To the moon Ziegler!

Ok, so admit it. You are not really getting anything done today at your office. So why not take part in the Photoshop contest featuring Supreme Court Justice Candidate Annette Ziegler. She's already been to the moon and to Baghdad. Where will she go next?

Ziegler flubs response to questions about webpage

Tony Galli at WKOW-TV recently asked Supreme Court Justice Candidate Annette Ziegler about the doctored photos on her website and gave one of the worst candidate responses I've seen in a long time. When asked whether or not the doctored photos were meant to mislead voters, she referred them to a consultant.

The single word "no" probably would have been a better answer.

Ziegler's consultant tries to pass the whole thing off as a mistake.

"Problem here is they clearly deliberately changed the names of the counties...you don't do that by accident, that was planned", UW Political Science Professor Charles Franklin told 27 News Thursday.

You can find the rest of the story here.

New year, new job

Next week will be my last week of blogging for a while. I've decided to take a job in the Capitol and I will not be posting to my blog while I'm working there.

I've had a lot of fun doing this so I suspect I will be back at some point.

My family celebrates Christmas so I won't be posting until I'm done putting on the mandatory five Christmas pounds and finished all the extra shopping President Bush says I have to do for the sake of our country. I don't want to risk getting put on a list that won't let me fly in an airplane.

But I will put some posts up next week to wrap up my blogging if anyone is around and cares to read them.

So enjoy the 40 degree weather this weekend! And if you need to see a white Christmas, there is a guy who lives in Madison using a machine to keep snow on his lawn for the holidays. Global warming doesn't scare him. He tackled it the American way - he bought something. What a patriot!

Where in the world is Annette Ziegler really?

Here's some free campaign advice for State Supreme Court Candidate Annette Ziegler - just give up the map on your website. It is going to be an endless source of entertainment for people like me because you don't seem to know much about our state.

Today on "Where In The World Is Annette Ziegler Really?" we head to Portage County. If you go to her website and roll the mouse over Portage County you see a picture of her standing in front of the Portage Cafe. Problem is, the city of Portage is not in Portage County. It's in Columnbia County and so is the Portage Cafe.

Religious freedom? Never heard of it.

"[I]f American citizens don’t wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran," the letter reads.

Who is Virgil Goode? Unfortunately, this idiot is a U.S. Congressman elected by the state of Virginia. The quote is from a letter he sent to a constituent.

Before Goode takes the oath of office, he may want to review the U.S. Constitution he is going to be swearing to uphold. It says a little something about religious freedom. And it doesn't say people are free to practice only Goode's religion.

You can find the rest here at TPM Muckraker.

-By Tom Toles of the Washington Post

Lasee's fresh idea

A while back State Senator Alan Lasee (R-De Pere) announced he is running for Brown County Executive. He had two statements that caught my eye.

One was this:

Lasee says he was tired of making the commute to Madison...

You know, I think the voters of the 1st Senate District might have been interested in that statement about two months ago. But perhaps he only became sick of the drive once he learned he was going to have to move to smaller office because his party lost control of the senate.

The other statement was this one:

Lasee believes he brings a fresh, outside prospective and that may be why people will vote for him.

Let's be honest here Mr. Lasee. There is nothing fresh about a politician that has held office since the year I was born. (I turned thirty-five this year in case you don't want to look up his political history.)

But elections are about selling yourself so perhaps Senator Lasee can convince voters that he is a fresh face on the political scene. Justin Timberlake recently convinced Jessica McBride that he is a true artist instead of just being a pop star, so I guess people can sell anything.

2008 U.S. Senate races, something for everyone

Feeling down because your party lost just about everything in the last election? Feeling optimistic that your party can continue build momentum and take even more seats in Congress? Then start sizing up the 2008 U.S. Senate races here from The Fix at the Washington Post.

The author, Chris Cillizza, even delves into how the presidential ticket might change the outcome of certain races...

And for those of you who insist Mississippi won't be competitive in 2008 no matter the circumstances, ponder this scenario: Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) is on the national Democratic ticket as either president or vice president, the first black politician to be so distinguished. Is it implausible that Democrats could expect historically high turnout from the 36 percent of African-American voters in the state?

Ah, the fun never stops does it?

Stupid Supreme Court campaign tricks

Campaigns are a lot of work. Especially statewide campaigns. You have to go all over the state, meet lots of people and take pictures to use on your campaign website and literature.

Unless you are Annette Ziegler, a woman running for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court against Linda Clifford. Annette Ziegler doesn't appear to have the time to actually go to courthouses in Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Waukesha and Washington Counties for photos. Why do that when you can just Photoshop the different county names into one picture and use it over and over again from slightly different angles?

