Right Side of the Rainbow

I’ll put up the related text later, but here’s today’s podcast:

If you’d prefer to listen to the original mp3 file, which provides the best sound quality, click the icon below. (Link launches your media player.)

You can also subscribe to my podcast using Apple’s iTunes.

Run time: 9:00.

ADDED —

This week:

Colorado 7
Open Republican seat
PVI: Democrat +2
GOP nominee: Rick O’Donnell
Democratic nominee: Ed Perlmutter
Projected Democratic pick-up

Iowa 1
Open Republican seat
PVI: Democrat +5
GOP nominee: Mike Whalen
Democratic nominee: Bruce Braley
Projected Democratic pick-up

North Carolina 11
PVI: Republican +7
GOP nominee: Charles Taylor, incumbent
Democratic nominee: Heath Shuler
Toss-up

Illinois 6
Open Republican seat
PVI: Republican +3
GOP nominee: Peter Roskam
Democratic nominee: Tammy Duckworth
Toss-up

Florida 22
PVI: Democrat +4
GOP nominee: Clay Shaw, incumbent
Democratic nominee: Ron Klein
Projected Republican hold

Ohio 18
Open Republican seat
PVI: Republican +6
GOP nominee: Joy Padgett
Democratic nominee: Zack Space
Projected Democratic pick-up

In the last two weeks:

Texas 22
Indiana 2
Indiana 8
Indiana 9
Connecticut 2
Arizona 8
Pennsylvania 7
New Mexico 1
Minnesota 6
Ohio 15
Kentucky 4
Virginia 2

Next week:

Connecticut 4
Connecticut 5
Pennsylvania 6
Pennsylvania 8
Pennsylvania 10
Ohio 1

So far, 18 races projected. 9 Democratic pick-ups. 4 Republican holds. 5 toss-ups. Races yet to be projected: 6. Bonus seat to Democrats (not included in the twenty-four races I’ve been tracking): Florida 16. (Incidentally, the loss of Mark Foley’s safe seat is making it hard for some of my Republican brethern to cope. How else to explain that?)

For maps of the congressional districts, go here.

For an explanation of Charlie Cook’s Partisan Voter Index (PVI), go here.

Technorati tags: 2006+elections, Congress, Democrats, Republicans, Colorado, Iowa, North+Carolina, Illinois, Florida, Ohio

Posted by Paul at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In real estate, the rule is “location, location, location.” In politics, the rule is “events, events, events.” If the Democrats didn’t already have the 15 seats they needed to win control of the House, they do now. Rep. Mark Foley, R-FL, has resigned from what was a safe Republican seat.

This election will be extraordinarly close, and it’s possible the Democrats could end up with a one seat majority; if so, the GOP will have been knocked from power by a same-sex “sex” scandal. That’s exquisitely ironic.

By the way, does the name Gerry Studds ring a bell with anybody? In 1983, he was a then-closeted Democratic member of Congress from Massachusetts who had done more than send solicitous e-mails to a teenage page. Studds had screwed a page. Studds did not resign, the House declined to expel him and his constituents re-elected him.

Or how about the name Stephen Gobie? That’s the name of the live-in hooker who in the late 1980s turned the apartment of another gay Massachusetts Democrat into a bordello. In addition to plowing Gobie for pay, Rep. Barney Frank used congressional stationery when writing letters of reference to the rent boy’s probation officer. Frank did not resign, the House declined to expel him and his constituents re-elected him. Rep. Frank is, in fact, still a member of Congress.

I don’t know why Mark Foley resigned. Maybe he resigned out of sheer embarrassment. And maybe he resigned because he thought Florida conservatives aren’t as forgiving as Massachusetts liberals. But I know what the reason for his resignation wasn’t: Foley did not resign — he could not have resigned — out of respect for congressional precedent.

Technorati tags: Mark+Foley, 2006+elections, Congress

Posted by Paul at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The roll call of the House vote yesterday on the terrorist surveillance bill is here. The vote was 232-191.

AP has this report.

ADDED —

I should add that Senate passage is not expected before the pre-election break.

