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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Sign up to receive Skepticians.com in your favorite news reader so you’ll never miss a post. It won’t make you pretty, or intelligent, or, well, give you any desireable trait, but at least you won’t sound like a dolt at the watercooler tomorrow.

Gwinn, who last month was charged with six felonies for campaign finance crimes and money-laundering, became the subject of a voter fraud investigation after an email from College Democrats Vice President Kellie Galan surfaced in which students were promised a cash bounty for every voter brought to the polls.

“Remember, if you bring a friend from 4th ward they are more then [sic] a friend, they’re 5 bucks!” Galan wrote to fellow College Democrats in the email.

Athens’ 4th Ward featured a hotly contested city council race between College Democrat-endorsed incumbent Christine Fahl and Republican challenger Randy Morris. Fahl defeated Morris by a slim 30 vote margin.

Athens GOP County Chair Pete Couladis demanded an investigation after news of the email broke, telling reporters “maybe the College Democrats received a stimulus check to help get people to vote.”

“If money was being paid or offered by the College Democrats to college students or anyone else to vote, this is a serious violation of Ohio’s elections laws,” said Couladis.

Athens County Prosecutor Dave Warren, a Democrat, said at the time the investigation was launched, “I think it smells like the Democrats are trying to buy an election.”

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests as much, and also suggests College Democrats played a central role in this crime.

According to Ohio’s bribery statutes concerning voting, “advance, pay, or cause to be paid or procure or offer to procure money or other valuable thing to or for the use of another, with the intent that it be part thereof shall be used to induce such person to vote or refrain from voting” is illegal.

Presently, no members of the College Democrats have been indicted in the vote bounty scheme, likely attributable to the logistical and public relations nightmare in trying dozens of co-eds with voter fraud.

Cross-posted to CRNC.org.

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Siraj Wahhaj, a radical Muslim cleric who authorities in 1995 identified an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trace Center bombing, was last week invited to Queens College to speak on the subject “How Islam Perfected Thanksgiving.”

Wahhaj, a year after being named an unindicted co-conspirator of the 1993 WTC bombing, testified for convicted terror plotter Omar Abdel Rahman, who was charged with attempting to bomb New York’s Lincoln Tunnel and the United Nations. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was recently assailed–justifiably so, considering the imam’s history and inflammatory rhetoric–in the press for inviting Wahhaj to an event with local Muslim religious leaders to discuss the Ft. Hood tragedy.

Despite Wahhaj’s altogether sordid and troubling past, the imam was invited with open arms to campus of Queens College by the Muslim Student Association (MSA), whose members just days before attended a College Republican film screening event of an anti-radical Muslim film and reportedly laughed and muttered “good” as beheading footage of American businessmen and the collapse of the World Trade Centers aired.

At a debate following the film, one MSA member said, “If I had enough money I would be part of the jihad army, I would kill all the Jews,” according to one College Republican present. Another spoke of getting a “bomb.”

Following the events of the debate and the invitation to Wahhaj, the Queens College chapter of College Republicans demanded the school’s administrators defund the MSA on the grounds the group espoused radical, anti-American ideology. School officials defended the organization, telling reporters it was a matter of constitutionally-protected free speech.

The MSA “definitely should not be funded by the taxpayers,” Queens College Republicans Vice President Ryan James Girdusky told the New York Post.

But despite the school’s protestations, the Queens College Muslim Student Association has a history of associating with extremist elements of the Muslim community. One of the group’s most committed members, Adis Medunjanin, was last month arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation with Najibullah Zazi in New York City as a prime suspect in a terror investigation called “one of the most serious terrorist threats to our country since Sept. 11, 2001” by Attorney General Eric Holder.

Medunjanin, a respected member of the Queens College MSA, was a common fixture in the group’s prayer room, “where he came to worship two or three times a week,” according to the New York Times.

But the most alarming aspect of this is the College Democrats’ conspicuous silence on the matter. Wahhaj’s record of destructive and divisive rhetoric is such that, in an ideal world, both parties would be compelled–out of simple respect for the victims of September, 11th, if by nothing else–to condemn the imam’s radical brand of Islam and the group who so willingly extended an invitation.

Of course, we don’t live in an ideal world.

College Democrats’ are complicit in Wahhaj’s troubling anti-American rhetoric by failing to condemn his presence and ideology, a particularly tone-deaf position as disconcerted New Yorkers cope with the Obama Administration’s reckless decision to award enemy military combatants civilian trails in their back yard.

While school administrators’ insistence that the MSA is a run-of-the-mill student organization may be the politically expedient thing to do, it’s certainly not the right thing to do.

[Disclosure: I serve as the College Republican National Committee's Communication Director.]

Cross-posted to Redstate.com and the CRNC’s official blog.

Despite Serwer’s protestations, there is very little question that President Obama has a Gitmo problem.

This Administration is battling significant headwinds on a number of fronts, the greatest of which perhaps is that Americans by more than a 2-to-1 margin in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll oppose the closing of Guantanamo Bay. Coupling this with the fact that many in the President’s own party demand an immediate closure of the controversial detention facility, and the President is forced to do some difficult political calculus that likely leaves the progressive wing of his party out in the cold.

It’s really no secret that this White House’s policy initiatives are almost exclusively poll-driven, particularly defense-related issues. President Obama has been quietly moderating his position on a series of Bush policies since assuming office in January, including the suspension of extrajudicial military commissions and the release of torture photos.

But while these new polls are certainly damaging to the President’s agenda, what is most damaging is the hemorrhaging of Administration officials who have abandoned their posts after disagreements with White House political brass.

