Reminiscent of the no-bid, cost-plus contracts awarded in the Bush administration to defense contractors, ABC News reported last night the Obama Administration awarded a 5 year $18 million contract to Smartronix, a Maryland-based IT firm with connections to House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, for the redesign of Recovery.gov.

Launched in February to track the expenditures of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Recovery.gov was to be the pinnacle of web-enabled transparency, according to President Barack Obama.

“The site is the tip of the iceberg for the effort that will go into taking spending tracking and accountability to the next level,” one administration official said of their intended level of transparency.

But now, it seem, the administration has failed to deliver on two pledges central to the Obama campaign’s rhetoric: fiscal responsibility and unrivaled transparency.

An acerbic Ed Morrissey asks, “Since when does it cost $18 million for a website, even one with a database requiring updates on a quarterly basis?”

Not often.

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Top White House aide David Axelrod told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos today that the administration intends to explore a number of means by which it can overhaul the nation’s health care system, but refused to reaffirm then-candidate Barack Obama’s “firm pledge” to not raise taxes on middle class Americans.

“The president had said in the past that he does not believe taxing health care benefits at any level is necessarily the best way to go here,” said Axelrod. “He still believes that, but there are a number of formulations and we’ll wait and see.”

Obama has not always been open to “a number of formulations,” however. In fact, prompted by Republican accusations his tax plan would hurt middle class pocketbooks, Obama was quite adamant he would do no such thing. While campaigning in Dover, NH, Obama said, “Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

Slow to fulfill campaign pledges or entirely reversing his position on others, the president has come under fire from the most loyal of Democratic Party activists, including the LGBT community and environmentalists, but waffling on his no-middle-class-tax-hike pledge stands to pit the irresolute president against a majority of the American voting public, not just disillusioned splinter groups.

After pressed on whether the president will draw “a line in the sand” by a persistent Stephanopoulos, Axelrod refused to take the bait and align the administration with any such ultimatum.

“One of the problems we’ve had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other. And you don’t get anything done. That’s not the way the president approaches this,” he said.

The reason for President Obama’s now-obvious reticence to pursue campaign pledges—or make intractable ultimatums, for that matter—is quite simple. Keeping promises while juggling the competing interests of donors, activists, and voters is no simple feat. If you don’t make a promise, you can’t break it.

Then-candidate Barack Obama promised impossibilities—of a transparent government, of a new politics, of a hopeful and peaceful American—and performed little. Now-President Barack Obama promises nothing and yet he still performs little.

Color me surprised.

Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

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The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced Friday it will launch a series of district-specific radio ads targeting vulnerable Republicans who voted against President Obama’s controversial war supplemental package.

As a matter of national security in years past Republicans have shown tremendous support for similar measures, however last week they voted en bloc against the $106 billion appropriations bill.

The Democratic Leadership and the DCCC would be content to let the public believe Republicans were “playing politics” with the troops, having voted against the emergency legislation out of pure spite for the president.

Over 100 Republicans voted for the bill when the first iteration—before the $83.5 billion bill mushroomed—reached the floor of the House several weeks ago. But after the Democratic Leadership rewrote the bill to include billions in funding for lawmakers’ pet projects, including an additional $5 billion in funding for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), virtually all Republicans defected, accusing the Democrats of lacing the emergency war-funding bill with billions of extraneous pork barrel spending.

If a global bailout is to be to debated and funded, it surely does not belong in a war appropriations bill. Democrats know this, just like they knew bailout-averse Republicans would, instinctively, vote against any such measure. And then they realized they had the upper-hand: they held the coveted “you’re-playing-politics-with-the-troops” card.

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After boldly promising to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and reverse “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the ban on openly gay and lesbian service members, gay voters, en bloc, went to the polls for then-Senator Barack Obama. But following months of concealing their bitter disappointment, gay rights advocates have begun publically airing their grievances with the Obama Administration over its concerning pace of progress on gay rights issues.