Technorati tags: Electronic+surveillance, terrorism, Congress

Posted by Paul at 11:30 AM | Permalink

Here’s the lede:

The Democratic vote in the Senate on Thursday against legislation governing the treatment of terrorism suspects showed that party leaders believe that President Bush’s power to wield national security as a political issue is seriously diminished.

But only four paragraphs later, this is what we’re told:

Over all, 32 Democrats voted against the measure while 12, including some of those in the most difficult re-election fights, backed it. Among the latter was Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, whose perceived support for Mr. Bush has brought him political trouble at home.

If the president’s “power to wield national security as a political issue is seriously diminished,” why would Democrats in difficult re-election fights back legislation he favored? The Times’ headline reads, “Democrats see strength in bucking Bush.” But apparently some of them see weakness in bucking Bush. And is Joe Lieberman’s imminent re-election to the Senate the “political trouble at home” to which the Times refers?

Technorati tags: New+York+Times, Democrats, Bush, 2006+elections

Posted by Paul at 6:00 AM | Permalink

I had no idea that the American people know as little about politics, public policy and government as they do (which is to say that I was ignorant of the ignorance). Americans are evidently not a politically well-informed people. But as Ilya Somin points out in the essay at the link, it’s not rational to expect them to be well-informed. Our Government is now so large and complex that people couldn’t keep up with it even if they wanted to.

Posted by Paul at 10:55 PM | Permalink

Associated Press:

The Senate on Thursday endorsed President Bush’s plans to prosecute and interrogate terror suspects, all but sealing congressional approval for legislation that Republicans intend to use on the campaign trail to assert their toughness on terrorism.

The 65-34 vote means the bill could reach the president’s desk by week’s end. The House passed nearly identical legislation on Wednesday and was expected to approve the Senate bill on Friday, sending it on to the White House.

The House vote was 253-168. That roll call is here. I’ll post the roll call from the Senate when it becomes available.

ADDED —

Here’s the Senate’s roll call. Eleven Democrats voted yes. One Republican voted no. Can you guess which one?

On Fox News, I just heard Dick Morris say, “The big loser in all this is John McCain.” I think that’s right, even though McCain voted yes tonight. John McCain will not be the Republican nominee in 2008, and his cheerleading for terrorists’ rights is one reason why.

ADDED II —

Meanwhile, dissension on the Left. Here’s Yale law professor Jack Balkin: “What a spineless, worthless lot the Democrats in the Senate are. They deserve every lost Senate and House seat that comes from this.” It’s always good to see that liberals can be as unhappy with their leaders as we can be with ours. It provides perspective.

Technorati tags: Detainee+interrogation, war+on+terror, Congress

Posted by Paul at 6:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Take a look at this fascinating chart at Drug War Rant. Using inflation-adjusted dollars, it shows the U.S. retail price for a gram of cocaine falling by 62% since 1990. Meanwhile, cocaine production from Columbia, as measured in metric tons, has risen 595% since 1990.

Falling prices, rising production. This is what our Government calls success in the war on drugs.

Technorati tags: War+on+drugs

Posted by Paul at 7:05 PM | Permalink

If you’re the iTunes sort, you can now find my podcast in Apple’s iTunes Store. Just click the button below.

Posted by Paul at 5:00 PM | Permalink

Gay.com:

The openly gay mayor of Palm Springs, Calif., said in an opinion piece published Friday that he was only showing “Christian courtesy” in welcoming an “ex-gay” group to his city Saturday, CBS News reported.

Mayor Ron Oden is catching hell from gay activists. But it seems to me that mayors are usually welcoming to most anyone who comes to town spending money.

ADDED —

It also seems to me that despite our insistence on the tolerance of others — even to the point of changing millennia-old tradition — we gays and lesbians are ourselves often intolerant. The notion of “ex-gays” strikes me as absurd. But it also strikes me as not my business.

Technorati tags: Gay+news

Posted by Paul at 7:15 PM | Permalink

Brace for it: “It’s Nov. 8, the day after the election. The costliest and nastiest campaign for control of the House in history is …. not yet over.”

If on election night one party or the other has a two or three seat majority — don’t rule out the possibility! — we can expect litigation everywhere the vote was close. We can also expect the political headhunters to be out in force looking for party switchers.