Phillip Carter, who was formerly a fierce critic of the Bush administration’s detention policies, abruptly resigned Tuesday from his Pentagon Post, launching speculation from all sides that the White House was further hedging on its promise to close Gitmo.

Carter’s statement read that he was resigning for “personal and family reasons,” but most astute observers recognized this as typical Washington parlance for internal disagreements. This speculation of ideological growing pains and internal friction was compounded by the fact that Carter resigned only days after President Obama confirmed to Beijing press that the White House would miss its self-imposed January 22nd Guantanamo closure deadline.

Obama’s transition advisors floated the notion that then-President-elect Obama would begin symbolically dismantling the Bush-era detention policies by issuing a closure of Gitmo on Day One of his Administration. It’s now nearly twelve months later and Gitmo is still open.

The image Obama cultivated over the course of last year’s campaign was such that then-Senator Obama was an idealist, a civil libertarian, and a constitutional law professor. As it turns out, as President, Mr. Obama is far more concerned with political expediency than idealism.

When asked by a student if he was aware of China’s firewall blocking the popular micro-blogging service, Obama forewent his tech savvy reputation, saying, “I have never used Twitter but I’m an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access.”

President Obama’s admission that his unfamiliarity of the technology tool du jour would have been an altogether innocuous acknowledgement that the President is, well, old, were it not for the dogged efforts of his campaign apparatus in portraying the young then-Senator Obama as hip and tech-savvy opposite the old and inaccessible Senator John McCain.

In explicitly making the case that McCain’s simple awareness of technology was not equivalent to Obama’s superior appreciation–and use–of technology, the Obama campaign launched a web ad in September of 2008 callously assailing McCain for his inability to use a computer and send an email. Were McCain elected, their logic went, the seat of the Free World’s power would run through the 73-year-old’s car phone and computer running on MS-DOS.

Of the ad, the Obama campaign said, “‘Still’ details why John McCain would just be another out of touch president offering more of the same.”

While the Obama campaign suggested McCain’s indifference to new technology was the result of the Senator’s age, Republicans were quick to note the real reason for his perceived tech-illiteracy: Senator McCain’s battle-field wounds limit the use of his hands. The Obama campaign never apologized, insisting McCain’s failure to make use of technology was due to his age and he was therefor unfit to serve as President.

President Obama’s admission that he’s Twitter-averse is not an acknowledgment that he’s old or even out of touch, like he suggested of Senator McCain. It is, however, emblematic of the duplicitous ends to which President Obama and his allies–complicit in this and countless other deceptive electioneering offenses–will go in the name of campaigning.

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“Our nation is facing serious economic challengers because we keep rehiring the same failed career politicians who have proven themselves incapable of making hard choices,” read Coburn’s statement. “Carly’s common sense and fiscal conservatism will be a welcome addition to the United States Senate. I am glad to offer her my endorsement.”

Today’s announcement by Fiorina, who only formally announced her bid for Senate on Wednesday, comes on the heels of Senator Jim Demint’s endorsement of Fiorina’s Republican primary opponent, Assemblyman Chuck DeVore.

In addition to Coburn, Senators Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham, Jon Kyl, John McCain, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, and Olympia Snowe endorsed the former Silicon Valley executive.

“I am humbled to have earned the endorsement of each one of these distinguished Republican Senators,” Fiorina said of today’s endorsements. “They are all dedicated public servants and it is a true honor to have their support.”

While DeVore’s campaign has likened the California primary to the contentious GOP primary in Florida with liberal Republican Governor Charlie Crist and conservative Marco Rubio, conservative activists have failed to coalesce behind DeVore in ways similar to Rubio in Florida, Hoffman in New York, and Toomey in Pennsylvania.

Fiorina’s endorsers–who run the political gambit from reliably- to questionably-conservative–emphasizes the campaign’s general election strategy against liberal Democratic incumbent Senator Barbara Boxer. Fiorina must cobble together an altogether unlikely coalition, attracting the GOP’s newly-energized conservative activists while not running a campaign entirely predicated on red meat conservative values. And she’ll have to do it soon with the dogged DeVore at her every turn.

Fiorina’s allies acknowledge there is yet a long way to go in their uphill battle against Boxer, but today’s endorsements are a step-if only small in the critical eyes of California’s conservative activists–in the right direction.

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“It was a photo op precisely because he’s having big-time trouble on this whole Afghanistan dithering situation,” the conservative radio icon told “Fox News Sunday.”

While there is little question in my mind that the President is sincere in his concern for the men and women of the Armed Forces, there is absolutely no question the White House is hyper-sensitive to growing concerns among the public that the President is wholly out of his depth as a career politician trying to effectively execute the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A New York Times report of the even said the photos were taken to “convey to the nation the President was not making his Afghanistan decision lightly or in haste.”

While very few, I think, would believe the President is making his Afghanistan decision in haste after Administration officials on Monday said it could be three more weeks until the official strategy in Afghanistan is announced, there is mounting concern that he’s taking this decision to deploy more troops–or leave those presently on the ground floundering without the necessary support–lightly.

And to quell these concerns, the White House made the conscious decision to telegraph and commemorate Obama’s actions.

The President’s decision to pay tribute to America’s fallen soldiers was a noble and indeed righteous act, but paying homage does not necessitate he bring along the D.C. press corps.

Even with photos like these to remind the public that President Obama is cognizant of the human cost of battle field success, voters will only afford the President and his advisors so much indecisiveness with American lives hanging in the balance and the heart of Rush’s criticism, I think, speaks to this.

On Monday after a long birthday weekend, I appeared on MSNBC alongside Ari Melber of The Nation to debate the impetus and optics of this photo. Below is the unedited clip, in which I wear a bow tie.

