ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) - A former Louisiana congressman who famously stashed cash in his freezer was sentenced Friday to 13 years in prison for taking hundreds of thousands in bribes in exchange for using his influence to broker business deals in Africa.

(H/T: Riehl World View) You know, when you’re faced with this sort of situation - one where you see a flawed, corrupted, fundamentally weak man finally be caught up by the impersonal forces of law and justice - there are times where you have to look on and ask yourself, Was it worth it to see the wreckage that has been made of this person’s life?  Can there be satisfaction in seeing an elderly man sent to prison for what might be the rest of his days?  Are you satisfied at the way that the foe has been relentlessly brought low?

(pause)

(Brightly) Yes!

Moe Lane

PS: …in his freezer.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

But can he do it, after… oh, let Bryon York get this one:

I asked whether Obama, after presiding over the stimulus, the bailouts, the big Democratic budget, the House cap-and-trade vote, health care reform, and finally, a tripling of the already-high federal deficit, could plausibly position himself as a spending hawk. “Their principle failure is that they have allowed themselves to be defined as government interventioners and huge spenders,” the strategist told me. “If he becomes the great expander of government and the great increaser of spending, he’s going to get destroyed in 2012.”

Actually, the principal failure is that they are government interventionists and huge spenders - and have revealed this blatantly enough that independent voters have noticed. In other words, it’s not ‘If he becomes;’ it’s ‘he has become.’  That’s the primary reason why his economic marks are so poor Right Now - and why waiting for Real Soon Now is contraindicated.

Contraindicated.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

In the 43 states where the congressional redistricting process is in partisan hands, Democrats control both houses of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion in 15 states, while Republicans hold 8 states, and 20 states are split between the two parties. Going into 2010, Democrats control redistricting in nearly twice as many states as Republicans, but states where the GOP controls the process - for instance Florida, Texas, and Utah - are also the most likely to be adding congressional seats. And for the first time since it joined the union in 1850, California may not add a congressional seat.

…37 states will elect new governors and 36 new state legislatures next fall. That means that every state house race - especially in states like Tennessee, where the legislature is closely-­divided - has the potential to have effect on the next decade’s political landscape.

(Via 73Wire, via The Other McCain)

Let’s look very quickly at the eight states listed here as being the ones most likely to lose seats:

• Iowa: The legislature has final say over redistricting plans. 56/44 Dem/GOP in the House, 32/18 in the Senate.
• Louisiana: Currently split in control and the state house representatives do not have elections in 2010.
• Massachusetts: State legislature does redistricting.  141/19 Dem/GOP in the House, 35/5 in the Senate, and at least they can’t actually take away a Republican’s Congressional District from him or her.
• Michigan: State legislature does redistricting. 67/43 Dem/GOP in the House, but 21/17 GOP/Dem in the Senate.
• New Jersey: Done by independent commission and there will be no state legislature elections in 2010.
• New York: State legislature does redistricting. 104/41 Dem/GOP in the House, 32/30 Dem/GOP in the Senate.
• Ohio: State legislature does redistricting.  53/46 Dem/GOP in the House, 21/12 GOP/Dem in the Senate.
• Pennsylvania: Bipartisan redistricting. 104/99 Dem/GOP in the House, 30/20 GOP/Dem in the Senate.

I note this because by now the conventional wisdom has shifted from whether the Democrats will lose seats in 2010 to how many seats the Democrats will lose.  This means that, among other things, Democrats in the states that are losing House seats anyway will have, perhaps, an incentive in creatively redrawing Congressional District boundaries for 2012.  This makes it very important that state races are supported; good nights in Iowa and Ohio could save the GOP seats in the long run.

So support your local and state GOP.  There isn’t any such thing as a meaningless race: they’re all important.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Tokyo (CNN) – In the first major shakeup among President Barack Obama’s senior staff, White House Counsel Greg Craig is being pushed out in favor of veteran Democratic lawyer Bob Bauer because of a dispute over plans to close the U.S. military prison in Cuba, CNN has learned.

The move will be announced by the White House in the coming days, a senior administration official and a senior Democratic source confirmed. The sources said it could be announced as early as Friday while the president will be in Japan starting a four-nation tour of Asia, which would make it likely the staff change will be overshadowed by other events.

