Regardless of the outcome of the Sen. Tim Johnson episode, congressional politics isn’t going to be pretty. With the exception of committee chairs, there’s no use expecting anything different even if the majority turns out to be republican. Because of the RINOs in the bunch, we already know that a 7 seat majority isn’t enough to get anything meaningful passed, so why would anyone think that a 1 seat majority would be any better?
All posts by Ross
Dem Control Of Senate Tentative
Of course, we all wish Senator Tim Johnson (D) of South Dakota well, and hope that he recovers well from the apparent stroke he suffered today. But if for whatever reason Sen. Johnson decides to retire his seat, chances are that Gov. Mike Rounds (R) will appoint a republican as his replacement, which if he would, would make the balance 50/50 with VP Cheney making the 51 majority. And I don’t even want to think about what the democrats (and the media) would do if that were to actually happen.
New Democrat Caucus?
Twenty-five years after Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner was killed in the line of duty by ‘former’ Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, the case is still on appeal.  Various communist groups have maintained Jamal’s innocence, despite his guilty conviction and death sentence. They recently got active in France too in the killer’s behalf. Paris made him an honorary citizen, and a slum named St. Denis in April 2006 named a street after him. So in response to these events, one of those non-binding resolutions was put forth by Pennsylvania politicians to voice their displeasure with the actions taken by French authorities. The measure passed 368-31, with 8 members voting “present.” Â
Pardon me for noticing that it wasn’t a unanimous vote in favor. What does it say when all 31 who voted against the resolution, and all 8 who voted ‘present’ were democrats? Have cop killers, communists, socialists, and the French become a new special interest for these democrats?
| Neil Abercrombie (Hawaii) | Carolyn Kilpatrick (Mich.)Â | Robert Scott (Va.) |
| William Clay (Mo.) | Barbara Lee (Calif.) | Jose Serrano (N.Y.) |
| Emanuel Cleaver (Mo.) | Cynthia McKinney (Ga.) | Fortney Hillman Stark Jr. (Calif.) |
| John Conyers (Mich.) | Gregory Meeks (N.Y.) | Edolphus Towns (N.Y.) |
| Jim Cooper (Tenn.) | Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.) | Tom Udall (N.M.) |
| Danny Davis (Ill.) | James Oberstar (Minn.) | Nydia Velazquez (N.Y.) |
| Raul Grijalva (Ariz.) | Major Owens (N.Y.) | Maxine Waters (Calif.) |
| Maurice Hinchey (N.Y.) | Ed Pastor (Ariz.) | Anthony Weiner (N.Y.) |
| Mike Honda (Calif.) | Donald Payne (N.J.) | Lynn Woolsey (Calif.) |
| Jesse Jackson Jr. (Ill.) | Charles Rangel (N.Y.) | |
| Eddie Bernice Johnson (Texas)Â | Bobby Rush (Ill.) |
Looks like a Cop Killers Caucus to me too.  James Taranto makes an astute observation.
The most disturbing name on the “no” list is that of John Conyers. Granted, this is only a symbolic vote, but is it really a good idea to entrust the chairmanship of the Judiciary Committee to a man who casts a symbolic vote for a cop-killer and against his victim?
How About A Triple Bypass Burger?
That’s what I like, an entrepreneur with a sense of humor. No surprise, there’s someone anxious to be offended by it. Nurses. What?
From the Heart Attack Grill in Tempe, AZ.
Give me a break, video. CNN video.
Rep. William Jefferson (D-La) Gets Pass
He gets a total pass involving the bribery investigation that he has been involved in. In 
that regard, an FBI raid in his New Orleans and Washington D.C. homes discovered $90,000 in cold cash, packed, wrapped, and in his freezer. The cash was marked as the bribe money. 
But the news today is not about that, its about his political future in a runoff election.
How much of this pass is due to his political party affiliation, and how much is due to his race? Or maybe he is being treated as innocent until proven guilty? Same question, how much of that is due to political party, and how much due to race. 50/50? 60/40? 40/60? 25/75? 75/25?
Just looking for an explanation of the double standard for outcomes that exist between the democrat perps and the republican perps.
al-AP link
What Real Women Do
Palestinian women’s’ soccer? These players (Muslims and Christians) are “changing things around.” How they even have a team is amazing, under otherwise unbearable circumstances. These women have embraced freedom and are great ambassadors for it.
Opportunities for the entire national team to play together are extremely rare. The handful of team members from Ramallah and the Gaza Strip can’t come to practices in Bethlehem. They train locally, often with fewer resources and even less support than the girls in Bethlehem. The team can meet and play together only at overseas championships.
Christian Science Monitor link
al-New York Times
The New York Times, the intelligence wing of al-Qaeda, has again obtained known classified documents and made them public. Like I said before, there ought to be a law.
Disclaimer: this is a New York Times link, any supposition of truth should be weighed against what you believe to be true, or what you already know about the New York Times.
Britney Speared
Thanks to grandma Sharon Stone for ‘opening the way’ so to speak, Britney Spears ‘accidentally’ got a camera shot seen around the world. In food lingo, it’s sort of, speared. Could be the latest thing now, a race to the ground. Not to be outdone, we might expect to see her new best bud Paris Hilton? Question is, will it be on a bar stool or getting out of a car?
Judiciary Run Amok
In the latest bizarro judicial decision, having already raped and pillaged the White House and the position of Commander in Chief, U.S. District Judge James Robertson is telling the Treasury Department to change the money so that the blind can, ostensibly, use it more effectively.  It’s a warm and fuzzy thought, but since when have judges become a replacement for the people?
From a technical standpoint, the answer lies in an electronic scanner instead of changing the whole monetary system. Besides, the fraud issues won’t go away because of the feel of it, or the presence of braille. Without a scanner of some sort, how could you assume that the ‘new’ currency is really currency?Â
And from a ‘where’s the money going to come from to overhaul the money supply’ standpoint, it seems to me that this judge needs to recognize money himself. Even though he can see it, he still doesn’t recognize it.
There’s More Than One, Leaker
Once again, in a matter of only a few weeks since it’s publishing top secret government secrets, they do it again. The problem is the ‘administration official’ who purportedly offered up the document to the New York Times reporter. This is not just another secret document, this is a secret report which is an assessment of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki’s success in putting down the sectarian violence in Iraq, on the day that Maliki and Bush were to meet. Maybe it’s just a coincidence that the 2-day meeting was cancelled in favor of a 1-day meeting.
An administration official made a copy of the document available to a New York Times reporter seeking information on the administration’s policy review. The Times read and transcribed the memo.
The leakers need to be sought and dealt with. And I don’t mean like Fitzgerald dealt with the Valerie Plame leaker, Richard Armitage. I think this time, we should think of the leaker as someone who commits a high crime.Â
And now that the SCOTUS has affirmed the government’s right to phone records on one of their earlier release of state secrets, they need to get on the stick today. While we’re at it, why doesn’t congress do something to protect state secrets? Good place to start is to make it a crime to publish that which is known to be government secrets. Protect them with the law and tell the ACLU to take a hike.