Janine Pirro's lack of Prosecution In Harrison, N.Y. at another typically drunken house party when a fight broke out. One guy punched another guy, who fell backwards onto the concrete patio and hit his head hard. Rather than calling for an ambulance, the kids at the party rushed around throwing away all the alcohol and cups, destroying the evidence that they had been drinking, then concocted a story about how he had somehow hit his head in a nearby park. They finally did take the kid to the hospital, but it was too late, and he died from the head trauma. It was acknowledged that he might have survived had they called an ambulance straight away and had not tried to orchestrate a cover-up. None of them went to jail because Janine Pirro orchestrated a cover-up.

Janine Pirro's lack of Prosecution In Harrison, N.Y. at another typically drunken house party when a fight broke out. One guy punched another guy, who fell backwards onto the concrete patio and hit his head hard. Rather than calling for an ambulance, the kids at the party rushed around throwing away all the alcohol and cups, destroying the evidence that they had been drinking, then concocted a story about how he had somehow hit his head in a nearby park. They finally did take the kid to the hospital, but it was too late, and he died from the head trauma. It was acknowledged that he might have survived had they called an ambulance straight away and had not tried to orchestrate a cover-up. None of them went to jail because Janine Pirro orchestrated a cover-up.

slight correction:

The ultimate best case scenario for the Dems, the proverbial pulling an inside straight would be +7 in the Senate.

Winning Va, TN and holding N.J. is the equivalent of 'pulling an inside straight."

I agree with Rob M.

I think the best way to 'predict' the election is to do 'worst' and 'best' case scenarios and a 3rd scenario which is somewhere in the middle.

I'd think the Dems 'worst' case is +3 in the Senate and 'Best' is +6.

In the House worst is say +10 and best is say +24.

Then we need to see how the political winds are blowing. The Dems had the wind at their backs in Aug, then the wind changed some in September and now appears to be shifting again to the Dems.

I'd think there would be say 3 forecasts:

an August 15 forecast which really favors the Dems.

A September 15 forecast which tempers that forecast.

and now a say October 7 forecast which is rosier for the Dems then September 15.

No one can say now where the pendulum will be on November 7, except that it will probably be between the 'best' and 'worst' cases I indicated above.

In the Senate, the most interesting is that Va, TN, and N.J. are in play.

Normally all three should be 'safe' seats but several could flip to the challenging party.

It's freaky on the campaign trail in Ohio this year. Republicans who've never voted for a Democrat are going to try it for the 1st time. Independents who've never voted a straight party line are going to pull the lever for Democrats. And, Democrats are downright orgasmic in the counting chickens department - they haven't been on top in a campaign for 16 years - some have never known what that's like to have their candidate win.

So we are out campaigning for our friend, a Republican judge, handing out football schedules on the back of the judge's portrait. We're at the high school football game, in a very affluent, very red community - voters who've always been very good to our friend - it was down-right hostile tonight.

"Is she a Republican? We won't vote for a Republican."

And, that's a community where a Libertarian candidate can get just about as many votes as a Democrat.

Looks like the radioactivity coming from the White House, the Congress, the State House, etc. is now toxic all the way down to the bottom of the ticket.

Rob, thanks for claiming the 12:30 post. Sorry I missed that when I posted my comment pointing out all the anonymous gutless wonders on here.

Posted by: | September 28, 2006 08:34 AM <--COWARD
Posted by: | September 28, 2006 08:38 AM <--COWARD
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Posted by: | September 28, 2006 08:47 AM <--COWARD
Posted by: | September 28, 2006 08:51 AM <--COWARD
Posted by: | September 28, 2006 09:10 AM <--COWARD
Posted by: | September 28, 2006 09:12 AM <--COWARD
Posted by: | September 28, 2006 09:14 AM <--COWARD
Posted by: | September 28, 2006 09:45 AM <--COWARD
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Posted by: | September 28, 2006 10:03 AM <--COWARD
Posted by: | September 28, 2006 12:30 PM <--COWARD

bin Laden not getting habeas corpus?? That might actually be an issue if, say, the administration were making any effort to catch him.

