization bill that would repeal DADT, according to the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein. The inclusion of such language, however, hinges on successful Democratic vote whipping — a Capitol Hill virtue not found among Democratic assets in recent high-stakes military funding battles.

Democrat Barney Frank was early out of the gate to preemptively cushion the blow in the event his colleagues failed to secure the necessary support, telling The Advocate that the incorporation of the repeal in the committee’s military budget recommendations was not a necessity.

“I do not think it matters what the Pentagon says,” Frank said. “We will get the votes without, I think.”

Despite Frank’s reassurances and categorically naive judgment that the Pentagon exerts no influence over Congress on military appropriation legislation, the gay community’s senior statesman would not have been dispatched to play the expectations game if Democrats were confident they the votes in committee. Ultimately, the Armed Services Committee’s vote to include or expel the new language will serve as a barometer for the House’s temperature on the matter.

For the repeal to reach critical mass, President Obama must build a consensus among virtually all Democratic lawmakers, though few, if any, vulnerable Blue Dogs will be receptive to his calls with contentious reelection battles on the horizon and a bruising health care battle at their backs.

In an email to SKEPTICIANS, LGBT kingmaker and organizer of the recent gay march on Washington David Mixner said the gay community is “simply not sure how serious” lawmakers and the president are about repealing the ban. “Clearly some progressives Democrats want to just that,” still, he said, “others swear they can’t support it.”

As the 2010 midterm elections rapidly approach, the last thing Blue Dog Democrats want to defend to constituents in conservative-leaning districts is a vote to socially reengineer the American military. And as Obama’s potential legacy as a failed one-term president hangs in the balance, the last thing the White House wants is to provide his would-be Republican opponents with any additional ammunition for the 2012 presidential campaign.

In the end, satisfying his progressive critics and appeasing the Democratic Party’s gay donor base is not worth risking reelection for President Obama. Gay outreach, as a matter of political expediency and common sense, will always play second fiddle to the president’s courtship of evangelical voters as he eyes a second term.

If they still disagree, the president’s remaining disillusioned gay supporters should reevaluate Obama’s selection of Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at last year’s inauguration. The response from the gay community was typical, if exasperated, with leaders characterizing the decision as a “genuine blow” to the movement for marriage equality. Warren, they said, had taken an active role in defeating gay marriage equality in California through the voter referendum known as Proposition 8.

But despite the outcry from gay supporters, Warren delivered the invocation without a hitch. He did so not because he Obama was specifically beholden to Warren, but because the president-elect was desperate to make inroads with evangelical Christians — even at the cost of marginalizing some of his most ardent supporters.

The demand for action on “don’t ask, don’t tell,” like the outcry over Warren’s selection, will fall on the conveniently evangelically-inclined deaf ears of the White House.

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However, I remember the one graph that showed the clearest evidence was one of Google searches for each of the candidate’s names in days and weeks preceding the election. Remembering that and thinking it an oddly much more reliable, objective measure of the potential interest in Scott Brown vs Martha Coakley, I mined similar data in the upcoming Massachusetts Senate race.

The graph below shows the volume of search queries for “Scott Brown” and “Martha Coakley” originating in Massachusetts for the past 30 days, which, for the large part, filters out all non-Bay Staters.

Brown in red [A]; Coakley in blue [B]:

Google Trends for Massachusetts Senate Race

To be clear, the ratio of queries for Scott Brown to queries for Martha Coakley is 3.10:1.00. That is absolutely remarkable.

If you add in the other trending query, “Massachusetts Senate Race (MSR),” the ratio for Brown:Coakley:MSR is still 3.10:1.00:0.10, which I take to mean that the level of general interest among Democrats remains low – that is, the Democrats’ recent media blitz is not doing a good job of bringing in uninterested, unmotivated voters. In fact, the MSR query failed to register until a few days ago.

At the risk of sounding confident, I think this is going to be an historic election and completely remake the landscape for 2010.

Tommy Jardon is the former Executive Director of the College Republican National Committee and a recent graduate of the University Florida Law School.

With the expansion of California’s State Route 905 as her backdrop, Senator Boxer insisted “that these stimulus dollars are putting people to work.”

But an Associated Press analysis released the same day by independent economists at five universities revealed that stimulus spending has failed in lowering unemployment rates.

While highway constructions projects exist as effective photo opportunities for vulnerable incumbents, the AP’s analysis laid bare a truth the White House and Congressional Democrats are keen on ignoring: infrastructure projects like road construction have “not markedly improved the country’s broad employment picture.”

Despite an unprecedented surge in transportation spending and Beltway intervention, California’s unemployment rate remains above 12 percent. Researchers found that local unemployment was largely unaffected, with rates rising and falling “regardless of how much stimulus money Washington poured out for transportation.”