Yesterday, amid fears neither of those lofty campaign pledges may be actualized, Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solomnese penned a stinging open letter to President Obama in response to a brief filed by the Department of Justice that defended DOMA’s legitimacy.

Concerned the President does not view gay men and women as “human beings whose lives, loves, and families are equal” to his own, Solomnese mockingly offered to “reintroduce” the LGBT community to their capricious ally in the White House.

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Former U.S. Senator Bob Smith (R-NH) announced Monday, via YouTube, he intends to challenge Governor Charlie Crist and former Florida House of Representatives Speaker Marco Rubio in the Republican primary for Florida’s vacant Senate seat in 2010.

Echoing Rubio’s conservative sentiments, the Florida snowbird said his entry into the already-crowded primary was precipitated by the Republican Party establishment’s unacceptable lurch to the left. “I can’t stand by and watch what is happening to our country – and our Party,” Smith said in his online address.

Smith’s new-found moral compass and concern for the direction of his country and of the Republican Party is awfully amusing, of course, given his opportunistic and decidedly vindictive nature.

After mounting a comically unsuccessful independent bid for President in 2000, Smith lost a bitter primary battle to then-Congressman John Sununu two years and two parties later. But unfortunately Smith’s presence on the national scene didn’t end with his ousting.

Hoping he might reemerge as a key political player, ostensibly as a Democrat after having sampled all competing parties, Smith endorsed Senator John Kerry in his ill-fated campaign for President in 2004, citing Kerry’s “courage and character” forged on the battlefields of Vietnam.

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A review of Minnesota’s statewide database of registered voters revealed at least 2,812 deceased individuals voted in last November’s general election, according to a new report by the “traditional values” advocacy group Minnesota Majority.

After obtaining the list of voters who participated in November’s election, the group hired an independent firm who specializes in “death suppression” for direct mailing lists to review the data. The process, which involved matching names and addresses to state death records, bore troubling results.

According to Minnesota statute 201.13, the commissioner of health is to report monthly the name, address, date of birth, and county of residence of voting-age deceased residents to the secretary of state.

Presumably the commissioner of health would not issue incomplete reports (read: no motive), the blame then falls elsewhere – namely, at the feet of Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, whose partisan leanings and curious alliance with vote fraud-magnet ACORN are becoming more salient by the day.

Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann argues the discrepancies unearthed by the group are merely the result of election workers updating the voter database with faulty information and were not instance of voter fraud.

“I would venture—put my reputation on—the fact that there are very few, if any, people impersonating dead people. You’re going to have human error,” he admitted.

But Jeff Davis, president of Minnesota Majority, believes the situation to be far less benign – and legal – than the Ritchie’s staff is willing to admit.

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Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour will headline a Republican Party of Iowa fundraiser in late June, fueling speculation the wildly-popular two-term governor may indeed have ambitions for higher officer.

Barbour, 61, will be ineligible to seek another term as governor in 2012, but refuses to speak to his political future, saying only that “You can look for me not to run for re-election.”

He will undoubtedly dismiss the candidate-type activity as inconsequential, as spreading the Republican Gospel, but no politician finds themselves in Iowa — the launch pad of every dark horse candidacy — by pure coincidence.

Considered a highly effective organizer and strategist, Barbour was a key architect of the 1994 Republican revolution as chairman of the Republican National Committee.

In the wake of two consecutive Republican losses, GOP power broker Fred Malek hopes Barbour may yet have some ideas how to recapture the Contract with American spirit. “Extremely sound on policies, clear thinking and the best political strategist” the GOP can boast, Malek wrote on his blog, ranking the governor as the third most likely individual to secure the party nod.

A Barbour candidacy isn’t without its challenges, of course.

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Republican National Committee members today will vote on a resolution to rebrand the Democratic Party the “Democrat Socialist Party,” upon the urging of leading conservative members of the committee.

In an email to committee members announcing the resolution, conservative stalwart James Bopp, Jr., said President Obama’s foremost intention is to reengineer the American way of life, and will stop at nothing short of restructuring our society “along socialist ideals.”