I’m increasingly persuaded that no Democratic “wave” is coming, i.e. the Democrats won’t win thirty or forty or fifty Republican-held seats. But I’m also increasingly persuaded that the GOP will come perilously close to dropping the fifteen seats that will give Democrats control. It’s going to be tight!*

If I turn out to be wrong about this, I will quit prognosticating. I will have proven myself to be bad at it!

(*By the way, if you’re the political junkie that I am, tell your boss now that you need off on Wednesday, November 8. We’re going to be up late Tuesday night.)

Technorati tags: 2006+elections

Posted by Paul at 6:55 PM | Permalink

Associated Press: “The Army is stretched so thin by the war in Iraq that it is again extending the combat tours of thousands of soldiers beyond the promised 12 months — the second such move since August.”

Also, the Army will reportedly need another $66 billion to “repair or replace all the equipment torn up in Iraq.” That’s in addition to the more than $318 billion the war has cost so far.

Says U.S. Sen Arlen Specter, R-PA: “My instinct is once the (November) election is over there will be a lot more hard thinking about what to do about Iraq and a lot more candid observations about it.”

Technorati tags: Iraq, US+Army

Posted by Paul at 6:20 PM | Permalink

“The Rev. Jerry Falwell acknowledged on Sunday saying that if Hillary Rodham Clinton were the Democrats’ presidential nominee in 2008, it would motivate conservative evangelical Christians to oppose her more than if the devil himself were running.” (Link)

Technorati tags: Hillary+Clinton, Jerry+Falwell

Posted by Paul at 5:15 PM | Permalink

If, as I did, you missed this Los Angeles Times essay by liberal Sam Harris when it published Monday, don’t miss it now. Here’s a sample:

A cult of death is forming in the Muslim world — for reasons that are perfectly explicable in terms of the Islamic doctrines of martyrdom and jihad. The truth is that we are not fighting a “war on terror.” We are fighting a pestilential theology and a longing for paradise.

[…]

We are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely, nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.

Given the American people’s appetite for economic populism, and the incompetence, corruption and unprincipledness of the extant Republican regimen, liberal Democrats could electorally obliterate the GOP were they all as clear-headed on national security as Sam Harris is. But they hate Bush more than they hate the enemy, and more than they love their country.

ADDED —

Case in point: “Yesterday, former Senator Gary Hart reminded us of why Democrats have managed to lose three straight elections that they should have won …”

Technorati tags: Liberals, liberalism, national+security

Posted by Paul at 1:55 PM | Permalink

Although I’ve included Connecticut 5 in the twenty-four U.S. House districts worth watching, the Republican incumbent there, Nancy Johnson, is out of danger. Here’s one of the reasons why. I think the political pros call it “high production value.”

ADDED II —

As of this update (9:15 p.m. CST), Rep. Johnson’s site is still offline. But I just remembered that before it went offline, I downloaded the video I want you to see. And now I’ve uploaded it to my site. You can watch it here. (Link launches your media player.)

ADDED —

As Zendo Deb notes in a comment below, Johnson’s website is down as of roughly 2 p.m. CST today.

Technorati tags: Nancy+Johnson, Connecticut, 2006+elections

Posted by Paul at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Associated Press: “Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist on Sunday said he wants a Senate vote soon on an immigration bill focusing primarily on border security, but acknowledged that quick passage is doubtful.”

Technorati tags: Immigration, border+security

Posted by Paul at 11:45 AM | Permalink

Run time: 9:42. Theme music by Shockwave Sound.