Even proponents of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package have admitted its failure in stemming the tide of unemployment.

“In terms of creating jobs, it doesn’t seem like it’s created very many,” Emory University economist Thomas Smith said of the spending’s shortcomings.

Still, Boxer said on the stump: “All of us are so happy to see this project come alive, and I know that it wouldn’t have come alive without the stimulus funding.”

“Boxer’s timing is perpetually off when it comes to her blatant election year exploitation of the stimulus package to try to bolster her failure of a record for the people of California,” Fiorina spokeswoman Julie Soderlund said.

“Timing is everything,” she said, issuing a reminder to the press that in Boxer’s last stimulus cheerleading foray her facts were “woefully off.” According to local press accounts of her last trip to the region in November 2009, Boxer was caught with faulty talking points when discussing those jobs “created or saved” by recent federal spending.

On a tour of the John Moores Cancer Center at USCD, Boxer credited federal spending with the creation of more than 16,000 jobs in the San Diego area. KUSI News San Diego noted those new jobs were the product of a National Health Institute grant, and not stimulus dollars.

Boxer, whose poll numbers have been on a downward trend since March of last year, will face reelection this fall.

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A morsel, though do read it in its entirety:

Defecting to the GOP Hill campaign committees after a series of high-profile blunders by Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, veteran Republican bundlers and donors are expressing doubt in the Committee’s ability to capitalize on what political handicappers project will be a Democratic-hostile cycle.

Vaulting from one controversy to the next–each more embarrassing than the last for the national party apparatus that elected him last year–the embattled RNC chief may yet be weathering another significant loss to his roadmap for Republican success this fall: the mass exodus of staff who say Steele is “making the job harder” in the wake of his near-constant gaffing.

When Mr. Steele incites controversy, like calling Rush Limbaugh’s radio program “ugly” or suggesting Republicans are not yet ready to retake control of Congress, aides are forced to play interference for the chairman with party faithful and officials, with whom his relationship has been strained in recent months for obvious reasons. We have to “divert attention from getting our message out to placating party officials,” one senior RNC official said of the situation. “It’s all about the 168 [RNC voting members].”

Steele, around whom many rumors of ousting swirl, surprised many last week when he announced he had authored a political manifesto for a Republican renaissance. And he did so without the consultation of Republican officials and operatives on Capitol Hill.

Read the remainder of the article for more insight and musings on the inner-workings of the national party’s head quarters from those who know it best.

But as with each successive challenge to the Obama White House, when all else invariably fails, the President and his aides blame the former administration with graduating intensity. Defense-related issues–on which the President and his party are, largely, observed as out of their depth–are of course no exception to Obama’s petty politics of blame.

A senior White House official Thursday told The Washington Post’s Greg Sergeant that those terrorist recidivists cited in the Pentagon’s study were conveniently, and necessarily by virtue of Obama’s perfection, released during the Bush administration.

“Because the Obama administration has a better screening process in place to determine which detainees pose a threat,” Sergeant writes, the Obama aide was confident no detainees released under President Obama’s watch have resumed extremist activity.

The question of who is at fault for the sudden spike in terrorist activity among former detainees is one of little concern, particularly as the White House signals it intends to shutter the detention facility in the wake of increasing criticism from its progressive base. What is distressing, however, is President Obama’s insistence upon rebuking his predecessor, as opposed to taking the extraordinary measures necessary to prevent the release of additional recidivists.

The Department of Defense reported in June of 2008 that 37 former Guantanamo detainees were “confirmed or suspected” of engaging in terrorist activity following their release. That figure climbed to 61 by January of 2009, according to Pentagon officials. And in May, when the most recent “Return to the Battlefield” report was leaked to the New York Times, the upward trend continued, reaching 74.

While present figures remain classified, the Weekly Standard’s Thomas Joscelyn approximated that, according to the Pentagon’s new analysis, 112 former detainees had resumed their jihad on America – a startling metric of failure the current administration is keen on discounting.

Was a negligent Bush White House to blame for the increased rates of recidivism? Not likely, as the Pentagon conducted an intensive review of the remaining detainees at the close of President George W. Bush’s administration.

Those detainees released by the Bush administration were considered less dangerous than the roughly 200 remaining inmates. Obviously, errors of judgment were made, for which the former President and his aides must answer.

To that end, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said of the Bush administration’s determination to release select detainees: “Some of the initial cases were — were — were more obvious than others. Some of them were deemed to be less of a threat than others. I think as we are getting down to the final couple hundred, that these are clearly very difficult cases.”

But whereas President Bush’s aides released or transferred those inmates “deemed to be less of a threat,” President Obama’s administration must review the undesirables, the “very difficult cases,” for whom there is no degree of certainty they will not resume terrorist activities.