Craig declined to comment and hang up when reached by CNN late Thursday evening.

Oh. I think somebody needs a hug.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

HAVANA, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Cuba has ordered all state enterprises to adopt “extreme measures” to cut energy usage through the end of the year in hopes of avoiding the dreaded blackouts that plagued the country following the 1991 collapse of its then-top ally, the Soviet Union.

In documents seen by Reuters, government officials have been warned that the island is facing a “critical” energy shortage that requires the closing of non-essential factories and workshops and the shutting down of air conditioners and refrigerators not needed to preserve food and medicine.

It apparently more or less worked - no word on how many people it killed while doing so - but I have an alternate suggestion: how about the next time this happens the Cubans replace the current ruling regime with a functional democracy, embrace a free market capitalist system, and utterly reject the modified Marxist theology that they’re currently suffering from? That way they can stop worrying about keeping the air conditioning running, and start worrying about the populace’s obesity rates.

Just wanted to throw that out there.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

…but there’s some interesting things that can be seen with a little sorting. Below is a chart of competitive seats, sorted by Cook Partisan Rating:

As you can see, there are a lot of Democratic incumbents in districts that typically vote Republican in Presidential elections, and almost no Republican incumbents in districts that vote Democratic. For that matter, something like 72% of the total competitive races are in Republican districts… which would sound like bad news for the GOP, except that Democratic-held seats make up 75% of both the total and particularly competitive races surveyed by Cook. The midpoint for that list is at R+3; below that point there are 14 GOP districts held by Democrats, and only 7 Democratic ones held by Republicans.

What does that mean, in terms of the 2010 elections? Well, if you assume that every district held by Democrats that’s at R+4 and above gets flipped, every incumbent between R+3 and D+0 keeps his or her seat, and that every Republican in a Democratic district loses his or her seat… the Democrats lose 31 seats next year. Assume that an incumbent needs to at least break even (i.e., has at least a R or D+0), and the number goes up to 48 seats lost by the Democrats. Split the difference, and now you know why Charlie Cook is pessimistic about the Democrats’ chances next year.

Moving on, here is a map of the cross-party-held seats:

As the key notes, Red shows states with at least one vulnerable Democrat-held seat; Blue shows states with at least one vulnerable GOP-held; and Purple are states with at least one of each. Again, there’s a lot more in the first category than there are in the second and third. The reason that this is important is that the exceptionally wide geographical spread of the territory that the Democrats will have to defend next year should make for some entertainingly hard choices for the White House. Assuming that the administration comes out swinging for the midterms… well, it can either pick its spots (at a guess: NY, OH, & PA) and abandon the rest, or it can try to defend everything (and thus defend nothing). Obviously, neither choice is really optimal.

Conclusion: as of this moment, one year in it looks good for the GOP to get a large number of seats back. One year in.

This will change.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

…of Speaker Pelosi admitting that she’s fine with sending people who don’t want to be insured to jail (H/T: Infidels are Cool); but I’m not all that happy with the results.  Which is interesting, because I’m also not happy with the notion of throwing poor people into jail just because Speaker Pelosi wanted to raid taxpayer wallets and pocketbooks for the benefit of the Democratic Party’s various special interest groups.

Again.

See also Hot Air, AoSHQ - and probably everybody else soon enough.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Obviously, since I’m pro-choice, I think you can argue against abortion control in many effective ways. But this[*] is not one of them–at least not if you hew to the feminist notion that women are entitled to their own choices and preferences as individuals, not lumped in with some vast undifferentiated mass of women who all want the same thing.

To too many of the people that she’s objecting to, women who aren’t pro-life aren’t actually ‘real’ women. Or particularly people, for that matter.

:shrug: You get used to it, of course: I’m just surprised that Megan hasn’t by now.

Moe Lane

*’This’ being defined as ‘dismissing conservative female objections en masse as being contradictory to a liberal tautology.’

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

e) She settles scores with some of those brave McCain folks who as genuine teammates in battle anonymously leaked unhelpful things about her to journalists during the campaign. Ms. P helpfully provides their names.

Andrew’s one of the few mainstream journalists who cares about the Wasilla Church Burning**, so I think that we can safely assume that he’s enjoying the prospect of names being named, too.