And if you’d like to send more hate mail concentrating on my choice of tie (e.g., “your bow tie dwarfed your fucking head, you Republican piece of shit), please feel free to email gofugyourself@Idontcarewhatyouthinkaboutmywardrobe.com.

Rosiak writes:

The biggest disparity seems to be bandwidth costs–the RNC paid Smartech Corp., a Republican-focused hosting firm, more than a million dollars, plus $22,000 to Eloqua, compared to the DNC’s $203,000 to Sprint, Switch and Data and Servint Corp.–despite the fact that the two sites’ traffic, which determines bandwidth usage and, largely, hosting costs, was the same.

But the design of the site itself was costly, too. In the months prior to the October 13 launch of GOP.com, the committee paid $328,000 to 11 firms for Web development.

For an organization that prides itself on investigative research, the Sunlight Foundation is comically inept at reading campaign finance data. “They should learn to read an FEC report,” remarked my source.

The most outrageous of the RNC’s web-related expenditures, Sunlight’s exposé goes, is the $1 million-plus disbursement to Tennessee-based Smartech Corp. for hosting services. Smartech, considered by many a heavyweight in Republican web hosting, began consulting for the RNC in 2000.

“I can tell you from my tenure there that the Smartech bill includes a lot of things that aren’t GOP.com,” said former RNC eCampaign Director Michael Turk. “If you go back and look at that bill over time, I suspect it has always been high, regardless of who was Chair and regardless of whether they were rolling out a new GOP.com.”

The range of services provided by Smartech extends far beyond pricey bandwidth support for the party’s new website. According to party officials, Smartech facilitates internet at the national headquarters, hosts 31 state parties’ websites on the RNC’s platform, and provides broadcast email capabilities to the RNC and over 40 state parties. Additionally, a vast majority of the data aggregated by Voter Vault–the RNC’s voter microtargeting database, which compiles state voter files, information from commercial marketing companies, and census data to predict voters’ partisan tendencies–is hosted by Smartech.

Sunlight correctly notes the DNC’s expenditures for bandwidth services are well below that of the RNC, but what they neglected to report is perhaps more telling: the DNC does not provide website and email hosting to state parties.

RNC officials were not willing to disclose exact figures related to the party’s new digital threads, but offered assurances it was “well in the average for the services rendered.”

To that end, Turk said of the RNC’s web development budget: “subtract the million from the $1.4, and then deduct the $328k for development, and the big ‘shock’ here is that they spent $100,000. As is often the case with Sunlight attacks on the RNC, this one can be summed up with ‘Show’s over, folks. Nothing to see here.’”

Speaking of ‘Sunlight attacks,’ it is worth noting that all are not equal. Transparency and skepticism should be reserved only for some — specifically, Republicans. When reporting on the Obama administration’s fiscally irresponsible $18 million redesign of Recovery.gov, Sunlight officials sought to quell criticism, writing at the time, “you can’t presume that the government isn’t spending its money wisely unless you know both what Government is paying and what they’re paying for. We don’t know what they’re paying for.”

But Sunlight presumed to know exactly what the RNC’s web development expenditures were for, presumably because their targets were, well, Republicans.

The latest installment in OfA’s “call ‘em out” campaign—a call to arms of sorts for complacent allies of President Barack Obama to debunk Republican myths about heath care reform—accuses Steele of scare-mongering and orchestrating a misinformation campaign against the President’s efforts on health care.

“Michael Steele is willing to lie and play political games in order to kill reform that would help Americans of every political party — so we’re calling him out,” reads an email from OfA Executive Director Jen O’Malley announcing the video.

Republicans on Capitol Hill, however, argue the Democrats’ new web campaign is as blatantly wrong as it is overtly hostile.

Opening with a recent segment from White House-scorned FOX News on health care reform’s “obligation to older Americans,” Steele said, “Just look at the situation with our veterans when you have a manual out there telling our veterans, you know, stuff like are you really a value to your community. You know, encouraging them to commit suicide.” Promptly followed by a blaring, rubber-stamped chyron reading “FALSE,” OfA cites as Politifact.com as cover for their claim.

At issue is a Department of Veteran Affairs-funded pamphlet—dubbed the “death book” by the Wall Street Journal—which presented various advanced care scenarios to aging veterans, callously prompting readers to then decide if their life would be “not worth living.” Democratic strategists correctly note the “Your Life, Your Choices” document was first published in 1997 and promoted by the VA throughout President George W. Bush’s two terms in office. What they fail to mention, conveniently, is that the “manual” was suspended after a review by Bush administration officials – and only later revived in 2009 by the new Democratic administration.

Despite OfA’s protestations, the Obama administration published a directive on July 2nd, 2009, emphatically stating that “primary care practitioners are responsible for giving patients pertinent educational materials, e.g. refer patients to the ‘Your Life, Your Choices’ module.” If patients request more information from doctors, the directive continues, they should “be directed to the exercises in ‘Your Life, Your Choices’” – i.e., initiating end-of-life counseling.

Furthermore, the belief expressed by Steele and other prominent Republicans that elderly Americans and aging veterans would be vulnerable under the Democrats’ health care proposal is one grounded in the realities of the marketplace, not a smoke-filled room in the Republican Capitol Hill Club. A study from Georgetown University’s Center for Clinical Bioethics, in fact, legitimized the fear of government-encouraged suicide as a means of cost-cutting when they found staggering “links between cost-cutting pressure on physicians and their willingness to prescribe lethal drugs to patients.”

