State News

We have had a Democratic Governor for all of 9 days now and already he has done more progress than Taft ever did:

Gov. Ted Strickland signed his second executive order today, creating an energy adviser to coordinate the state's efforts to create jobs through fuel-saving initiatives.

"One of the core principles of my Turnaround Ohio plan is to invest in Ohio's strengths," Strickland said in a prepared statement. "Clearly, energy production is one of those strengths. I am convinced that we can create thousands of good-paying jobs by encouraging next-generation energy production in Ohio including ethanol, clean coal, wind and solar."

Strickland's first executive order -- signed Jan. 8 on his first day as governor -- banned gifts worth more than $20 for state employees.

Soy is a major crop here and the fuel initiative is defiantly a great idea. We also desperately need new jobs in Ohio (something we lost a lot of under Taft).

The banning of gifts is one of those "had to be done" items. Taft was the only governor in the history of Ohio to be convicted of a crime while in office. His crime was accepting gifts and not reporting them. Strickland has a plate full to clean up the corruption left behind by Taft and his cronies, but he is surely the man to get it done.

Already we have heard about countless voting nightmares around the country - and the election isn't for three days yet!. Absentee ballots are playing a major role in the problems of our democracy this year, and this is one that is really bad:

If you got your absentee ballot in the mail and it looks suspiciously like a photocopy of a regular ballot, that's because, well, it is.

Unusually high demand and a printing order that wasn't filled fast enough caused the San Diego County Registrar of Voters to run short of absentee ballots this week. About 5,000 photocopies were mailed out instead, said Registrar of Voters Mikel Haas.

But there's nothing to fear, Haas said. “Their votes will be counted.” When those ballots are returned, registrar's employees will copy voters' choices by hand onto regular card stock ballots that can be run through the optical scanners that count the votes.

Photocopied ballots were mailed in the same envelopes as regular absentee ballots. As with all absentee votes, the envelopes must be signed by the voter and verified by the registrar's office.

Although barely more than 1 percent of the 427,000 absentee voters will be affected, it has caused consternation in an election season that has seen a growing mistrust of new electronic voting machines.

“I just think it's bizarre that they literally transfer people's votes from one piece of paper to another,” said San Diego County Democratic Party Chairman Jess Durfee. “Any time you do that, there have got to be mistakes.”

So people in San Diego are supposed to trust someone to "transfer" their vote to a ballot? WTF? No sensible person trusts the system anymore and a move like this will really disenfranchise what little trust their might be.

A note to the government - you keep pushing the people like this and the people will push back. They get their chance to push back on Tuesday, but if the election process is screwed up again, then other means to push back might be sought. You are putting this nation on a collision course with disaster.

That is liberal blogger Mike Stark of CallingAllWingnuts getting assaulted by campaign workers from the George Allen campaign. His crime? He asked Allen why he spat on his first wife.

I guess this is Allen's new way of showing he isn't a racist. Now he is just showing that he hates everyone.

I hope Mike takes Allen and his entire staff to court and talks to the police about some assault charges. This should be the end of Allen's career right here, if we weren't in a country run by lunatics like Allen.

Call it signs of desperation or just down right hatred, but what the California Republicans have done now are new lows:

State investigators have linked a Republican campaign to letters sent to thousands of Southern California Hispanics warning them they could go to jail or be deported if they vote next month, a spokesman for the attorney general said.

"We have identified where we believe the mailing list was obtained," said Nathan Barankin, spokesman for Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

He declined to identify the specific Republican campaign Wednesday, citing the ongoing investigation. The Los Angeles Times and The Orange County Register both reported Thursday that the investigation appeared to be focused on the campaign of Tan D. Nguyen, a Republican challenger to Democratic U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez.

The letter, written in Spanish, tells recipients: "You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time."

In fact, immigrants who are naturalized U.S. citizens can vote.

So people who are immigrants can't vote? That is news. Perhaps we should make this "new rule" proactive. Anyone who is of immigrant origins to the United States can not vote this election year. I wonder how all those American Indians will vote? I wonder if they still have hard feelings for the millions that Abramoff stole from them. I am sure they do.

This type of stunt is sadly not uncommon around the country. We really need new laws regarding these type of campaign tactics. I believe if someone is found guilty of doing something like this, or making false claims in their ads against their opponent, then they must pay their opponent the cost of the ad plus an additional amount to undo the wrong doings of these people. If campaigns start facing hefty fines like that, instead of the little slap on the wrists, then perhaps they will grow up and play by the rules. After all - what they are doing is a crime against our country.