Bopp hopes their misguided efforts to rebrand the Democratic Party will serve as a galvanizing point in American politics, not unlike “President Reagan’s identification of the Soviet Union as the ‘evil empire’ galvanized opposition to communism.”

Not quite.

Unlike the “Evil Empire,” Republicans lost to the Democratic Party in a fair and free election – the hallmark of American democracy – to the tune of 9,500,000 votes. And then, of course, is the fact that we’re not, say, at war and with mutually-assured destruction looming overhead.

The Democratic Party may well be, as Bopp contends, on a slow, steady march towards Socialism, but passing such a resolution would be a four-minute mile run towards generational oblivion.

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In a brief ceremony at the White House today, President Barack Obama tapped Utah Governor John Huntsman to serve as United States Ambassador to China — his chief envoy to the world’s most populous country.

Reelected in 2008 by a record margin as a moderate Republican in an exceedingly conservative state, party elites and strategists were quick to point to the rising star as a potential challenger to the president.  But given today’s interesting political calculus, the prospect of Huntsman now staging a challenge to Obama is exceptionally low.

Having carved out a reputation as a would-be-modernizer and pragmatic conservative on divisive social issues, Huntsman was right to test the waters. It seems he waded a little too deep for Obama’s comfort, however.

No less than the chief architect of Obama’s campaign David Plouffe has expressed concern over Huntsman’s budding portfolio. While he admits no potential candidate makes him “shake in his shoes,” he concedes the potential of a Huntsman bid leaves him a “wee bit queasy.”

By all accounts, Huntsman stood a good chance at securing the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, if only for the fact that he is the conservative antithesis of Obama: He’s a moderate, young, and attractive politician.  Those are the grounds on which Obama won, and those are the grounds on which they fear he’ll lose it in 2012.

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While the specific dynamics of November’s election are not yet known, University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato is wasting no time in making bold assertions. To say nothing of the fact the first African American was elected President of the United States, he maintains 2008 was no ordinary election. 2008 was just the tip of the iceberg – a dramatic shift of political coalitions, likely ushering in an extended period of Democratic control, according to his new political anthology, “The Year of Obama: How Barack Obama won the White House.”

To be sure, when the most-quoted political scientist in the land speaks up, people listen, but has the good doctor misdiagnosed ailing Republicans’ present predicament?

Before arriving at the intricacies of Sabato’s argument, it’s worth explaining the rather amorphic notion of political “realignment,” particularly given the state of reporting on the matter. A political realignment is a dramatic and enduring shift in voters’ loyalties and fundamental perceptions of the parties in government. We have witnessed three such instances, the 1896 election with the emergence of a national campaign, the 1932 election following the nation’s greatest financial disaster to date, and the 1980 election marking the meteoric rise of social conservativism.

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Republican Jim Tedisco conceded the special election to fill Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s vacated House seat to Scott Murphy yesterday, thereby giving Democrats their second Congressional victory post-November, but most importantly, a reason to cast Republicans – namely, Republican National Chairman Michael Steele – in a less than competent light.

After rebounding from a series of gaffes and provocative interviews, Steele saw NY-20 as a means to change the narrative. He elected to up the ante and raise the profile of the race by investing large sums of money in the race, transferring $280,000 to the New York Republican State Committee, which is to say nothing of the $1,000,000 transferred to the financially-strained Hill committees.

The RNC transfers aside, Steele invested his own personal capital and celebrity in the hopes of assuaging committee members’ fears they elected the wrong guy for the job. Steele bet it all – his reputation and unclear future as party chief – on Tedisco, and now all he has are the shoes on his feet and the shirt on his back.

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Wisconsin University Law professor and blogger Ann Althouse is reportedly marrying a long-time commenter on her blog.

After four years of sparing in the comments section, exchanging several emails, and a few weekend rendezvous, Althouse announced her whirlwind romance in typical Althouse fashion, an emblematic photo essay.

While engagements are generally joyous occasions, not all of Althouse’s fellow bloggers are rejoicing in her impending nuptials.