And bhoomes, if you're still so confident Republicans will gain two seats in the Senate, why haven't you answered my challenge to you to put some money where your mouth is?

simple here to say that the above post is mine, apologies about the lack of name.

bhoomes says

AND THEN WITH A STRAIGHT FACE THEY WILL TELL YOU THEY ARE TOUGH ON NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUES.

meanwhile

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) "defended Bill Clinton on Wednesday over the former president's counterterrorism efforts, saying recent criticism on preventing the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks is wrong," USA Today reports.

hahahaha Bhoomes just predicted a 2 seat gain for the Republicans in the Senate, hahaha thats awesome and it really shows how far out of touch with reality he is. Almost every respectable pundit is stating that the Republicans will lose seats in both houses and that its getting worse for them. There are 2 seats that Republicans may challenge for, Washington and New Jersey, and Washington is quickly slipping away. Meanwhile, Republicans have 8 seats, (Rhode Island, Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Tennessee, Virginia, and Arizona) Republicans are gonna lose 3-6 seats in the Senate and more than 15 in the House and you can bank on it.

i really dug the video... keep up the great and informative reporting.

bhoomes you are such an ignorant, simple-minded fool. Too bad so many others are like you. Why do you hate America? Why do you want to destroy the Constitution? You would throw away everything Americans have fought and died for for so many years. Protections for us, for American citizens.You are a traitor.

I don't give a damn what happens to Osama. What i don't understand is why he isn't dead yet. Because he's useful to your president, maybe? Or is it because he's incompetent and impotent?

But I do care what happens to American citizens like me, who can now be arrested, tortured, raped and murdered by your president. He doesn't even have to give a reason. We no longer have any freedom or liberty if we have that hanging over our heads.

You make up all these childish, foolish strawmen to justify the fact that you sold out your country becuase you are a crybaby, a badwetting coward. You wanted a dictator, now you got one. Now go crawl back under your bed.

Drindl proved my point when I said yesterday if Osama had a vote he would vote for the dems. The dems want to give Osama all the rights an american citizen would have ,if ever brought to trial. They would be against waterboarding him even if it meant saving thousands of innocent lives. Of course they would be against the death penalty for him and would want him to have three meals a day, with free cable TV and a computer so he could keep in contact with all of his buddies. AND THEN WITH A STRAIGHT FACE THEY WILL TELL YOU THEY ARE TOUGH ON NATIONAL SECURITY ISSUES. DRINDL YOU ARE A FARCE AND NOT TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY.

"they have proven since 2000 they can not win without cheating.."

Actually, this pattern of election fraud really got started when Bush stole the Texas Governor's mansion from Ann Richards... still a mystery to most of those Texans who are really "in the know."

It was evident also, in 94', when Newt commandeered Congress in such a sweeping subterfuge, and the pattern really hit its stride in 2000, when the Supreme Court signed on as a player.

Few of us who were watching doubt that the same pattern reared its ugly head in 2004.

Most of this could be quite easily proven, if our own government wasn't the very culprit we seek to uncover.

ast week, ABC News reported on a series of emails suggesting Commerce Department and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration officials tried to prevent a government scientist from discussing the possibility that global warming could be making hurricanes worse. You can read that story here.

Now, a new report from the prestigious science journal Nature says that Commerce officials (which oversees NOAA) blocked the release of a report earlier this summer that would have contained a consensus statement that global warming may be contributing to hurricane intensity. The statement was the work of a panel of NOAA hurricane researchers and was set to be released at the start of the hurricane season in June, the Nature report said.

The head of NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, according to the Nature report, received an email from a Commerce Department official on May 18 that said the document was too technical and should not be released.

Why was the report blocked?

The link between global warming and hurricanes, according to the Nature report, "is a sensitive issue because of the devastation caused by hurricane Katrina and the US government's reluctance to restrict the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change."