Moe Lane

*The joke in DC is that the first thing that anybody in this town does when they see a new political memoir is out is to flip to the back and look him or herself up. Not going to happen on this one, which is perhaps cruel of the former Governor.

**Eleven months, at this point. And no, I don’t enjoy bringing this topic up: while I enjoy hate mail as much as the next person, the kind that I get when I mention this issue typically smells bad. The kind of smell you associate with public restrooms in major metropolitan train stations.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

• Does she support the House’s health care rationing bill?

and

• What is her opinion on the Stupak amendment?

(See also: The Conservatives.com)

While Carnahan’s response to the first question might be at least considered a standard attempt at mealy-mouthing, and thus not overly outrageous; I cannot imagine how any progressive watching that could be pleased at her ‘answer’ to the second question. Every credible side in the health care dispute concedes that the Stupak amendment is relevant to the discussion, and people are keeping track of who has what opinion of it. Robin Carnahan’s going to have to choose a side.

Moe Lane

PS: What exactly did the Carnahan family do in Missouri to justify their quasi-hereditary political status in that state? Save St. Louis from a rampaging Mississippi River monster?

*See here and here for the reference.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

And for those who served: my thanks.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

[Former President Bill] Clinton delivered the keynote address at the party’s Jefferson Jackson Dinner, the kickoff to the 2010 campaign in Delaware — a foray many Democrats hope will again feature “Biden for Senate” buttons.

But there was no word from Attorney General Biden on Tuesday night about whether he will run for the U.S. Senate seat once held by his father.

Mark my words, an announcement was expected last night; the Jefferson-Jackson dinner would have been the logical time and place for it, too. On the other hand, VP Biden’s name does not have the luster… well, it never particularly had any real luster, but he doesn’t poll well these days. And on the gripping hand, as one of Jim Geraghty’s readers notes 2014 may be a more logical time for AG Biden to run for Senate anyway.  Meanwhile, of course, Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) is running for Senate himself.  For those keeping score: no on stimulus, yes on cap-and-trade - but yes on Stupak/no on health care.

Possibly lately he’s been… thoughtful… too.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Since Gallup regularly began using the generic ballot to measure registered voters’ preferences for the House of Representatives in 1950, it has been rare for Republicans to have an advantage over Democrats. This is likely because more Americans usually identify as Democrats than as Republicans, but Republicans can offset this typical Democratic advantage in preferences with greater turnout on Election Day. Most of the prior Republican registered-voter leads on the generic ballot in Gallup polling occurred in 1994 and 2002, two strong years for the GOP.

Particularly interesting is this amusing graph:

…and yes: the Democratic line does look uncannily like the trajectory of an airplane just after it has lost all power to the engines, mid-flight.  A real shame that this didn’t come out last Friday, huh?  There’s a bunch of Blue Dogs who probably would have appreciated the opportunity to factor this information into their long-term voting strategies.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Please. 14 million people watched it last Tuesday. That’s a number that’s in the same general vicinity of Rush Limbaugh’s weekly numbers (at a guess), and there’s been a buzz for months that this miniseries wasn’t going to be about the hopeandchange.  Expecting us to believe that any administration as obsessed with how it’s perceived as this one is hasn’t kept an eye on V is as about as realistic as expecting us to believe that either the Tea Party movement, or last week’s elections in New Jersey & Virginia, passed without the administration monitoring developments.

Which is to say, it’s not realistic to expect that.

Moe Lane

*In the broadest sense, it’s fairly obvious that the President is not a Reptoid wearing a flesh mask and sporting a desire for anthropophagy**.

**Firefox’s spelling dictionary leaves something to be desired.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

HARTFORD, Conn. — Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell says she will not seek re-election next year.

Rell made the announcement in a news conference with reporters Monday at the statehouse in Hartford.

The article indicates that her personal polling has slipped - all the way down to 59%; she was also looking at a Q-poll which had her six points ahead* her most likely Democratic rival. It’s possible that this was enough to trigger her desire to get out of political life, especially in a year that’s starting to look bad for non-conservative incumbents. Then again, it’s possible that this was enough to trigger her desire to switch political gears and enter a race where she’d end up being neither.