Go here to Ziegler's event's section and scroll over those four counties and watch the picture change slightly each time. Isn't it amazing that all four counties have their courthouse located at 432 E. Washington Street? What are the odds of that?

If you can't even trust this woman to tell the truth about what courthouse she is standing in front of, you shouldn't trust a whole lot that comes out of her mouth on the campaign trail. And is she going to cut and paste different names on court decisions and hand those in as her finished product if she gets to the bench?

If this is the kind of effort Ziegler is going to put into her campaign, donors should be wary of writing her checks. It seems unlikely the donations will be spent well.

UPDATE: The Ziegler campaign seems to have taken down the doctored photos. If you missed the fun, you can check them out here at Folkbum's blog. Thanks to Jay for saving them for us!

Donate to a working family in need

Thousands of Goodyear employees do not a paycheck coming for the holiday season. Please donate to the worker fund to support those that fight to make sure jobs in this country can support families. Every dime goes to the families. Go here for the details.

Fox news is planning Senator Johnson's funeral

More or less. They are already trying to figure out how fast they can get the Republican governor of South Dakota to appoint a Republican to fill his seat. They really have no shame. You can find the clip here at ThinkProgress.

Prez polling in Iowa

TPM Cafe has the results of a poll on Dem prez candidates. As is often the case, the voters that know a candidate the best are holding back support. Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack did not come out ahead in the poll. Which candidate did? I think you'll be surprised. You can find the post here.

Add one more seat to the total

From The Washington Post's The Fix column:

House Democrats increased their 2006 election gains to 30 seats Tuesday, with former Rep. Ciro Rodriguez's (D) surprisingly convincing victory over Rep. Henry Bonilla (R) in a runoff election in Texas's massive 23rd District.

And it looks like all the immigrant bashing may have fed into the loss for the Republicans.

Rodriguez's win comes just five weeks after Bonilla received 49 percent of the vote in a special primary on Nov. 7. Rodriguez won just 20 percent that day, while a handful of other Democrats split up the remaining votes.

The apparent key to Rodriguez's come-from-behind victory was a heavy focus by national Democrats on identifying and turning out Latino voters -- especially in Bexar County

Of course it helped that the Republicans took a page out of Rep. Rob Kreibich's playbook and got a little cocky.

In contrast to the heavy spending by the DCCC, the National Republican Congressional Committee chose not to spend a dime on this race -- under the belief that Bonilla's massive financial edge (he outspent Rodriguez at a better than four-to-one clip) would be more than enough to hold the seat.

You can find the whole column here.

Midwest expressing no interest so far in takeover

Let's hope this doesn't happen. Midwest is the only decent airline out there. And, as mentioned in the article, our air service would probably decline if we didn't have an airline hub here.

Just smile more often

"I think we have to be happy conservatives."
-U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS)

Yes, I'm sure the American people will like your cuts to student loans while you are giving massive tax cuts to the wealthy if you all just smiled more often and have more happy thoughts in your head.

Keep dreaming.

You can find the quote above in an AP story in the Washington Post.

Support striking workers

If you live in Milwaukee or Madison and have a few hours to spare on Saturday, please consider taking the time to support the Goodyear workers.

The Details:

Milwaukee members and supporters will meet at the following location :

On Saturday, December 16, from Noon-2 pm , USW members and their supporters will gather at the USW Milwaukee office, 1126 S. 70th Street, West Allis, WI . (Meet behind the building, to the east, in the parking lot. From there, we will travel to two Goodyear stores in the Milwaukee area:

3514 S 27TH
MILWAUKEE, WI 53221

10757 W NATIONAL AVE
WEST ALLIS, WI 53227



Madison members and supporters will meet at the following location :

On Saturday, December 16, from Noon-2 pm , Steelworkers Local 904 will be leafletting the Goodyear Auto Service Center, 3773 E Washington Ave., to educate consumers about the strike and the dangers of scab-produced tires. Meet at Noon in the old K-Mart parking lot just east of the Goodyear Service Center .

New poll low for Iraq

Accoring to a new Gallup poll, Americans don't believe any of the spin that we are winning in Iraq. They aren't buying the ridiculous spin that the situation is not a civil war either. Unfortunately, they also don't think anyone is capable of solving the crisis. You can find the story here and the poll results here.

Hat tip: American Progress Action Fund

Maybe Nass didn't get the memo

Rep. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) must have had his head in the ground on November 7th this year. He doesn't seem to realize that his world has changed a little bit. From WISCTV:

State Rep. Stephen Nass, of Whitewater, sent the regents a letter asking for the delay. He threatened to propose a constitutional amendment banning race-based admissions, as was approved in November in Michigan, if his concerns aren't addressed.