Pennsylvania is one of the GOP's "firewall" states they feel they need to keep control of the Senate. Well that firewall must be made by Microsoft because it is failing rapidly:

With just a few weeks to go until November 7, Senator Rick Santorum's chances of securing reelection fade a bit more every day. The latest Rasmussen Reports election poll finds that challenger Bob Casey, Jr. has a thirteen point advantage, 54% to 41%. That's the same margin we saw in our last survey.

When leaners are added, Casey leads by twelve, 55% to 43%. Leaners are those who don't initially commit to voting for either candidate but express a preference when asked a follow-up question.

The race remains in the "Democrat" column in our Senate Balance of Power summary

Perhaps Ricky boy should try some more LOTR analogies.

The culture of corruption expands:

Federal officials are probing scathing allegations that the Romney administration falsely claimed to conduct safety inspections in the Big Dig tunnel that collapsed and killed a woman in July.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is zeroing in on state financial documents from 2005 - cited in a new report by state Inspector General Gregory Sullivan - indicating that Gov. Mitt Romney was reviewing the safety of the Big Dig, when in fact the administration was only checking leaks in the Interstate 93 tunnel.

“Despite repeated assurances to bondholders, (MassHighway and Romney’s Executive Office of Transportation) . . . did not inspect the I-90 connector tunnel section where the July 10, 2006, collapse occurred,” Sullivan’s report states. “It is clear that casual disregard for the truth was grossly inappropriate.”

Remember - this is one of the darlings of the Republicans and now he is under federal investigation. They love to talk about Kennedy's accident. At least that was "an accident". If these allegations are true, then Romney needs to be charged in connection with the death of the lady who died in the collapse.

I realized how bad Romney was during Katrina last year when he told a news station that if that happened in his state he would have put anyone in those buses to drive people out of his towns. I can't tell you how BAD of an idea that is (someone not use to driving a bus, driving one in a fiasco like a mass evacuation. If they wreck you now loose a major artery out of town, which will ultimately cost more lives). If that is his reckless approach to a disaster, his normal administrative techniques can not be much better. We are now seeing that.

We get more proof that our own democracy is under attack:

Some U.S. states have placed laws to make it difficult to vote instead of reforming ballot problems. The study looked into 10 states with reported ballot difficulties.

The study cited proposed laws in Arizona and Georgia, that call for a government-issued photo identification card and proof of citizenship before voting.

Tova Wang of The Century Foundation think tank said that although both state laws were denied by judges, "the damage has already been done." The proposals confused voters and delayed voter registration drives.

The lack of definite electronic voting policies and machines were also mentioned saying that it could lead to longer voting lines in the upcoming midterm contest.

"There were long lines because there were inequitably distributed voting machines," Wang said.

Florida and Washington, for example, have no formula for determining the number of voting machines in each precinct, the study said.

After the 2004 incident in Ohio, a law was approved providing one machine for every 175 registered voters although it will not be enacted until 2013.

The study concluded that, "none have come close to addressing in full the major problems that plagued the system during the last federal election."

The states included in the survey were Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington and Wisconsin.

Isn't it great to be in the "beacon of democracy"? If we continue down this road then we might as well rip up the Constitution and start over.

This ad is raising serious questions.

Head on over to TPMCafe to find out what the problem may very well be.

And it is going to be good!

Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney has agreed with the Justice Department to plead guilty to at least one criminal charge in a deal that could be announced as early as Friday, Capitol Hill sources said Thursday.

The Justice Department and Ney's attorney would not discuss whether a deal has been reached.

"I don't have anything I can share with you right now," said William Lawler, a lawyer for Ney. Ney's congressional office did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

But Capitol Hill sources close to Ney said the plea agreement was ready to be publicized on Thursday, but an announcement was delayed to avoid influencing a special election in Ney's congressional district.

Funny how Ney kept pleading his innocence all these months. 

The tides are still turning in the country:

Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski, whose perceived missteps over the past four years have turned him into one of the most unpopular governors in state history, soundly lost his bid for re-election after finishing last in a hotly contested three-way race for the Republican nomination.

With 70 percent of precincts reporting, Sarah Palin, a former Wasilla mayor, won the GOP nod with 51 percent of the vote. Former state legislator John Binkley came in second with 30 percent. Murkowski polled just 19 percent.