Again with their self-indulgent “FALSE” rubber stamp, the DNC cried foul on another Steele claim: that Obama’s health care forms could result in “119 million Americans being dumped out of their private coverage into a cheaper government-run health care program.” But the Lewin Group, a non-partisan health care policy research firm, estimated that of the 171.6 million people who currently have private employer or non-group coverage, 119.1 million would be forced to move to the public plan. Politifact.com, OfA’s fact-checker-of-choice, finds no error with the Lewin Group’s model, but ultimately disagrees because it is “unlikely” that Congress would move forward with a Medicare-style public option.

Politifact’s review came in May, where it was unlikely that progressive Democrats would have bucked the President on health care if their demands for the public option were not met. Flash-forward to October, where House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she will “move forward with the more liberal version of a health reform bill that would peg government-run coverage to Medicare,” and Steele’s claim looks far more valid than the DNC, OfA and White House are willing to admit.

Citing Senator Max Baucus’ recent declaration that his version of the legislation would “actually reduce the federal deficit in the tenth year by several billion dollars” by way of debunking Steele’s claim that Obama’s reforms would increase the deficit, OfA once again gleefully says “FALSE.” Independent reviews of Baucus’ bill, however, reveal something quite different from the sentiment expressed today by the White House – namely, a parlous game with Congressional Democrats concealing hundreds of billions in costs to appear deficit neutral. Unlike their Democratic colleagues in the lower chamber who at least accurately portrayed the fiscal reality of the $245 billion “doc fix,” Senate Democrats patch an ever-expanding problem by naively assuming doctors would accept a 25% cut in Medicare disbursements for the unforeseeable future.

OfA’s latest assault comes on the heels of similar attacks on Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty and Representative Michelle Bachman. The strategy adopted by the White House, as many Republicans on Capitol Hill see it, is to unrelentingly ‘call out’ and dish ‘reality checks’ to their Republican critics until such a point where all ambivalent Americans succumb and submit as a means to end the White House’s seemingly un-ending fact-checking crusade. But if the White House’s political operation is so keen on fact checking their critics, many of whom are, in fact, on the money in their criticism, they would do well to avoid deceptive and duplicitous web videos.

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Upon reaching the new GOP.com, RNC Chairman Michael Steele takes a virtual step onto the computer screen and leads users on a tour of the site’s new features.

“Notice anything different?” asks Steele. “It’s the new GOP.com. It’s a forward-looking, open-platform for the party of new ideas. If you’re a Republican activist, this is your space.”

The developers of the new website hope to capitalize on the organic activism that gave way to Tea Parties across the nation by “creating a larger, more informed, more organized, and more energized Republican community.”

Conscious of the propensity for online social networking to mobilize activists, the new website was designed with an unmistakable attentiveness to social media and blogging, having devoted a significant portion of the landing page’s real estate to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.

At first glance, the RNC’s new digital threads look nothing like a typical political website. From the dynamic logo featuring user-submitted pictures of supporters to the refreshingly simple navigation menu, the revamped and reorganized GOP web presence represents a commonly-preached but rarely-practiced belief on Capitol Hill: that the best ideas come from outside the Beltway.

Said one RNC official familiar with the project: “We tried to break the mold here. None of the firms we hired have ever worked in politics.”

In addition to seamlessly incorporating prominent social networks like Facebook and Twitter into their new platform, the RNC also revised their now-defunct in-house social network, myGOP. Renamed to represent Steele’s embrace of organic activism and community engagement, their new social network, dubbed “OurGOP,” allows users to organize by location, issue, or candidate slate.

And as a supplement to the new “you-centric” social network, RNC officials note an additional innovative feature: users can securely login with third-party credentials, including OpenID and Facebook rather than creating a new account.

The new website is the latest aspect of Steele’s comprehensive rebranding campaign for the GOP, who weathered two consecutive election-year losses in 2006 and 2008. The 2010 midterm elections, Steele hopes, will be different. And that difference will be fostered by surging online conservative activism.

“At GOP.com something new is happening. And that something is you,” said Steele in his video introduction.

UPDATE: As Politico’s Ben Smith points out, the RNC’s “Future Leaders” page is curiously—or perhaps candidly—blank.

The Democratic National Committee gleefully noted the error to reporters this morning, echoing the “it’s funny because it’s true” criticisms voiced on Twitter today.

Suggesting the blank page is somehow emblematic of the GOP’s withering crop of leaders, one DNC spox told Talking Points Memo “there are no future leaders in the GOP. As the GOP continues to champion the same failed policies of the past, recycle the same failed leaders of the past like Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich, and fails to get that the American people aren’t looking for a party that just says ‘NO’ to progress, we rate this claim ‘True. So, very true.’”

Hoping to recover from their early-morning fumble, the RNC updated the page to reflect Steele’s belief that ‘action begins with the individual, and that grassroots activism holds the key to future GOP success.’

“Who are the future leaders of the Republican Party? You are — you, the people who make America work,” the new site reads.

The page does not currently feature any prominent Republican elected official or activist, but says supporters may send an email to FutureLeaders@GOP.com to acknowledge “stand-out, Republican leaders who don’t get the acclaim they deserve.”

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“We are going to have a public option before this bill goes to the president’s desk,” Reid said Thursday afternoon on a conference call with constituents.

But the Nevada Democrat, who is tasked with reconciling the competing Senate committee versions of the bill, yesterday told reporters the final bill would not be fashioned until the White House and leaders of the Finance and HELP committees had been consulted.

“Once that’s done, we’ll decide jointly as to what should be in that bill,” he said.

On Wednesday, the final bill hinges on consultation with Senate leadership and the President. Thursday, news surfaces that suggests Reid has consolidated the two Senate versions, and opted for the more progressive. There exists only two possible explanations. Harry Reid is either the single most productive member of Congress or he’s circumventing Democratic leaders—and the Ranking Republicans of the HELP and Finance committees—to advance his own agenda.