This week:

Pennsylvania 7
PVI: Democrat +4
GOP nominee: Curt Weldon, incumbent
Democratic nominee: Joseph Sestak
Projected Republican hold
See popup map of Pennsylvania 7

New Mexico 1
PVI: Democrat +2
GOP nominee: Heather Wilson, incumbent
Democratic nominee: Patricia Madrid
Projected Republican hold
See popup map of New Mexico 1

Minnesota 6
Open Republican seat
PVI: Republican +5
GOP nominee: Michele Bachmann
Democratic nominee: Patty Wetterling
Projected Republican hold
See popup map of Minnesota 6

Ohio 15
PVI: Republican +1
GOP nominee: Deborah Pryce, incumbent
Democratic nominee: Mary Jo Kilroy
Toss-up
See popup map of Ohio 15

Kentucky 4
PVI: Republican +12
GOP nominee: Geoff Davis, incumbent
Democratic nominee: Ken Lucas
Toss-up
See popup map of Kentucky 4

Virginia 2
PVI: Republican +6
GOP nominee: Thelma Drake, incumbent
Democratic nominee: Philip Kellman
Toss-up
See popup map of Virginia 2

Last week (projections unchanged):

Texas 22
Indiana 2
Indiana 8
Indiana 9
Connecticut 2
Arizona 8

Next week:

Colorado 7
Iowa 1
North Carolina 11
Illinois 6
Florida 22
Ohio 15

So far, 12 races projected. 6 Democratic pick-ups. 3 Republican holds. 3 toss-ups. Races yet to be projected: 12.

Caveat: in assessing poll data, I don’t look at the spread between the incumbent and the challenger. I look at where the incumbent is relative to the 50% mark. To understand why, see this.

For an explanation of Charlie Cook’s Partisan Voter Index (PVI), see this.

Technorati tags: 2006+elections, Congress, Democrats, Republicans, Pennsylvania, New+Mexico, Minnesota, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia

Posted by Paul at 4:00 PM | Permalink

Red Hot Chili Peppers: the sounds of torture?

More:

The Republican bill provides legal protection for the CIA program by precisely defining and enumerating atrocities widely accepted as war crimes — including torture, rape, biological experiments, and cruel and inhuman treatment.

For acts that do not rise to the level of a war crime but may test the bounds of the Geneva Conventions, the GOP bill allows the president to make the call.

Backstory: “The CIA reportedly used the music of the Red Hot Chili Peppers to torture a confession out of an al-Qaida terrorist.”

Technorati tags: CIA, terrorist+interrogation, Republicans, general+American+nuttery

Posted by Paul at 9:00 PM | Permalink

U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-PA, waves goodbye. He’ll leave the Senate in January.

According to the latest survey from Rasmussen Reports, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-PA, has the support of only 39% of voters in his bid for re-election. I believe it. (See this.)

Although I’m no fan of his, I had thought Santorum might rally. He hasn’t. The “incumbent rule” applies here, and that means Santorum is toast.

Unless Democrat Bob Casey decides to masturbate in public or do something else as equally shocking, he’ll win in November. Mark the Senate seat from Pennsylvania as a Democratic pick-up.

Technorati tags: Pennsylvania, Rick+Santorum, 2006+elections

Posted by Paul at 8:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Michael Steele, center: Republican senator from Maryland?

A Republican win in Maryland would make it virtually impossible for the Democrats to take control of the Senate.

Steele’s website is here.

Technorati tags: Maryland, Michael+Steele, US+Senate, 2006+elections

Posted by Paul at 6:55 PM | Permalink

Via Yahoo News: “The Army is ending its best recruiting year since 1997 and expecting similar success in 2007, despite the weight of grim war news from Iraq, Army Secretary Francis Harvey said Thursday.”

Technorati tags: US+Army

Posted by Paul at 6:00 PM | Permalink

Via MSNBC: “The Bush administration asked an appeals court Thursday to step in immediately and dismiss a lawsuit over the government’s warrantless eavesdropping program, calling a lower judge’s ruling dangerous and wrong.”

Technorati tags: Terrorist+surveillance+program

Posted by Paul at 5:45 PM | Permalink

This report by the Associated Press begins: “A national black Republican group is running a radio advertisement accusing Democrats of starting the Ku Klux Klan and saying the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican …”

Technorati tags: Black+Republicans

Posted by Paul at 5:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

According to the editors of National Review, “Without action by Congress to state plainly what is and is not permissible, intelligence agents will have to fear being sued or prosecuted for war crimes just for doing their jobs. This is not a hypothetical concern; anxious agents are already buying litigation insurance. Soon, our efforts to cull intelligence from detainees will shut down entirely (that is, if they haven’t already).”