I was beginning to gain a new respect for Warner, McCain and Graham, but they now looks more like a coalition of the willy-nilly than the Three Musketeers.

Wonder who scared those old "R" birddogs off the trail?

One can only magine the powers that were bent against them, and apparently they folded to the pressures.

Bush is now the first official American Dictator. It wasn't listed like that on the ballot, but that's now his new title.

Shouldn't be a surprise from the only American to ever be declared the "Ruler" of Babylon...

If the Dems look like they are still positioned to take the House in a couple weeks, watch out, folks, you can wager on an event of great magnitude to frighten the public back into neocon submission.

It is just a matter of days before the first ads come out that say, essentially, "A vote for the Democrat is a vote for Bin Laden."

Unfortunatley, it will take another disaster to convince the public to believe that lie.

In this greedy game of billion dollar no-bid contracts, there simply are no coincidences.

Feel safer yet?

Wine seminars in california, sea turtles in Greece, a workplace seminar in Hanoi, Vietnam, and elephant training in Florida

'Since 2000 the U.S. Government has spent nearly $1.5 billion of taxpayer money so its employees could attend conferences in Greece, Hanoi, Vietnam, Hong Kong, California, Florida and Reno, Nevada. That figure will almost certainly go up because the numbers for 2006 aren't complete yet. But what is most astounding is "the rate at which this spending has increased---some 70% in 6 years," and spending this kind of money on out-of-town conferences in a day and age when modern technology makes tele-conferencing and simple e-mail communication so fast and efficient, makes no sense.

The Department of Homeland Security had a big problem getting workable trailers to Katrina homeless in New Orleans, but it apparently had no problem sending its employees to conferences. In the short 3 years of its existence DHS has seen its spending on conferences increase by 148% from $6,195,275 in 2004 to $15,370,713 so far this year. Since 2004 the huge new bureaucracy has spent $28,630,762 on conferences according to congressional staffers. Last April DHS sent 842 FEMA employees to the National Disaster Medical Service conference in Reno, Nevada at a cost of $1.5 million. The first two days were all optional sessions giving the FEMA people plenty of time to enjoy the many pools, casinos, go-kart tracks and restaurants advertised on the conference hotel's website. Last year DHS attended 660 conferences---this year according to coburn they will attend "a whopping 2,217 conferences."

From June 2003 until June 2004, Paul D. Eaton was the commanding general of the coalition military assistance training team charged with rebuilding the Iraqi army. This past January he retired with the rank of major general and soon afterwards announced his strong support for getting rid of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

This afternoon he testified before a panel of Senate Democrats on the conduct of the war in Iraq. In his statement Eaton says he will not debate the wisdom of going to war in Iraq. "The nation went to war and the war is ongoing, prosecuted by the nation's best and brightest in all ranks, my two sons among them. We very much need to succeed."

What he will say is that Rumsfeld has tried and continues to fight this war on the cheap and adds the president is not well served by his secretary of defense, "a man history will not handle kindly."

"The most important function of government is to assure the security of the governed. "Iraqis believe the same and observed to me that it is better to live 40 years under a dictatorship with order than 40 days of chaos. the united states has failed to secure the peace having artfully changed the iraqi regime. We went in with a bad plan."

He accuses Rumsfeld of giving very low priority to the establishment of a new Iraqi army saying the Secretary's plan "consisted of a 24 page powerpoint briefing" developed by General Franks. "As the Coalition Provisional Authority became increasingly challenged, my operation became increasingly isolated from U.S. troops. Our allies stepped into the breach. I am very grateful to Great Britian, Australia, Spain, Jordan, Poland, Italy and Romania for their very talented soldiers and their country's assistance."

"Two weeks into training it became obvious we had a flawed plan---we needed soldiers to train the Iraqi army, not contracted civilians regardless of their competence and stellar prior military backgrounds. We set out to change Secretary Rumsfeld's plan"

A friend of mine in Baghdad told me about Parsons long before this article came out. Why Parsons wasn't terminiated for default instead of for the convinence for the Government is beyond me. My friend says that there are so many contractors over there who have no purpose other than to make money - war profiteering - on the lives of our soldiers and the pockets of the American taxpayer. Yeah, the GOP, what a proud party!