While Reid’s comments will likely embolden disaffected progressives, they promise to marginalize Democratic Senators Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu and Republican Senator Olympia Snowe.

Some Democratic leaders maintain there’s no “line in the sand” in the health care overhaul, signaling the potential for negotiations with Republicans. Still, Reid’s comments today represent the increasing vulnerability of Democrats to attacks from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party for rejecting the public option.

Highlighting this vulnerability, Daily Kos Founder Markos Moulitsas wrote on Twitter today, “Blanche Lincoln will soon wonder why no one is riding to her rescue, or [cares] about her possibly losing.”

Moderate Democrats must fall in line like Speaker Reid or risk losing deep-pocketed progressive donors and online advocates like Moulitsas.

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Citing the physical demands of her ongoing treatment for breast cancer, for which she was diagnosed last March, potential GOP Senate candidate Carly Fiorina said her schedule of radiation treatments would not permit her attendance at the convention.

But the DeVore campaign has noted that, while Fiorina’s health curiously precluded her from attending the party gathering, she spent much of the following Monday campaigning in Fresno with ranchers and participated via satellite in Fortune’s “Most Powerful Women Summit.”

Laying the foundation for the belief that Fiorina is somehow casually exploiting her illness for the benefit of her campaign, State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore told The Fresno Bee he finds “it curious that her campaign said she was unable to make the convention for health reasons, and yet, … she was engaged in what appears to be a pretty standard, strenuous campaign day yesterday – the day after the convention.”

Indicative of his campaign’s reliance on rumor-mongering of a particularly vicious and fatuous sort, DeVore’s critics say his campaign’s latest assault on Fiorina is built on the notion that he can cobble together support among the GOP ranks by fostering the double-edged rumor that his opponent is too ill to campaign, too liberal to campaign for the Republican nomination – or, perhaps, both.

“Carly says daily treatments keep her home, yet she campaigned Monday. Conclusion: as Pluto is no longer a planet, Monday is no longer a day,” wrote campaign spokesman Josh Treviño on Twitter.

Fiorina, whose campaign is stalled in the exploratory phase, will “continue to take day trips with a limited schedule, like she did in Fresno, in order to meet with people and hear first hand their concerns about our state and our country,” said spokeswoman Beth Miller.

Sources familiar with Fiorina’s event in Fresno say it was neither “strenuous” nor absent of conservatives, contending it was a casual agricultural campaign event. Moreover, the event in Fresno was conveniently—and necessarily—located near where Fiorina receives her radiation treatment – whereas Indian Wells is roughly 400 miles away.

As for Fiorina’s participation in Fortune’s summit, the suggestion that she is cherry-picking her appearances to deliberately avoid Republicans is asinine. And it’s particularly offensive when considering the topic. Fiorina and fellow cancer survivor Elizabeth Edwards spoke on behalf of “Stand up to Cancer,” a star-studded campaign to fund cancer research, both of whom were unable to attend in-person due to treatment regimen.

Fiorina, who is in the final weeks of radiation treatment, is expected to make a definitive announcement about her intentions to run for Senate in the coming weeks.

But should she ultimately decide to challenge Bay Area liberal Barbara Boxer, California Republican activists should expect to see Fiorina at the next state GOP convention in February – healthy.

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After launching a website last week describing Pawlenty as “extreme,” the Democratic National Committee today characterized the potential 2012 contender as a “part-time Governor” after news surfaced he was to launch a political action committee.

“Tim Pawlenty is quickly becoming the definition of ’say one thing and do another’. Today’s news about Pawlenty starting a political action committee is just the latest in a series of broken pledges by the Governor – first breaking his pledge to not raise taxes on the people of Minnesota, and now breaking his pledge to finish his term ‘strong’ as Governor,” said DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan.

“This is just more evidence that Pawlenty is, at best, a part-time Governor who cares more about his national political ambitions than the people of Minnesota,” he said in an email to reporters this afternoon.

While the formation of PACs are indeed a signature of budding presidential campaigns, Democrats have not always been of the opinion they somehow represent a “broken pledge” or a dereliction of duty, as one political advisor close to Pawlenty noted.

Then-Senator Hillary Clinton filed a statement of organization for her leadership PAC, “HILLPAC,” on January 5, 2001, spending eight years as a “part-time” Senator before leaving her post in 2009.

On June 25, 2005, then-Senator Barack Obama announced the formation of “Hope Fund,” whose donations to politicians in key 2008 primary states raised questions of legality on the level of coordination between the PAC and the Obama campaign.

And four days after the official formation of Obama’s “Hope Fund” PAC, then-Senator Joe Biden filed a statement of organization with the FEC for his “Unite our States” PAC, in anticipation of his campaign for president in 2008.

The formation of political action committees is one of many steps in the logical progression of presidential campaigns. If Pawlenty is a “part-time” governor, he will find himself in the company of President Obama, Vice President Biden, and Secretary of State Clinton – all of whom formed PACs years before their terms in the U.S. Senate expired.

UPDATE: The DNC’s “part-time” missive seems particularly ill-advised when one considers the organization’s leadership. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine was installed as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee in early 2009 by President Obama, and has since weathered criticism for his absent governing. Keeping with Sevugan’s twisted logic, Kaine fits the bill of “part-time Governor” quite nicely.

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But Republican responses to the pending censure might explain why some prescient Democrats, perhaps guilty of similar actions under the last administration, were uneasy with assuming the role of disciplinarian: several key Democrats are weathering their own controversies, including Reps. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means committee, Jack Murtha (D-PA), and Pete Visclosky (D-IN).

“Call it the Glass House of Representatives effect,” writes Politico’s Glenn Thrush.