Meanwhile, without any apparent sense of irony, the editors of the Boston Hearld write: “Powell and McCain also raised concerns that any reinterpretation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions could endanger U.S. soldiers who might be captured.” As things stand now, U.S. soldiers captured by al Qaeda are not in any danger …

ADDED —

Associated Press: “The Bush administration and Senate Republicans announced agreement Thursday on terms for the interrogation and trial of suspects in the war on terror.”

Technorati tags: Detainee+interrogation, Congress, John+ McCain

Posted by Paul at 5:05 PM | Permalink

“President Bush’s embattled anti-terrorism plans got a boost Wednesday when a wiretap bill was revised and a Senate Republican leader said he was hopeful a deal was near on treatment of detainees,” according to the Associated Press; however, “[p]rospects for the two critical pieces of legislation remained unclear …”

• In Hamdan, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions applies to the conflict with al Qaeda.

• Article 3 prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment …”

• An al Qaeda detainee might claim, inter alia, that interrogation by a woman is humiliating and degrading.

• President Bush wants Congress to “make explicit that by following the standards of the Detainee Treatment Act our personnel are fulfilling America’s obligations under Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions,” and to preclude captured terrorists from using the Geneva Conventions as a basis for suing U.S. personnel in our courts.

• The Administration has indicated it will close the CIA’s detainee interrogation program if Congress does not set explicit standards for American interrogators. In a letter to employees of the CIA, director Michael Hayden wrote: “At the end of the day, the director — any director — of the CIA must be confident that what he has asked an agency officer to do under this program is lawful.”

• For political reasons, the Democrats have decided to stay on the sidelines and leave this fight to Republicans.

• The phone numbers for your senators are here.

Technorati tags: Detainee+interrogation, CIA, Congress, Republicans

Posted by Paul at 9:30 PM | Permalink

A USA Today/Gallup poll shows “likely voters evenly divided between Democratic and Republican candidates for Congress, 48%-48%.” The Democrats still maintain a 51-42 lead among registered voters. But as I’ve argued before, likely voters are the only subset of voters worth caring about.

Posted by Paul at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

On Saturday, I began reviewing — and projecting the results of — twenty-four U.S. House races worth watching. A reader’s comment here got me to thinking about the “incumbent rule.”

Let’s say you have a congressional race where the polling data look like this:

John Doe, incumbent: 45%
Jane Smith, challenger: 47%
Undecideds: 8%

On the surface, the race looks like a toss-up, doesn’t it? But it’s not a toss-up. Or at least the incumbent rule suggests it’s not a toss-up.

The incumbent rule posits that most voters who claim to be undecided aren’t really ambivalent. They have in fact decided to vote against the incumbent, whom they usually know well by virtue of his tenure in office. What they haven’t decided yet is whether the challenger is an acceptable alternative.

Usually, most undecided voters end up deciding that the challenger is an acceptable alternative and they vote for her. Consequently, we might expect the numbers above to break out like this on election day:

John Doe, incumbent: 47%
Jane Smith, challenger: 53%

In any race where an incumbent is up for re-election, don’t look at the polling spread between the incumbent and the challenger. Look instead at how close — or how far — the incumbent is from the 50% mark. The spread here is only four points, but these pre-election numbers spell doom for Mr. Doe:

John Doe, incumbent: 44%
Jane Smith, challenger: 48%
Undecideds: 8%

Are polling data always accurate? No. Is the incumbent rule always operational? No. Just this month, pre-election polling showed Steve Laffey winning the Rhode Island GOP primary over incumbent Lincoln Chafee. But it was Chafee, and not Laffey, who prevailed on election day. The pollsters had not accounted for crossover voting by Democrats who re-registered as independents and voted for Mr. Chafee. (In Rhode Island, independents can vote in either party’s primary.)

But if a poll is methodologically sound, we should be mindful of the incumbent rule when assessing the poll’s findings. More often than not, the incumbent rule works.

Posted by Paul at 8:00 PM | Permalink

International drug cartels have made crystal methamphetamine “so abundant that distributors now commonly ‘front’ up to 2 pounds of ice to street dealers on credit,” MSNBC reports.