Upon learning of the news of Althouse’s engagement, The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan ironically adopted the mantle of the marriage brigade, crassly writing, “Ten days of emailing … and she was ready.”

Sullivan, a gay man with a committed partner of 5 years, is one of the most outspoken advocates for marriage equality, a proponent of the notion that all people, irrespective of sexual orientation, are inherently equal. This concept of equality, then, should confer the rights of marriage, proponents of gay rights argue.

Not so, says Sullivan, at least when this concept of marriage equality is applied to what he ostensibly views as frivolous heterosexual unions. Sullivan’s shrewd opposition to Althouse’s marriage is merely a disingenuous excuse for gay rights activists to flex waning political muscle in the wake of Prop 8’s passage.

Ironically, Sullivan is guilty of the same crime of his most socially conservative opponent: He now considers it his responsibility to validate, and likewise invalidate, the unions of others.

It takes a real egotist to make the news of another’s engagement about one’s self. At this rate, Sullivan would wear a white dress to Althouse’s wedding.

Shame on you, Andrew. Your comical egotism aside, the spiteful rhetoric – “OMFG” – likely won’t build the coalition of support necessary for the federal government to recognize your cohabitant as your husband.

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Ralph Amendolaro, a Queens construction worker, is cashing in today with a little help from, of all people, convicted felon Bernie Madoff.

Though not a regular purchaser of lottery tickets, Mr. Amendolaro told the NYDN he purchases tickets when a number catches his eye. After noticing one such number – 054, the last three digits of Madoff’s prison ID – Amendolaro said to himself, “I’m going to be a winner with this guy even though everyone lost money with him.” Adding, “Somebody had to get a little lucky with him.”

A little lucky, indeed. 

After placing a $3 bet once a day for 3 days, Mr. Amendolaro’s “lucky number” came up.  For his petty $9 investment – a far cry from those made by others on Madoff’s investment scheme – Amendolaro will cash in his ticket for $1,500.

No word yet on whether Mr. Amendolaro will pursue similar reparations from Mr. Madoff’s ponzi companion, President Barack Obama. The former swindler, of course, pleaded guilty to securities fraud and robbing American investors to the tune of $65 billion; the latter managed to dupe voters out of $787 billion in one fell swoop.

Cross-posted at Skepticians.com.

Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele should resign from his post immediately, according to the American Family Association’s new online survey.

In light of Steele’s regrettable GQ interview, AFA President Don Wildmon asked members if the beleaguered Republican chief should resign from his post, declaring the former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland believes “abortion is a choice, and homosexuality is not.”

An overwhelming 94% of the more than 74,500 respondents answered Wildmon in the affirmative. 

Likewise making their displeasure known, prominent social conservative luminaries characterized Steele’s mea-culpa as “very troubling.” Ken Blackwell, who formerly endorsed Steele after withdrawing from consideration for chairman on the fifth round of balloting, sternly instructed his former rival to “re-read the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and the 2008 GOP Platform … or get out of the way.”

Both Chairman Steele and his socially conservative detractors, the number of which are growing by the thousands at AFA’s website, are sorely misinformed: The role of RNC Chairman is not one of a curator of opinion. Steele’s opinions on abortion and gay rights – whenever he settles on one – should have no influence on the implementation of sound strategies in his capacity as chairman.

Speculating perhaps that the “open,” candidate-centered campaign for chairman manufactured Steele’s present predicament by creating the perception that the candidates’ opinions actually mattered, Phil Klein writes, “in the end, it turned the race into more of a personality contest.”

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Forced to address whether gay federal employees and spouses are eligible for, among other things, health insurance coverage, President Obama is now in the unenviable position of navigating a political and social minefield: Balancing his commitment to the LGBT community and progressive liberals with his willingness, and need, to appease the conservative Evangelical community.