The censure is “another stunning example of hypocrisy,” said Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele in a statement. “Congressional Democrats are wasting taxpayers’ time and resources on a legislative measure to censure Congressman Joe Wilson so they don’t have to talk about their exceedingly unpopular health care plan.”

While the proposed censure has galvanized Republican legislative opposition to the President and Speaker Pelosi, it represented low-hanging fruit for many Capitol Hill communicators – an opportunity to revive fading Democratic controversies.

“If we are going to march Members down to the well of the House to apologize, Joe Wilson is going to have to get in line behind Nancy Pelosi, who attacked the intelligence community who protects us, Charlie Rangel who cheated on his taxes, Jack Murtha – a walking scandal, and we all know how the Democratic leadership tried to protect William Jefferson” said Steele.

Echoing Steele’s sentiment, Ken Spain of the National Republican Congressional Committee asks, “When is Nancy going to schedule a vote for Charlie Rangel?”

Despite the censure-worthy actions of Democratic members of Congress, “Nancy Pelosi continues to look the other way,” Spain added.

“The American people are still waiting for a public repudiation of the corrupt actions of Democrat members like Charlie Rangel, John Murtha, and Pete Visclosky, whose actions have truly disgraced the integrity of the People’s House that Democrats claim to be so concerned about defending.”

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While the president consciously rallied fleeting progressive support and attempted to dispel myths surrounding the legislation, he wholly neglected to mention military personnel, becoming the first wartime Commander-in-Chief to do so since former President Gerald Ford in 1974.

With public approval of the war effort in Afghanistan dipping, the case could be made—and with little difficulty—that the decision not to mention the troops serving in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere was a conscious, deliberate one.

Obama’s progressive base is rebelling, raucously in some instances, on everything from the public option to LGBT marriage equality. As it stands now, the President’s political house has been beaten and battered, and a commitment to the Afghanistan War just may be the big, bad wolf to come blow it all down. And this is not a risk the White House is willing to take.

The collapse of public resolve for the ongoing but unmentioned efforts in Afghanistan is symptomatic of the Administration’s timidity with fully committing to the war. Americans look to their President in times of war for leadership and guidance. Our President’s silence can mean only one thing, and it surely is not victory.

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But the original prepatory material for Obama’s school house stump speech raised a few parents’ eyebrows and left others convinced the principle aim was nothing short of indoctrination.

The Department of Education told teachers they might “extend learning” and stimulate discussion by instructing students to “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.” And to ensure the students hold themselves accountable, the teacher should collect the letters and redistribute them at a later time – presumably when the President’s approval rating has dropped another 10 points.

In a letter to school administrators announcing Obama’s back-to-school speech, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Obama’s special address will seek to inspire students by impressing upon them the necessity to complete school.

“During this special address, the president will speak directly to the nation’s children and youth about persisting and succeeding in school. The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning.”

White House officials say Obama’s telecast will be the first speech by a sitting president to stress academic achievement since 1991, when President George H. W. Bush spoke to students from Deal Junior High School in Washington, D.C.

Democrats, of course, sang a far different tune when a Republican was preparing to address the nation’s school children.

Then-House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Missouri) said, “The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the President.”

To be clear, the Department of Education is only a tool of indoctrination when the Secretary of Education answers to a Republican President. When students are instructed to “help the president” and no doubt support his anemic legislative agenda, it’s a teaching experience – namely the lesson of political double standards.

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But while DeVore is surely among the most tenacious and unswerving candidates vying for public office in the 2010 midterm elections, his campaign has seen only moderate success in translating his attributes as a indefatigable campaigner into support – namely, contributions, with his last FEC filing in July showing only $75,600 in cash on hand in his uphill campaign against Democratic incumbent Senator Barbara Boxer.

In an hour-long interview with REDSTATE, DeVore likened his insurgent, techno-centric campaign to that of then-Senator Barack Obama, and said he anticipates a surge in donations as his campaign further develops its online fundraising infrastructure.

The DeVore campaign is “trying to use new media in a synergistic way to tie together volunteers in a way that had not previously possible prior to the time that Al Gore invented the internet,” he told me, tongue-in-cheek.

In the hopes of affecting the debate on the Democratic-sponsored cap-and-trade legislation, the DeVore campaign launched TaxFax.us, a micro site designed to capture contact information from supporters and subsequently provide a simple, online vehicle to contact their elected officials.

“You’d be surprised how effective faxes into the Capitol Hill can be,” says the website, quoting a Hill staffer. And you may also be surprised how effective DeVore’s fax campaign was.

“We generated over 50,000 faxes into the U.S. Senate over tax-and-trade. Every U.S. Senator got a fax that I wrote,” DeVore said. “I’m unaware of any other person who has run for U.S. Senate who has tried to affect a national issue by generating such a massive amount of correspondence into Capitol Hill on an issue of currency.”

DeVore remains hopeful his unconventional but aggressive campaign will prove catch Boxer by surprise, and said that July was their best month yet in terms of fundraising where he raised over $100,000.

While his campaign’s online strategy would no doubt be music to online evangelists’ ears, I was more concerned with the campaign’s recent missives highlighting former HP CEO Carly Fiorina’s position on abortion – one they claim to be muddled. I wrote last week that DeVore’s abortion critique of Fiorina was wholly without merit, for which a DeVore consultant responded thusly: “unfortunately, it is all too easy to question the depth of Fiorina’s commitment to the pro-life cause.”

Indeed, unanswered questions remained – specifically whether DeVore is of the opinion that Fiorina is pro-choice when the only evidence to that effect are scant blind quotes by “Republican insiders” and not an admission herself.