Times have changed Mr. Nass. You and your colleagues cannot go running to the constitution like a spoiled child every time something isn't going you way. Not only does another party control both the state senate and the governor's office, it's fair to assume that your own caucus in the assembly is going to be a little gun shy on the whole constitutional amendment thing.

When the Assembly Republican Caucus gets to Madison on January 3rd and takes a good look around, they will see a lot of their friends missing. Missing after the Republican leaders promised they had the ticket to keeping their majorities and getting the governor's mansion. All the Republicans had to do was play with the emotions of voters by using controversial issues for constitutional amendment votes and they could have all their little hearts desired.

Didn't quite work out that way. And for good reason.

Voters may have voted for things like the death penalty referendum, but it was done in a vacuum of options. If you gave voters here the choice between life in prison without parole and the death penalty, they would choose the life in prison option. Why? The Christian values the Republicans like to play on of course. There is no asterisk on that commandment. It just says you shouldn't kill people. So the voters made their own option and voted for the referendum and to oust the people that gave them such poor choices.

So this session Mr. Nass and his colleagues might actually have to have some real policy debates and take responsibility for their policy choices instead of forcing the voters to do the work. And we can finally put the constitution in a safe play before the children do any more damage.

-By Rob Rogers of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Farewell to the 109th Congress

TPM Muckraker has a farewell to the outgoing Congress that is not only humorous, it's a great summary of the many, many sordid tales of the 109th Congress.

The "fiscally responsible" ones leave town

"It's a spectacular disorder of chaos. We will have to run a cleanup brigade."

-Rep. Dave Obey (D-WI) on the Republicans leaving town without passing nine out of eleven appropriations bills.

At least some of the Republicans are feeling some shame about this juvenile move by the current leaders in Congress. Not enough of them to actually do their work of course. These jokers should never, ever be allowed near the purse strings again.

You can find the rest of the story here.

Of course Congress does have time for one more favor for Big Oil.

Hat tip: Think Progress

Hillary 08?

Can Hillary win in 2008?

Dick Morris says yes. The rest of Morris' article is crap, but there is one interesting paragraph. From his article in The Hill:

She definitely can win...and probably will. She is uniquely able to expand the electorate to bring in millions of women, mostly single, who will vote overwhelmingly for a female Democrat. The feminization of poverty, long decried by the left, will finally lead unmarried women to show up at the polling place and vote their short-term economic interest and vindicate their gender bias. In 2000, only 19 million single women voted. By 2004, their turnout rose to 27 million. With Hillary in the race, the single-female vote will probably go up to its proper ratio of the adult population — 33 million votes.

I've always thought that the first woman president would be a Republican because women are perceived to be more liberal then men, so a Democratic woman running for president might be viewed as just too liberal. Maybe I'm wrong about that.

If Hillary does run, does it force the Republicans to at least put a female in the VP slot? I think so. Could be a really interesting field of candidates next time.

Conservatives fail in bid to make up science facts

The U.S. House of Representatives defeated the so-called Unborn Child Pain Awareness act. The bill tried to force doctors to tell women unproved facts about fetal pain. Some in the medical community think it could have been dangerous to women too because it would have doctors encouraging women to take larger doses of anesthetics. The vote was 250-162 and failed because it was being considered under suspension of the rules. Any bill considered under suspension of the rules needs a two-thirds majority to pass.

Assembly health care, take two

In my post yesterday about health care and the Assembly Republicans, I mixed up two health care bills. Rep. Huebsch is upset the Farm Bureau is going to consider supporting the Wisconsin Health Plan introduce by Rep. Gielow and Rep. Richards(AB1140), not the WI Health Care Partnership Plan (SB698) introduced by Senator Decker and Rep. Terry Musser.

The message is the same though. Bipartisan groups of legislators, outside groups, and Wisconsin families all want to see radical reform on health care and the Assembly Republicans should get in the game instead of trying to stop debate on the issue.

Former Senator and DHFS Secretary Joe Leean has a response (below) for Rep. Huebsch too that explains how Huebsch is misleading everyone on the LFB report he mentioned in his letter to the Farm Bureau. And Seth also has a good examination of the LFB report and agrees with Leean that Huebsch is wrong.

December 6, 2006

Assembly Speaker Elect
Representative Mike Huebsch
Rep.Huebsch@legis.wisconsin.gov

Dear Speaker Elect Huebsch,

I was very surprised and extremely disappointed to see your letter to the Farm Bureau Membership attempting to forestall their support for the Wisconsin Health Plan.