As it stands now, health benefits are readily available to spouses of federal employees, though as an official for the Office of Personnel Management explains, “spouses,” as stipulated by the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, are persons “of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”

In accordance with DOMA’s strict interpretation of spouses, gay federal employees are currently denied the opportunity to extend health care benefits to their partners – even if their states recognize them as legally married. This strict definition, they argue, denies gay men and women equal compensation.

The federally institutionalized ‘discriminatory practice’ of denying health coverage to the committed partners ostensibly violates Obama’s socially liberal sensibilities, but President Obama is first a politician looking to get reelected, and second an ally to the LGBT community. Obama understands when it’s politically advantageous to engage in ethnic-, religious-, social-, and regional-based politics, and, perhaps more importantly, when it’s not. The latter being anytime one is actually governing.

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In what will only serve as additional ammunition for his more socially conservative detractors, RNC chief Michael Steele split with the party faithful and took a decidedly controversial position: That homosexuality was not, in his opinion, a choice.

“I don’t think I’ve ever really subscribed to [the] view [that homosexuality is a choice], that you can turn it on and off like a water tap,” he said in a recent interview with GQ’s Lisa DePaulo. Even going so far as comparing the static nature of sexuality to race, he said, “You just can’t simply say, oh, like, ‘Tomorrow morning I’m gonna’ stop being gay.’ It’s like saying, ‘Tomorrow morning I’m gonna’ stop being black.’”

Steele’s comments, while seemingly refreshing to moderate GOP members, highlight a serious concern among the fledgling chairman’s critics. His proclivity for embarrassing gaffes is forcing the RNC’s skeleton crew to work double-time to salvage what remains of his once sterling reputation as a polished spokesman.

“Lest we forget, communication was supposed to be his strongest suit,” writes an irritated Phil Klein. But why, then, must we be inundated with stories of clearly avoidable mistakes? Klein argues that Steele’s desire to portray a moderate-friendly image at all times, even at the cost of abandoning his own principles, results in the delivery of a “completely muddled message.”

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Katon Dawson, one time contender for the top Republican post, is quietly coordinating a vote of no confidence in newly-elected RNC Chairman Michael Steele after the NY 20 special election on March 31 – “regardless of whether Republicans win the seat or not,” reports Taegan Goddard.

After an extremely divisive race for RNC Chairman, Steele, the former Chairman of GOPAC, bested Dawson on the sixth ballot, and political insiders are quick to note the lingering bad blood between the two rivals.

If Goddard’s sources are correct, Dawson won’t be the only top-ranking party official to voice their concern over Steele’s debut month as Chairman. In a memo circulated last week to national committee members, Dr. Ada Fisher, one of three African American members of the RNC and a former Dawson supporter, called for Steele’s resignation, saying he was “eroding confidence” in the national party apparatus to fundraise and remain competitive in a Republican-hostile climate.

The metrics by which Fisher, and ostensibly Dawson, judge Steele – his proposed ‘hip hop’ makeover, and the public flap with Rush Limbaugh – are embarrassingly shallow, particularly so when used as ammunition to call for a chairman’s resignation. As Politico’s Mike Allen explains, ousting a party chairman is no small order, in fact, the likelihood of other members joining Fisher and now Dawson is exceptionally low.

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Joining a growing choir of conservative luminaries, thought-leaders and activists in criticizing newly-elected RNC Chairman Michael Steele, Samuel “Joe The Plumber” Wurzelbacher leveled some harsh, Johnny-come-lately criticisms earlier this week in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

At a gathering of 800 conservative activists at Americans for Prosperity’s “Defending the American Dream Summit,” Wurzelbacher warned of the “long road ahead” as Republicans wander the desert for the next four years without leadership, awaiting the 2010 and 2012 elections.

“Unfortunately we have a chairman up there who wants to redefine conservatism; he wants to make it hip hop, put it in a new package and sell it,” Wurzelbacher griped as he referenced a three week old Steele interview with the Washington Post’s Ralph Z. Hallow. After his historic election, the newly-minted Chairman told Hallow he intended to revitalize the Party’s stale image – one all too often associated with aging, technophobic white men – via an unprecedented presence in print, television, radio, and online outlets.