Most unsettling is the prospect of the Obama administration making judgments in these most complicated of cases, whereby the likelihood of releasing recidivists outweighs the potential for earning allies in Yemen, Afghanistan, or the illegitimate state of “Somaliland.” If in seemingly clear cases errors were made by the Bush administration, only stunning hubris can explain Obama’s naive assertion that no recidivists will be released under his watch.

Now, President Obama should pledge to Americans the application of greater scrutiny in the determination of continued detention for Guantanamo detainees. Instead, the White House continues its blistering and reckless march towards closing the facility.

Boxer and Associates, owned by son Douglas Boxer, has in the last 8 years profited to the tune of $497,409.17, $36,000 of which was from last year alone as the politically-vulnerable Boxer readies for a contentious reelection campaign in the fall. These $36,000 in fees are supplementary to the $141,000 Boxer’s leadership PAC awarded her son in 2008 for fundraising consulting.

The subject of a 2007 Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) exposé on the practice of politicians using campaign funds to employ relatives, Boxer insists on keeping it in the family–with expenditures to her son’s firm the highest among all others for the 2010 cycle–despite concerns from constituents and watchdog groups.

Renewing interest in Senator Boxer’s family emoluments, the young Boxer Tuesday sent an email requesting supporters donate to his mother’s campaign “because she always wanted to make things better for our family.”

Carly Fiorina campaign spokeswoman Julie Soderlund sounded the alarm and questioned if the young Boxer was once again profiting from his mother’s sizable campaign war chest.

“Doug Boxer wasn’t kidding when he signed off this letter to donors by saying ‘our entire family is so grateful for your strong support’ – he’s grateful more than anyone since he’s been lining his pockets with hundreds of thousands of dollars thanks to his mother’s long career in politics,” Soderlund said in a statement.

“Ethical questions have been repeatedly raised regarding this financial arrangement, but that hasn’t stopped either of the Boxers from continuing with this questionable behavior and putting their own interests first.”

To the near-exclusion of regular citizens, Boxer’s “PAC for a Change” is largely supported by labor unions, malpractice law firms, and the entertainment industry — on whose behalf Douglas Boxer will no doubt lobby his mother in return for their generous support over the last 8 years.

Ethics legislation to amend federal election law barring political committees and leadership pacs from employing the candidate’s spouse and further requiring them to report all expenditures made to immediate family members passed the House of Representatives in 2008.

It met opposition in the Senate, however, and was never released from committee, providing the necessary cover for the Senator and son Boxer to further skirt reasonable campaign ethics reporting.

With polls proving her vulnerable to Republican challenges, Senator Boxer will fundraise–with son Douglas in tow, no doubt–with the fierce urgency of now, likely vaulting her well-heeled progeny well over the half-million threshold. And despite criticism from CREW and the like, Boxer has little interest in changing course 16 years in.

Cross-posted to RedState.com.

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According to figures collected by Politico, Washington’s influence peddlers will likely shatter last year’s record of $3.3 billion spent on lobbying Congress and the White House.

President Obama’s record is one of soaring rhetoric but compromised values. When push comes to shove, shove had better be prepared to contribute significant sums of money.

Early in his administration, Obama was forced to develop a mechanism to allow exceptions for “uniquely qualified individuals” under his “no lobbyists” dicta which qualified roughly 11 percent of President Obama’s senior staff–who were federally registered lobbyists in the last 5 years–to serve. And now, nearly one year and $3 billion later, Obama will again answer for his sheer ambivalence to allowing lobbyists the opportunity to run Washington.

“It is the most active time that I have ever seen in the advocacy business — from 1973 on,” James Thurber, director of American University’s Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, said of Washington’s influence industry in the Obama era of shallow transparency.

President Obama’s commitment to any issue is directly proportional to the amount with which lobbyists can pad his campaign coffers. And what’s worse, Democratic members of Congress are following Obama’s example.

According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics’ website OpenSecrets.org, the health care sector has to-date awarded Democrats over $9 million in campaign contributions, with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid taking the lion’s share.

Why, after hedging on a variety of Democratic campaign staples including Iraq, the public option and LGBT equality, would Obama hold firm on his promise to deny special-interest brokers a seat at the table?

Influence means money, and money in politics virtually ensures reelection.

Cross-posted to RedState.com.

Among those released were six Yemenis, four Afghanis, and two Somalis, many of whom have been in American custody for the last eight years.

The decision to close Guantanamo–by transferring and trying in civilian court or repatriating detainees–was hailed by Democrats as the first and ultimately necessary step in dismantling the Bush-era detention policies, but has since been met with increasing public skepticism and softening support, with polls finding Americans opposing the closure by more than a 2-to-1 margin.