Murkowski shook Palin's hand in the middle of a crowd of her supporters, all waving signs. "Congratulations, you've got my support. I'll do everything to see that you're elected," Murkowski told her.

Murkowski is the second lowest rated Governor in the country according to SUSA. He is just two points above the lowest, the governor of my state, Bob Taft (currently at 17%). Luckily Alaska had the chance to tell Murkowski that he sucks and send him packing. This is Taft's final term in office, so we just get to send him packing via the system of term limits (hell - at least he is gone).

This is a cross post from a post I did at Firedoglake about Joe's "hack"

Interesting how things develop overnight. I am of course talking about the “Joe2006 hack” story going around. I have had CNN on all day and they cover it about every 15 minutes or so. What is amazing is that a company like CNN hasn’t decided to dig into joe2006.com to see exactly what may be happening.

Markos has a post up, and his digging into this and explanation of it hits the nail right on the head:

Two posts down it's clear that Lieberman's website isn't suffering from a Denial of Service attack.

But now I have the definitive answer as to why Lieberman's site went down.

They are paying $15/month for hosting at a place called MyHostCamp, with a bandwidth limit of 10GB. MyHostCamp is currently down, along with all their clients.

Here's the deal -- you get what you pay for. My hosting bill is now over $7K per month. A smaller site doesn't need that much bandwidth, but if you're paying $15 because your $12 million campaign is too freakin' cheap to pay for quality hosting, then don't go blaming your opponent when your shitty service goes out.

For their part, the Lamont campaign has offered its technical expertise to get Lieberman's site back up (which could be done in an hour by a competent sysadmin), and has added a link to the googlecached version of Lieberman's site at the top of their blog.

For you FDL readers that have been around for a few months, you should be able to relate to what Markos is talking about. Since the move from Blogger, we are now on our third host and here is a little in depth look into that.

Damn these activist judges:

A federal appeals court panel on Thursday refused to let Texas Republicans replace Tom DeLay's name on the November congressional ballot.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling by U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, who said in July that DeLay name had to stay on the ballot even though he quit from Congress and moved to Virginia

Now why oh why would these judges rule like this?

Thursday's ruling said that GOP state chairwoman Tina Benkiser acted unconstitutionally when she tried to remove DeLay as the party nominee because he lived in Virginia. Democrats had noted that DeLay's wife, Christine, still lives in the DeLays' house in Sugar Land, just outside Houston

Oh yeah - that pesty thing called The Constitution. Damn the laws of the land. Don't these judges realize Republicans are above the law?

Heading into the primary home stretch in Connecticut, Ned Lamont gets some more good news:

A novice anti-war candidate seeking the Connecticut Democratic Party's nomination to run for the U.S. Senate has extended his lead against three-term incumbent and 2000 vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman, a poll showed on Thursday.

Ned Lamont, a millionaire businessman and opponent of the U.S. military presence in Iraq, now leads rival Lieberman by 54 percent to 41 percent among those likely to vote in the August 8 primary, the Quinnipiac University poll found.

"The incumbent has just five days to turn this race around, but never count out a veteran with his experience," said Quinnipiac University Poll Director Douglas Schwartz.

Next Tuesday is the primary and Ned still needs all the help he can get.

Jane has much more.

This is awesome news:

Sen. Joe Lieberman, under fire from activists in his own party, has lost ground to his challenger and is narrowly trailing him for the first time in their race for the Democratic nomination, a new poll released Thursday shows.

Businessman Ned Lamont had support from 51 percent and Lieberman from 47 percent of likely Democratic voters in the latest Quinnipiac University poll - a slight Lamont lead given the survey's sampling error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Lieberman had led in a Quinnipiac poll last month, 55 percent to 40 percent.

The new poll suggests that Lieberman still could win a fourth term, even if he loses the Democratic primary Aug. 8, however.

Lieberman filed papers last week that will allow him to petition his way onto the November ballot. The poll found that among all registered Connecticut voters surveyed, including non-Democrats, Lieberman had the support of 51 percent, followed by Lamont with 27 percent and Republican Alan Schlesinger with 9 percent.

For this big of a turn around in numbers, the Democrats in Connecticut must be upset with Lieberman's latest act of party mutiny in the name of self-preservation.

Ned is matching dollar for dollar on donations right now. You can donate here via the Blue America Act Blue page.

As always, Jane has much more on the race.

I got to say that this is by far one of the best political ads I have seen in years.

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Of course Joe Liebermanbaby will consider it to be an attack against him like he does everything else.