Wurzelbacher’s reductive critique of Chairman Steele’s agenda serves no one’s purpose beyond his own, as he recently hung up the plunger and boots to publish a book. And to boost sales of this not-so-originally titled book, Fighting for the American Dream, it isn’t surprising that Wurzelbacher would resort to drumming up controversy where none exists, or revive a one which has long since faded into the annals of bad talking points.

After a brief run-in with then Senator Barack Obama, Wurzelbacher was catapulted to the national stage by the McCain campaign as a shining example of the quintessential blue collar, small business owner who was threatened by Obama’s tax system. But his lasting influence – the fact we’re now 4 months out from November 4th but still forced to read the cringe-inducing title “Joe the Plumber” – is explained as such: His current media presence is an unfortunate byproduct of the 2008 campaign, a byproduct I regrettably helped create as an agent of that campaign. We unknowingly created a monster, and I suspect he won’t leave town until he’s chased by angry villagers with pitchforks.

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Marred by a week-long cycle of bad press and Cabinet defections, President Obama’s $787 Billion stimulus package passed both houses of Congress last night, despite the rigid partisan-divide.

Clearly emboldened by their unanimous “No” votes on the first version, House Republicans, masterfully corralled by Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), held the line yet again. Three Senate Republicans – Arlen Spector (R-PA), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Susan Collins (R-ME) – broke rank and voted for the President’s stimulus package for fear the situation would become “much worse without this bill.”

Obama’s crusade to saddle future generations of Americans with $1 trillion in debts, notwithstanding stagflation, will result in nothing more than supplementing their paychecks with a disgraceful $8 a week pat on the back.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 equals 5.7% of America’s Gross Domestic Product (GPD), whereas President Roosevelt’s New Deal, at its height of fiscally irresponsible, equaled approximately 2%. The gross spending called for by bill – mandated by Congressional Democrats and President Obama – is equal to or larger than the GDP of 157 nations – all but 14 countries listed in the International Monetary Fund’s database for 2007. Among those countries dwarfed by the unprecedented spending are United Arab Emirates, Dominican Republic, Iran, Taiwan, and Israel.

President Obama, by his own admission, owns this recovery bill, the largest of its kind in US history. “Congress has passed my economic recovery plan –- an ambitious plan at a time we badly need it,” he said in his weekly address this morning. Like FDR’s socially-transformative welfare policies, the implications of this bill’s sheer size and scope will likely not be known for several years, if not decades. But as Americans wake to the sobering reality that we’re now indebted to China, Saudi Arabia, and other hostile foreign creditors for trillions all for naught, Republicans would do well to remember just whose “economic recovery plan” this was.

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Wasting no time, President Obama began quickly overturning standing Bush executive orders in an effort to end nearly a decade of, what President Obama called on the campaign trail, “Bush cronyism.” Among his first moves were orders to freeze senior White House staffer’s pay and to toughen ethics and lobbying rules. As White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is fond of saying, Barack Obama has instituted the strictest ethics policy in the history of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Unfortunately for those voters who took Obama at his word, “strict” has an increasingly loose definition for the Obama-campaign-staffer-turned-White-House-spokesmen and his boss.

Obama’s message of “transparency” and “reform,” it seems, was nothing more than focus-group tested campaign rhetoric, and his new executive orders are nothing more than a frustrating extension of the like.

The revolving-door of politics, the junior senator from Illinois frequently crowed, would end in his administration. Lobbyists, he added, “won’t find a job in my White House.” His bold opposition to Washington’s entrenched interests took Beltway-apathetic voters by storm, but now, as the difficult realities of elected office greet Obama in the Oval Office, the President has failed to truly deliver the clean break from the last 8 years.

In the two weeks since his inauguration, Obama has issued a staggering seventeen exceptions to his short-lived no-lobbyist dicta. Despite the campaign rhetoric and present hedging, President Obama and his Cabinet-level officials have surrounded themselves with corrupt lobbyists, all of whom are all too willing to sell short the promise of America.

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