Posted by Paul at 11:50 AM | Permalink

Liberal hawk Jonathan Chait, in an article on the Democratic Party’s internal divisions over foreign policy, says the war in Iraq wasn’t doomed from the beginning. It was doomed by the Bush Administration’s incompetence:

… the more we learn about the war’s conduct, the more we learn that the administration didn’t just make the normal sorts of mistakes that inevitably occur in wartime; it was almost criminally negligent. The Bush administration literally refused to do any planning for the occupation. They invaded before all the available troops were in place, staffed the Coalition Provisional Authority with underqualified hacks vetted solely on the basis of ideological loyalty and rashly disbanded the Iraqi army, which could have provided some early order.

One might counter that none of this was really decisive because Iraq is so deeply riven with sectarian feuds that brutal fighting between Sunnis and Shiites was inevitable. But this misunderstands a lot about human behavior. When the authority of government dissolves, people retreat to the safety of tribal solidarity, and under such conditions they can do savage things of which they never thought themselves capable. Once the expectation of chaos sets in, it can spiral out of control. (Link)

Afraid that any criticism from them would undermine the whole enterprise, congressional Republicans have been mute on the Administration’s inept prosecution of the war in Iraq. (Does any Republican believe the president’s claim that our generals couldn’t do with more troops? Aren’t Republicans the party of “overwhelming force”?) Meanwhile, disdainful of the exercise of American power, congressional Democrats — especially the most liberal of them — have mostly confined themselves to denying the war’s legitimacy. This has left the Administration’s management of the war largely unexamined, and unquestioned.

Technorati tags: War+in+Iraq, Iraq, Bush, Democrats, Republicans

Posted by Paul at 4:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Charles Johnson on the Pope’s non-apology apology:

It won’t work. Islamists can tell the difference between diplomatic words and true surrender, and they want the Pope to utterly abase himself. It would be far better to stand up, and speak truth about the Muslim world’s insane reaction to his speech.

In his remarks yesterday, Glenn Reynolds spoke for many of us: “Frankly, I’m pretty tired of ‘Muslim rage.’”

Can you even imagine the coverage from Western media if Christians (or Jews!) behaved like this?

Technorati tags: Pope+Benedict

Posted by Paul at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

“Conservatives are deeply upset with the Bush administration and the GOP Congress about the lack of fiscal discipline, corruption in the ranks, immigration, and a host of other subjects,” write Larry Sabato and David Wasserman. “A dangerous thesis has taken hold among many in the GOP: that it might be better to lose the ‘06 election and re-group. In American history, when a faction in the majority party decides the party is tired and could benefit from some time in the wilderness, the voters usually oblige.”

But intraparty feuding isn’t limited to Republicans: “Strategically, Howard Dean’s DNC and the leaders of the party’s congressional campaign committees seem to be operating on different planets, with the former entity reluctant to sacrifice any territory for the sake of targeting the most competitive races — the latter entity’s raison d’etre. All of a sudden, Election Day is less than two months away, and many Democrats genuinely worry that this tabloid-worthy organizational feuding will severely hinder the party’s chances of fully capitalizing on the angry storm of anti-GOP resentment.” [Emphasis added.] (Link)

Technorati tags: 2006+elections, Democrats, Republicans

Posted by Paul at 12:10 PM | Permalink

Former Congressman Joe Scarborough, R-FL, says GOP incumbents should save themselves by throwing Mr. Bush under the bus:

Being a faithful follower of Brother Bush has long been synonymous with loving Jesus, supporting the troops and taking a stand against sodomy. But no more. Many of the conservatives who put Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich in power are counting the days until Bush goes to Crawford for good. Some mutter that their leader’s governing style looks more like Jimmy Carter’s every day — and among that crowd, there is no harsher insult.

Technorati tags: Bush, Congress, 2006+elections

Posted by Paul at 11:50 AM | Permalink

George F. Will: “In this autumn of their discontent, Republicans tremble as November nears. But now comes yet another book by a gloomy liberal anticipating permanent Republican dominance.”

Not unrelatedly, “Over the past three decades, conservatives have been procreating more than liberals — continuing to seed the future with their genes by filling bassinets coast to coast with tiny Future Republicans of America,” according to Vicki Haddock in the San Francisco Chronicle. James Taranto long ago dubbed this the “Roe effect.”