Regardless of how the elections turn out, in terms of controlling the House or Senate, those of us who have been watching carefully will always have one unfortuante "consolation" whether we win or lose.

We will always know the Republicans had to pull out all the stops, and that it was literally blood money that paid thier way.

So no matter how it ends up, we know it hasn't been a fair fight. Yet still, the "little guys", the underdogs without bullies behind them, are putting up a scrap that might just take one or both houses away from the blood-for-oil Republicans.

So whether it actually happens or not, at least we got a glimpse into the real dark side of Republican politics.

Like I have blogged before, beware the cornered beast.

I, for one, will never again believe the Republicans are capable of a fair and clean election, they have proven since 2000 they can not win without cheating.

So there will always be doubts as to the legitimacy of any election, until some sort of oversight can be installed, which will simply not happen as long as the R's are in control of the election process.

That is exactly why they are willing to drain their corporate-donation coffers to keep their lie alive.

They desperately fear a Democratic Party majority in either house, with subpoena power.

Oversight makes book-cookers very nervous.

"Wow, Imagine that,Osama and his friends not being afforded Habeas Corpus..."

well, so much for the rule of law, lets get back to the law of the jungle. Lets get down to "their" level, and wallow around in the muck.

These neocon wannabe's just don't get it. Laws can only be called "laws" when they apply to everyone, and do not exclude special groups or individuals.

If we intend to live by "the rule of law" those laws must be comprehensive and totally inclusive, or we make ourselves hypocrites.

Which is why so many Republicans seem to have no problem with "floating" laws, that only apply when they fit their agenda.

The made their peace with hypocrisy long ago.

Riddle me this? Why should anyone be denied habeas corpus, unless we are afraid of what they might reveal publicly?

Seriously, lets hear some expert advice, just how does habeas corpus threaten our prosecution of them, if they are truly guilty?

It would appear someone has something to hide, and it is not the alleged terrorists.

The NYT and the Post both stuff sobering reports on U.S. military officials' assessment of the worsening situation in Iraq. Commanders are questioning whether Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has the will or the ability to end corruption and rein in militias. The concerns come as the country sinks ever-deeper into chaos. The NYT reports that "the past week saw the highest number of suicide bomb attacks of any week since the American-led invasion in 2003." Yet violence is so out of hand that the bombings failed to displace murders and executions as the number one cause of civilian deaths in Baghdad. (And in still more bad news from Iraq, the Post fronts a report on the Baghdad Police College, which cannot train recruits because "feces and urine rained from the ceilings" of barracks that were built by U.S. contractor Parsons Corp.)

This bill has given a madman diictatorial powers -- the power to rape, to torture, to murder, which he can use on ANYONE he chooses, including you.

Actually, habeas corpus can now be denied to anyone, you simple-minded fascist tool.

This local report gives you a bit more, umm, color, in the Jeanine Pirro case. Jeannine, for those who don't know, was for many years the DA here in Westchester County. She and her husband Al, who is a developer with ties to certain New Jersey families, have been amusing us for quite some time with their antics. What's fascinating about this one is that Bernie Kerik and Rudi Guiliani are involved. Just one big happy crime family:

'According to documents now in the hands of several defense attorneys, Pirro and Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik were apparently talking about planting a hidden device onboard her husband's boat. Her possible
motive may have been to see if he was having an affair.

Sources tell us in one conversation, Jeanine Pirro allegedly complains that one of Kerik's employees is reluctant to board Albert Pirro's boat.

Jeanine Pirro suggests, "We can just simply say, if there is an issue, thatI am re-decorating it for our anniversary." She complains that Kerik's manis, "uncomfortable with that."

Kerik responds by saying, "But Janine, I'm having the same f------g problem with everybody. everybody is panic stricken because it's you. I've gone outon a limb. I had two other people looking at this. it's a problem."

