Another DEM bites the dust

Freshman Rep. Eric Massa (D-N.Y.) will not run for re-election this year, the New York Daily News reports. Massa ousted two-term Rep. Randy Kuhl (R) in 2008 by just 5,000 votes after losing to Kuhl two years earlier by 6,000 votes.

Massa is expected to announce his decision in a 3:30 p.m. conference call with the press. Politico reports Massa will resign amid allegations that he sexually harrassed a male aide.

The 29th District was George W. Bush’s best-performing congressional district in New York in 2000 and 2004, and one of four districts in the state to go for John McCain in 2008. McCain won the district by fewer than 7,000 votes.

The boot-shaped district takes up a large chunk of western New York.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/politics_nation/2010/03/massa_not_running_for_reelection.html

GIVE THOSE HACKERS ALL MEDALS!

Leaked e-mails allegedly undermining climate change science should be treated as a criminal matter, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said Wednesday afternoon.

Boxer, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said that the recently released e-mails, showing scientists allegedly overstating the case for climate change, should be treated as a crime.

“You call it ‘Climategate’; I call it ‘E-mail-theft-gate,’” she said during a committee meeting. “Whatever it is, the main issue is, Are we facing global warming or are we not? I’m looking at these e-mails, that, even though they were stolen, are now out in the public.”

The e-mails, from scientists at the University of East Anglia, were obtained through hacking. The messages showed the director of the university’s Climate Research Unit discussing ways to strengthen the unit’s case for global warming. Climate change skeptics have seized on the e-mails, arguing that they demonstrate manipulation in environmental science.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/70249-boxer-hacked-climategate-emails-may-face-criminal-probe

Nothing he says or does surprises me anymore.

“You guys make a pretty good photo op,” President Obama said to troops at Osan Air Base in South Korea.

Link to video:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2009/11/19/obama_tells_troops_you_guys_make_a_pretty_good_photo-op.html

I just find this to show once again a total lack of class from this President!

Did Hoffman concede too early?

Conservative Doug Hoffman conceded the race in the 23rd Congressional District last week after receiving two pieces of grim news for his campaign: He was down 5,335 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted on election night, and he had barely won his stronghold in Oswego County.

As it turns out, neither was true.

But Hoffman’s concession — based on snafus in Oswego County and elsewhere that left his vote undercounted — set off a chain of events that echoed all the way to Washington, D.C., and helped secure passage of a historic health care reform bill.

Democratic Rep. Bill Owens was quickly sworn into office on Friday, a day before the rare weekend vote in the House of Representatives. His support sealed his party’s narrow victory on the health care legislation.

Now a recanvassing in the 11-county district shows that Owens’ lead has narrowed to 3,026 votes over Hoffman, 66,698 to 63,672, according to the latest unofficial results from the state Board of Elections.

In Oswego County, where Hoffman was reported to lead by only 500 votes with 93 percent of the vote counted election night, inspectors found Hoffman actually won by 1,748 votes — 12,748 to 11,000.

The new vote totals mean the race will be decided by absentee ballots, of which about 10,200 were distributed, said John Conklin, communications director for the state Board of Elections.

http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2009/11/its_not_over_recanvassing_shows_ny23_race.html