He was quick to note that whenever Fiorina’s position on abortion was questioned, it was done so in the context of other less than appealing positions she has supported in the past. “You don’t know where she stands on the issues of the day,” he said, adding, “she has no record in anything because she’s never run for office.”

I should have anticipated some obfuscation; DeVore is a politician, after all.

Prior to assuming her position as RNC Victory Chairmwoman in 2008, Fiorina was a Silicon Valley business executive, so I was not satisfied with the tired “lack of a record” response. But upon further questioning DeVore revealed a rather bold assertion.

“I’ve heard from McCain campaign advisors that worked with her that unequivocally she was [pro-choice].”

Such personal reassurances from Fiorina’s fellow McCain advisors have likely emboldened DeVore in his convictions on the matter, but Republican primary voters should not anticipate abortion to overwhelm other salient issues, particularly California’s “bone crushing economic crisis.”

And perhaps providing his opponent with an avenue to escape further criticism if an examination of Fiorina’s past proves she was pro-choice, DeVore said: “What’s going to be on everyone’s minds here is jobs, jobs, jobs, economic development, modern, nuclear power, and oil and gas.”

UPDATE: DeVore has been quite the busy candidate. Ace of Spades’ Gabriel Malor also interviewed DeVore — posting the lengthy exchange in three parts, the second of which was focused on California’s busted budget and Proposition 8.

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PPP, whose sampling of voters skewed Democratic, found that only 36% of respondents approve of Lincoln’s job performance, while 44% say they disprove. In March of this year, the same outfit found that Lincoln maintained an approval rating with a 5-point positive spread.

The three would-be GOP challengers polled included state Senator Gilbert Baker, Huckabee fundraiser Curtis Coleman and Harvard-educated lawyer and U.S. Army veteran Tom Cotton. Among them, Baker performed the best; however a majority of Arkansans—ranging from 78% to 83%—were unsure of their opinions on the three men.

“You couldn’t get a clearer indication that the national momentum is with Republicans right now than a poll showing some guys with single digit name recognition running even with an incumbent Senator,” said PPP’s Dean Debnam.

With Obama’s health care proposal fairing worse in the polls than former President Clinton’s defeated reforms of 1994, Lincoln must take into consideration the consequences of supporting the President’s contentious legislation in a state whose voters ten months ago gave Republican John McCain 59% of the vote.

What’s more, the hemorrhaging of Democratic support to wavering public opinion raises a serious dilemma for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and poses an acute challenge to the President’s legislative agenda, as Democrats today lost their filibuster-proof majority with the death of Senator Ted Kennedy.

Reid must accept the political reality that Lincoln, who previously bucked party leadership on the cap-and-trade legislation designed to reduce carbon emissions and the reauthorization of banking infusion, may be the next casualty in the polarized health care debate.

UPDATE: Republican Party of Arkansas Chairman Doyle Webb responds:

“It’s obvious that Sen. Lincoln is vulnerable, and her approval rating of just 36% reflects the fact that she no longer represents the values of Arkansans. It’s clear the people of Arkansas reject the liberal agenda she supports in Washington D.C. Recent health care town halls have shown us that Arkansans want leaders who protect their interests, not control their lives.”

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Last week, Fiorina announced she took the first step in challenging Senator Barbara Boxer, and by proxy DeVore, by registering her campaign committee, “Carly for California,” with the IRS.

The DeVore campaign, certainly wasting no time, launched a cheeky website to “welcome Carly to the race,” asking supporters to send Fiorina one of four pre-scripted emails. Found among the original choices was the patronizing option to ask Ms. Fiorina, 54, to “make up her mind” on abortion, adding that “Carly Fiorina has never said whether she’s pro-life.” The DeVore campaign has since changed the wording to “suspect on life issues,” but the sentiment—that Fiorina is some sort of pro-abortion Manchurian Candidate—remains the same.

Following the launch of the website, DeVore allies began widely circulating an item from the Wall Street Journal that so matter-of-factly described Fiorina as “pro-choice on abortion” it reeked of poor campaign opposition research. Yesterday, the article was amended to show that Fiorina was, in fact, pro-life.

You should have detected a theme here.

Despite DeVore’s protestations, Fiorina settled on the contentious issue of abortion years ago. And contrary to the campaign’s constant refrain, she proudly calls herself a “pro-life, conservative, and life-long Republican.”

While abortion promises to be a challenge in a face-off with the fiercely pro-choice Boxer, Fiorina seems nonetheless resolved to make her pro-life position known. But for whatever reason, Fiorina’s verifiable pro-life record is not enough for DeVore.

“If DeVore doesn’t make it to the general election, he’ll be sure to bloody up Fiorina on her way,” said one Republican activist with ties to the DeVore campaign, speaking only on the condition of anonymity.

“They don’t have a statewide donor network and, as a result, they’ve raised only a couple hundred thousand dollars. They’re running against a three-term United States Senator, but their campaign is barely equipped to stage a successful state Senate bid.” Putting it bluntly, the activist added, “Chuck is a good man, but he is not a viable candidate.”

Political strategists consider any incumbent polling below 50% as potentially vulnerable, but money is the final arbiter in California statewide elections – and money is just what DeVore does not have. What DeVore lacks in campaign funds, he makes up for in doggedness, to be sure. Doggedness, however, won’t saturate television and radio with the ad buys necessary for electoral success; this requires millions of dollars.

DeVore has only raised a meager $337,000 in the eleven months he’s been running to unseat Boxer, according to his campaign’s July FEC filings. But with a fairly loose grip on the campaign’s purse strings, the campaign has burned through $302,000 and found itself $106,000 in debt.