Note: that last is a guess. And a very speculative one, at that. And it may be the right guess, but the wrong election cycle…

Moe Lane

*Which tells you… pretty much nothing. Quinnipiac hasn’t been at its best this cycle.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Woolsey: IRS should look at bishops

But I’m curious: which Rep. Lynn Woolsey (Democrat.  Dem-o-crat.) wants to have the IRS investigate the Roman Catholic Church in response to the latter’s support of the Stupak Amendment?

• Is it the Rep. Lynn Woolsey (Democrat.  Dem-o-crat.) who is the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus?  If so, is it now the CPC’s official position that the IRS should investigate the Roman Catholic Church?
• Is it the Rep. Lynn Woolsey (Democrat.  Dem-o-crat.) of California’s Sixth Congressional District?  If so, will she be campaigning next year on the need for investigating the Roman Catholic Church?
• Or is it just private citizen Lynn Woolsey (Democrat.  Dem-o-crat.)?  If so, then why did the Politico think that her opinion on investigating the Roman Catholic Church was relevant?

Moe Lane

PS: Is Rep. Woolsey’s position that the IRS should investigate the Roman Catholic Church shared by Vice President Joseph Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi?

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Which is why I’m more amused than anything else about this:

Attorney General Eric Holder endorsed the Senate’s version of legislation that would extend three provisions of the Patriot Act that are slated to expire at the end of the year.

Holder wrote in a letter today to Senate Judiciary Committee members that he offers “strong support” for the USA Patriot Act Sunset Extension Act, which would reauthorize the “lone wolf,” records and “roving wiretap” powers. By contrast, a House version of the bill would not continue the “lone wolf” provision, which lets the government track targets who don’t have any discernible affiliation with terrorist or other foreign groups.

…although I admit that I’m kind of curious of which member of the current ruling party thought that it was a good idea to hamper lone wolf surveillance.  The timing for that seems… suboptimal.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Pfizer abandons site of infamous Kelo eminent domain taking

The private homes that New London, Conn., took away from Suzette Kelo and her neighbors have been torn down. Their former site is a wasteland of fields of weeds, a monument to the power of eminent domain.

But now Pfizer, the drug company whose neighboring research facility had been the original cause of the homes’ seizure, has just announced that it is closing up shop in New London.

To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing. Suzette Kelo fought the taking to the Supreme Court, and lost. Five justices found this redevelopment met the constitutional hurdle of “public use.”

Oops?

Moe Lane

PS: I’d just like to note for the record that the dissenting judges on this one - the ones respectful of private property, in other words - were Judges O’Connor, Rehnquist, Scalia, & Thomas.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Well, maybe I’m getting this one on credit.

Democrat Janine Materna’s campaign is considering suing its consulting firm, the Advance Group, for $1 million, and claimed that consultant Scott Levenson’s position with the controversial ACORN group was among the reasons Ms. Materna lost the South Shore City Council race.

“It’s because of him that Janine lost the election,” said Jodi Materna, her sister’s campaign manager.

She said the campaign did not know of Levenson’s ACORN affiliation and if it had, “we never would have hired him.”

I agree with Brian that this is nonsense - if I’ve known that Scott Levenson has been a sanctimonious, unctuous [expletive deleted] for ACORN since the 2008 election season, then so should have the Materna campaign - but it’s funny nonsense that will put a spring in your step. Apparently Advance Group/ACORN couldn’t even bother to get mailings out on time, which just goes to show: it’s not that these groups are good at what they do. They’re actually pretty bad at it. It’s just that usually they don’t have anybody providing them with any sort of meaningful opposition.

Moe Lane

PS: Yes.

That sanctimonious, unctuous [expletive deleted].

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

For myself: I’m not an economist, not a financier, and the heights of my mathematical understanding was a grad school class informally called How vendors will lie to you with statistics.  but I knew back in July that we were going to hit double-digit unemployment, for a very simple and very cynical reason: because I knew that the people with political oversight over our economic and fiscal policy were not up to the job.  If they had been they wouldn’t have needed a perfect storm to gain political power in 2006, and consolidate it in 2008.

In other words, what was that phrase from our parents’ day, again?  Oh, right: “Would you buy a used car from this man?”

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.