And with reports now confirming that two Gitmo prisoners were released into the custody of a failed state whose legitimacy the United Nations and our State Department refuse to acknowledge, this sense of apprehension promises to grow deeper still.

The two Somalis, Mohammed Sulaymon Barre and Ismael Arela, were entrusted into the custody of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) by Justice Department officials. A former British protectorate known locally as Somaliland received the pair and, according to local press accounts, immediately freed the former terror suspects.

At the time of his arrest in 2006, the Department of Defense identified Arela as a “courier between East Africa Al Qaeda (EEAQ) and Al Qaeda in Pakistan,” additionally maintaining he held a leadership role in an EEAQ-affiliated group known as the Somali Council of Islamic Courts. Arela was suspected of acquiring weapons and explosives and facilitating the entry of Al Qaeda members into Somalia by way of forging government documents.

Arela’s compatriot was suspected of supporting “forces engaged in hostilities against the United States” while operating an illegal money transfer operation from his home in Pakistan. A member of the Osama Bin Laden-linked al Wafa, a terrorist organization found on the State Department’s dubious Terrorist Exclusion List, and participant in a jihadist training camp in Afghanistan, Barre was found deserving of continued detention in 2005.

Still, Obama Administration officials released both Arela and Barre — and not into the custody of a stable government, but rather into an environment in which radical anti-American sentiment flourishes.

There is little doubt that Arela and Barre would be free of American custody were Americans appropriately apprised of their sordid past. Unfortunately, their repatriation was organized with the greatest of secrecy. But sleep safe at night, America, with the knowledge that President Obama will pacify his progressive base at all costs.

While Amateur Hour at the Obama White House will no doubt continue indefinitely, Americans can only hope these men–and indeed President Obama’s reckless future releasees–are not terrorist recidivists.

Cross-posted to RedState.com.

Senator Al Franken today caused a stir among his colleagues, breaking from the Senate’s long-held standards of collegiality when the gavel-wielding Minnesota Democrat denied Senator Joe Lieberman an additional minute to finish his remarks.

Lieberman–who has been vilified by progressives for rejecting the controversial public option, most recently by MoveOn today–was interrupted by Franken when his remarks exceeded the allotted ten minutes.

“I’m sorry. The senator has spoken for ten minutes,” said Franken, acting as the chamber’s presiding officer.

In such occasions, members request unanimous consent from their colleagues for an additional moment or two. Such requests are summarily granted.

Franken, however, had little interest in hearing the remainder of the Connecticut Independent’s remarks on Medicare. “In my capacity as the senator from Minnesota, I object,” he said, with an unmistakable smirk.

While Lieberman casually laughed off Franken’s objection, Senator John McCain rose to defend his long-time friend, saying he’d never before seen such gross disrespect.

“I’ve been around here twenty-something years. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a member denied an extra minute or two to finish his remarks,” said McCain.

“And I must say, I don’t know what’s happening here in this body, but I think it’s wrong. I tell you, I’ve never seen a member denied an extra minute or two as the chair just did.”

Franken spokeswoman Jess McIntosh assured the Huffington Post that no disrespect was meant by objecting to Lieberman’s request for additional time and that Senate Democratic leadership is directing all presiding officers to strictly enforce time allotments. The decision, the spin goes, merely reflects the urgency with which Senate Democrats are approaching health care.

Either Senator Franken strictly adheres to Leadership direction, or the junior senator from Minnesota had a substantial axe to grind with Lieberman for taking “hostage” substantive health care reform. I’m willing to bet it’s the latter.

Indeed, so do progressives, droves of which can be found on Twitter celebrating Franken’s rude behavior.

Cross-posted to RedState.com.

“We should not be using health care reform to provide government access to abortion,” said Kohl–who NARAL awarded a 100% pro-choice rating–at a health care forum sponsored by Marquette University Law School.

But of particular consequence for the prescient senior senator from Wisconsin was the concern that Senate leadership would broker a late-night, controversial agreement on federally-subsidized abortion.

Decidedly off-message, Kohl continued, “And I would hope that people from whatever party won’t try and go down that road and put it into a bill in the dead of night and then, lo and behold, wake up the next morning and something that shouldn’t have happened did happen.”

Marquette graduate Dan Zeidler, whose line of questioning on abortion promise to land Kohl in uncertain waters with progressive Democrats, was assured by the Senator the two could work “directly” on a solution to prevent controversial abortion coverage mandates.

After weeks of unresponsiveness, Zeidler penned an open letter to Kohl, copying local Catholic Bishops. The letter (PDF) asks Kohl to reconfirm his commitment to “work directly” with concerned constituents to ensure passage of a similarly-worded House-passed provisions that denies federal coverage for abortion “and the other related life-protective matters, including the rights of conscious.”

An audio recording of the forum confirms Kohl’s account of the event, which was previously unreported.

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