Fiorina, who left HP with a severance package of $21 million in 2005, is positioned to shift considerably the dynamics of the money game. California has become reliably Democratic, and, should she hope to stage a successful challenge, she’ll need to either raise significant sums of money or dip into her personal fortune to stem the Democratic tide. On this count, Fiorina is particularly well-suited.

California’s voters first sent Boxer to Congress in 1992 and she easily won reelection in 1998 and 2004 – all three races against men. In her seventeen years there, Boxer has been a leading voice on women’s issues, including health care, domestic abuse, and reproductive care.

National interest in the race was subdued until last month when Rasmussen revealed that Fiorina, the first female chief executive of a Fortune 20 company, trailed Democratic incumbent Boxer by only 4 points in a theoretical matchup.

UPDATE: Joshua Trevino of the DeVore campaign responds thusly: “Pro-lifers should congratulate Carly Fiorina for her belief in the sanctity of life. But if she wants to claim it as a credit to her electoral ambitions, she has a long road ahead — and some explaining to do about the road behind.”

Read it all.

[Full disclosure: The author of this article served as RNC Online Communications Manager during Ms. Fiorina’s tenure as 2008 Victory Chairwoman at the RNC.]

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“You’ve heard this is all going to mean government funding of abortion,” the President said. “Not true.”

But as with many of Obama’s statements regarding his health care proposal, his seemingly forthright claim is simply ‘not true.’ Before a crowd of Planned Parenthood executives and contributors in 2007, then-Senator Obama explicitly pledged to not yield on “the fundamental issue” of abortion, adding that “reproductive care is basic care, it is essential care.”

The rights to an abortion, Obama said, “is at the center and at the heart of the plan that I proposed.”

“Essentially, what we are doing is to say that we’re gonna set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance. It will be a plan that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services,” Obama said to applause.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins has been on Capitol Hill working with pro-life members of Congress to include amendments that would prohibit tax-payer funded abortions, but says despite the President’s fierce protestations, the House and Senate health care reform plans will likely subsidize reproductive care unless Obama intervenes.

“The president knows very well that pro-abortion House and Senate committees rejected every single amendment to keep abortion funding out of the health-care overhaul,” Perkins said in a statement issued shortly after Obama’s open appeal to the progressive religious community ended.

“President Obama stated that abortion funding in health-care reform is a ‘distraction.’ If that is the case, then why not end this so-called ‘distraction’ and amend the bill to explicitly prohibit abortion funding and coverage with his health care plan?”

Following the President’s conference call, pro-life advocates quickly drew attention to an amendment offered by Democratic Congresswoman Lois Capps (CA-23) to allow for subsidized reproductive care under the House health care reform plan. The amendment, which the National Right to Life committee predicts will result in “the greatest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade,” is unlikely to be removed from the final bill, according to Republican aides on Capitol Hill.

It is unfortunate not that Obama would chastise those who bear “false witness” and later, as if reflexively, wholly misrepresent his health care proposal, but rather that such dishonest and duplicitous rhetoric has become the norm with President Obama that I am not stunned by his latest actions.

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Declaring war on Republicans critical of the president’s proposal, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel offers a far less rosy picture of Obama’s success in fostering bipartisanship than the image the Obama campaign created last November.

“The Republican leadership has made a strategic decision that defeating President Obama’s health care proposal is more important for their political goals than solving the health insurance problems that Americans face every day,” Emanuel said.

Democratic leaders say Republican obstructionism has forced their go-it-alone hand, but evidence exists to the contrary – namely the fact that off-message members of Congress have attested to the fact that Congressional Democrats were told, in no uncertain terms, to avoid bipartisan negations with Republicans.

Writing on The Huffington Post, Democratic Congressman Jim Cooper said: “And the White House released a statement praising this bipartisan leadership. In the House of Representatives, meanwhile, we are explicitly told not to work with Republicans.”

Like Obama in the White House and their colleagues in the lower chamber, Senate Democrats seem less than keen on bipartisan negotiations. Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), in particular, expressed his aversion to such a bipartisan coalition of the willing when the bill was still in its infant stages.

“My goal is to write a good bill. My goal is not bipartisanship,” Dodd admitted in June.

Unfortunately, Dodd failed on both counts. And rather than concede that they failed in writing a good bill, frustrated Congressional Democrats are intent on characterizing Republicans as reflexively partisan, condemning them for putting the health care bill on life support.

Tense negotiations require courage to compromise and, if necessary, buck party leadership, but Obama possesses neither a genuine interest in bipartisanship nor the courage to challenge Congressional Democrats to pass health care reform. The fact that Obama, whose record on bipartisan compromise is virtually non-existent, has given up on negotiations should come as no surprise. What should be disturbing, however, is how coolly Obama deliberately misconstrues the situation.

“It’s a shame that the White House and their liberal allies are now trying re-write history,” said John Boehner spokesman Michael Steel. “From the beginning of this debate, Republicans have tried to work with the President and Democrats on real health care reform that reduces cost and expands access for the American people. Instead, Democrats played the old Washington game, bribing and log-rolling special interests to produce a plan that will cost at least a trillion dollars and just won’t work.”

Absent the ability to filibuster such a proposal, Republicans are not the enemies of Obama’s health care reform legislation – public opinion is. But if the President intends to pass health care legislation without Republican cooperation, he would do well to at least mediate the intraparty dispute over the public option currently stifling Democratic cooperation in this process.

The collapse of bipartisan health care reform negotiations rests squarely on the shoulders of the President. Obama has all the while maintained that his hawk’s eye for bipartisanship and his knack for finding common ground between competing interests would put an end to Washington’s partisan divide, but here we are, still faced with more Democratic doublespeak and hardball politicking. And there, health care reform lie dead.

Bipartisanship, Obama hardly knew ye. Rest in peace.

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