Technorati tags: Conservatives, Republicans, Red+America

Posted by Paul at 11:10 AM | Permalink

“Despite a voter backlash against the GOP, political handicappers say it’s nearly impossible for Democrats to win the Senate this fall,” the New York Daily News reports.

Technorati tags: 2006+elections, Senate, Democrats

Posted by Paul at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

(Correction: In the audioblog, I refer to U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-AZ, as the only openly gay representative in Congress. That is, of course, wrong. I meant to say that Rep. Kolbe is the only openly gay Republican in Congress.)

Terms used in this audioblog:

Partisan Voter Index (PVI). Introduced by the Cook Political Report, PVI gauges a district’s competitiveness:

A Partisan Voting Index score of D+2.3, for example, means that in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, that district performed an average of 2.3 points more Democratic than the nation did as a whole, while an R+3.8 means the district performed more Republican than the nation. (Link)

U.S. House races reviewed in this audioblog:

Texas 22
Vacant Republican seat
PVI: Republican +15
GOP nominee: None
Democratic nominee: Nick Lampson
Projected Democratic pick-up
See popup map of Texas 22

Indiana 2
PVI: Republican +4
GOP nominee: Chris Chocola, incumbent
Democratic nominee: Joe Donnelly
Projected Democratic pick-up
See popup map of Indiana 2

Indiana 8
PVI: Republican +9
GOP nominee: John Hostettler, incumbent
Democratic nominee: Brad Ellsworth
Projected Democratic pick-up
See popup map of Indiana 8

Indiana 9
PVI: Republican +7
GOP nominee: Mike Sodrel, incumbent
Democratic nominee: Baron Hill
Projected Democratic pick-up
See popup map of Indiana 9

Connecticut 2
PVI: Democrat +8
GOP nominee: Rob Simmons, incumbent
Democratic nominee: Joe Courtney
Projected Democratic pick-up
See popup map of Connecticut 2

Arizona 8
Incumbent Republican retiring
PVI: Republican +1
GOP nominee: Randy Graf
Democratic nominee: Gabrielle Giffords
Projected Democratic pick-up
See popup map of Arizona 8

Technorati tags: 2006+elections, Congress, Democrats, Republicans, Texas, Indiana, Connecticut, Arizona

Posted by Paul at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Umm, hmm:

[Sen. Lincoln] Chafee won last night’s primary with 54% of the vote over Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey.  Club for Growth poured $1 million into Laffey’s campaign in a vicious effort to distort Senator Chafee’s record and divide the Republican Party.  “This was a hugely important election.  A Laffey victory would’ve emboldened special interest groups to target other mainstream Republicans across America,” said Sammon.

Say you’re a Republican gay rights organization that backed Lincoln Chafee in Tuesday’s Rhode Island GOP primary. It’s okay to gloat over your victory, yes? But why take a gratuitous swipe at Club for Growth, an organization well within the Republican mainstream, one that focuses on fiscal and economic policy, not social issues, and one with whom you might someday make common cause?

If you’ve ever wondered why many Republicans — including a not insignificant number of gay Republicans — look at Log Cabin and snicker, wonder no more. LCR has all the political acumen God gave to a tree stump.

More at Gay Patriot and Independent Gay Forum.

(Disclosure: I’m a member of Club for Growth. I’m not a member of Log Cabin.)

ADDED —

By the way, if we’re going to talk about things that “divide the Republican Party,” the push for gay rights produces heated debate in Republican circles. But there’s no debate, at least not among rank and file Republicans, about restoring the GOP’s commitment to fiscal probity.

Technorati tags: Log+Cabin+Republicans, Club+for+Growth

Posted by Paul at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Associated Press:

The Supreme Court will post transcripts of oral arguments on its Web site the same day they occur, beginning in October.

The change, long desired by court watchers, comes as Chief Justice John Roberts begins his second term at the head of the court.

If you’d like to bookmark it, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Web site is here.

Technorati tags: US+Supreme+Court

Posted by Paul at 6:30 PM | Permalink