Pirro says, "What am I supposed to do, Bernie? Watch him f--k her everynight? What am I supposed to do?. I can go on the boat, I'll put the f-----g thing on myself."

Minutes later, Kerik apparently calls a contact at Giuliani Partners, former mayor Rudy Giuliani's consulting firm, asking him to find a recording
device.

Sources tell the FBI and Justice Department have been asked to look into whether Pirro and Kerik also might have violated federal laws.

In the wire-tapped conversations, Jeanine Pirro appears to discuss how her
husband's alleged indiscretions hurt her politically.

Without her husband, sources say she tells Kerik, "I move into thegovernor's mansion." That's an apparent reference to her aspirations for higher office.'

Wow, Imagine that,Osama and his friends not being afforded Habeas Corpus. And the dems wonder why they are in a minority.

Howie Kurtz sees the light:

'I'm starting to see a pattern here.

Some news organization gets a leak of classified information and President Bush expresses moral outrage, slams the news outlet and says the story has damaged national security.

Then, when it's in his political interest, he declassifies the information and tries to seize control of the debate.'

From the Intelligence Estimate:

' The vast majority of Muslims are likely to reject the extreme political solutions proposed by al-Qaeda and its allies, and they will be more likely to do so if "democratic reform efforts in Muslim-majority nations progress" and entrenched problems of "corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination" are alleviated.'

So Fred Hiatt responds:

'The U.S. mission in Iraq since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein has been largely aimed at those goals, in one of the Muslim world's most important countries.'

Actually no, Fred. The US mission has been aimed at taking over the oil ministry and controlling the government. I don't really think that's 'alleviated' the fear of Western domination.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Tuesday accused unnamed people of leaking part of a classified intelligence report on Iraq as an act of political sabotage, intended to "create confusion in the minds of the American people" in advance of the November elections.

'Sabotage' heh? Really starting to sound like Stalin here. How long before anyone who disagrees with The Party is shot?

'The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.'

Time to celebrate, people. Your government has just argued for, and won the right to rape women legally. NOW ARE ALL YOU CHRISTIANS HAPPY?

Who would have Jesus raped? We have lost everything. We have become savages. Bin Ladin has won. He must be laughing his ass off.

if we somehow manage, through the grace of God, to survive as a democracy after this profoundly immoral regime ends, this time will be remembered with infamy -- and all the cowards and stalinists and bedwetters who enabled them will be remembered as the 'good germans' they are.

This is how low republicans will sink to win an election--gut the Constitution. This is how utterly, nakedly despicable they are. It makes me physically ill:
'Here's what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans' fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws -- while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists -- because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That's pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush's shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

These are some of the bill's biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of "illegal enemy combatant" in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret -- there's no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable -- already a contradiction in terms -- and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

•There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don't blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they'll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won't remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They'll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation's version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.'

Bhoomes could be right. The Republicans have enough money. If they scapegoat immigrants then their base might turn out after all.

Notice, Charlie Cook's prediction begins with the word "today."

Republicans will pick up two seats in the Senate and lose only between 5-7 seats in Congress. On November 8, please return to this blog to pay tribute to my foresight.

VA-SEN: Allen 49, Webb 44 (Survey USA) http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReportPopup.aspx?g=226fefc1-6037-49a7-933f-dd0e77164443&q=29152

"Today, I estimate it would be a Democratic pickup of 14 to 16 seats, or maybe 15 to 17. In the Senate, my hunch is a net gain for Democrats of three to five seats." -Charlie Cook, 9/26/06

CO-7: Permutter winning by 17 points (Survey USA) http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReportPopup.aspx?g=a5142241-447f-46f2-8546-8648e024d9d9&q=30757

I continue to be really disappointed that you guys aren't visiting or reporting on OH-15.

OH-6 runs along the Eastern and Southeast edges of Ohio, not Southern. See any district at http://www.nationalatlas.gov.

the problem Republicans have targeting Democratic seats is that for every seat they target, they have less money to spend on defending their own seats. Thats why you will see candidates like Graf in Arizona, a candidate that the Repubs would normally do a ton of work for to get across the line, not get any money, cause it would take massive amounts of funding to put Graf over the top. So they won't even make a great effort to try and save seats they see as undefendable, never mind try to take over seats that seem unwinnable. Wilson has been in a solid position since he won the primary. I'm not surprised to see Republicans pulling away from that race. I'd expect to see them pull out of a few more takeover opportunities before all is said and done, but they will hold off till the last minute to withdraw from those races, the more races the GOP pulls money from, the less Democrats will have to spend to win seats (Giffords in AZ) or defend them (Wilson in OH)and the more thay can spend to try and put more seats in play and take over the House and Senate

Zacharas: WV is home for me. This could be a pickup for the repubs. though 2 of the 3 seem pretty safe, dont be suprised if Shelly Moore Caputo goes down. Just heard today, rumor, I wont repeat, if given an tv spot could be bad news. This year nothing seemd to be a suprise.

And the GOP continues to self-destruct. Perhaps we should just open criminal investigations on all GOP candidates? It would probably be a relatively efficient means of fighting white collar crime.

"Jeanine F. Pirro, the Republican candidate for New York attorney general, said this afternoon that last year she asked an old friend, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik, to bug her family boat to determine if her husband was having an affair at a time when she was preparing to run for top political office.

Seething with anger and choking up at times, Ms. Pirro told reporters at a news conference that two F.B.I. agents recently informed her that the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District was investigating her over the surveillance plan against her husband, Albert J. Pirro Jr.

Ms. Pirro insisted several times that she had broken no laws, saying it would have been legal to secretly record Mr. Pirro on personal property. She denounced the federal inquiry as a "political witch hunt and smear campaign" brought by the same lawyer in the United States attorney's office who helped convict Mr. Pirro of tax evasion charges in 2000."

"with Ney leaving the race in an adjoining district, a lot of the local resources are going to keep that seat."

At the end of this election cycle, the "ripple effect" of the Abramoff-Delay-Cunningham-Burns-Ney culture of corruption might grow into a political tsunami.

It's a long list of offenders, kind of like old John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith, but the interconnectivity, the very interchangeability of the names on the list is its own scorching indictment; one more proof of the many-tentacled K-Street Octopus that has co-opted Congress since Gingrich, the White House since Bush, and the Supreme Court since Alito.

They have "the power", but not the public it is vested in, not any more. They had "the public" after 9-11, but as they are wont to say, while this is a post-9/11 world, it is also a post "Mission Accomplished" world, and folks just don't believe it any more.

Too many IED's on that long road.

"Some of the people all of the time" means, at best, only about 25% of the voting public, not that 46% mandate the Bush Gang so brazenly claims to hold onto.

These election resources (read; MONEY) that are being redistributed to fill some of these cracks in their political levee is taking vital funds from other major leaks.

If it goes even a little badly for them in November, look for a major structural crevice (Immigration reform?) that would split the GOP worse than Ross Perrot.

Synopsis:
Ohio 6 is located in Southern Ohio. Republicans, with their candidate state rep Chuck Blazedale (sp?), had been looking at this conservative leaning, rural district as a top takeover opportunity. However, the voters have been able to identify well with Democratic candidate Charlie Wilson, who is an old-style traditional values Democrat.

Chris and Jim have seen a couple of unforeseen problems have come up for Blazedale. One is that so much Republican resources nationwide are tied up in defending existing seats that other races are getting short shrift financially. Related to this is that, with Ney leaving the race in an adjoining district, a lot of the local resources are going to keep that seat. The other problem for is the problem afflicting all Ohio Republicans; that there is a perception that the entire party is corrupt.

Next up: West Virginia-1

Could you at least post a synoposis of subject matter for those of us who don' want to be bothered watching a video [sorry chet]-- it's time consuming and technically difficult for various reasons for some people. You notice the videos don't generate much discussion -- there's a reason for that.