Your statements are at best misleading and at worst inaccurate. Furthermore, it seems very strange you would try and derail a bi-partisan effort which has spent two years developing a proposal which would address an issue so important to our citizens.

The Wisconsin Health Plan is very comprehensive and still a work in progress. But without public support from groups like the Farm Bureau and others, effective health care reform will never be accomplished by anyone - including the legislature.

You call the Wisconsin Health Plan the largest tax increase in Wisconsin history on small businesses without telling people that it replaces the premiums they are paying for basic health insurance - or would like to pay for health insurance if they could buy a group policy like state employees and other large groups enjoy.

During the recent campaign cycle, opponents of comprehensive health insurance reform made the same misleading statements as they targeted ads against some legislative candidates accusing them of supporting a health care plan which would amount to a $12 billion new tax in Wisconsin. Their ads also were not honest as they did not inform the public that this assessment/tax would replace existing spending on health care insurance and health care spending. As you no doubt know, every candidate they targeted with these ads won their seat regardless of the misleading ads.

You also misinterpret the Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) memo by suggesting the LFB determined the plan to be $8.7 billion short the first year. I've carefully read the Fiscal Bureau paper. It does not say anything close to what you claim. The Fiscal Bureau was simply pointing out that there is clearly a great deal more spending on health care in Wisconsin than what is currently covered by health insurance or would be covered by a basic health care insurance program.

As the LFB memo suggested and as we all know, another actuarial analysis of total health care spending and the relative accuracy of the Wisconsin Health Care Plan's numbers is needed. The bi-partisan group working on this plan is in the process of contracting for that analysis.

I would hope you would embrace the effort of legislators and representatives of the public as they continue to fine tune a plan to provide health care coverage for all Wisconsin citizens. This plan also has the potential to save the state hundreds of millions of dollars, significantly reduce the property tax spending on local government health care costs, be managed by the private sector and provide individual choice of health care provider.

If the numbers don't work after final analysis, the plan will fail on its own. But let us be honest about the "Billions of Dollars of New Tax" – that it is in fact replacing dollars currently being spent on health care while giving everyone health care insurance they can afford.


Sincerely,
Joe Leean
Former State Senator and Secretary DHFS

What's in a word?

Chris Cillizza over that The Fix blog for the Washington Post thinks the Democrats have an image problem because more people self-identify as "conservative" rather than "liberal."

Asked to name which words fits their political thinking best, "conservative" ruled the roost with 54 percent saying it applied to them. Contrast that with the 34 percent who said "liberal" was an apt description of their political philosophy and you quickly see the image problem Democrats have struggled with in recent elections.

I would disagree. Republicans would seem to have the image problem if over half of the country says they are politically more in line with your party, but still vote for the other side.

Of course Cillizza is talking more about the long run for Democrats. And he's correct, the word "liberal" has been mutilated by the right. Will Democrats being in power take the word back or take a page from President Bush's team and just get a new word?

The chairmen selected to run the U.S. House are some of the more liberal Members of Congress. If they run the place well, they can take back the word pretty quickly.

You can find the rest of his post here. It has a link to exit polls he is using in the post.

Four-year-old kindergarten could be on the agenda next session

Rep. Debi Towns (R-Janesville) has a parting gift for her party they probably won't like. She is finishing up her report on four-year-old kindergarten before she leaves office next month. And here's the thing that will rub her party the wrong way - she likes it. Debi Towns has spent months researching this topic and came away convinced that it is good for the children of Wisconsin.

So will the report see the light of day in her caucus? Chances are Towns' leaders created a task force on this issue to find a reason to end the program. In the past the Assembly Republicans have proposed eliminating four-year-old kindergarten. That idea went over like a lead balloon.

It's not hard to understand why either. Communities that have four-year-old education don't want to give it up. Educators like the results that it brings. Parents have seen how much good it does for their children.

In fact, if the rest of Towns' caucus would take a serious look at the program the way Towns did, they'd come away believers too. There have been many studies that show the benefits of early education. The child benefits and the taxpayers benefit too. It really is a win-win situation.

A report done to show how our state would benefit from expanding our four-year-old kindergarten program found individual benefits include:

enhanced academic attainment;
improved health;
higher probability of graduating from high school
and/or going to college;
higher wages; and
lower probability of involvement in criminal activities

and societal benefits include:

higher tax payments by participants;
lower reliance on welfare; and
lower rates of criminal activity.

All of those translate into lower taxes for our state down the road.

Let's hope that the Towns report will spark a commitment from her Republican colleagues to expand this program.

U.S. House Dems pick some chairmen

The U.S. House Dems have started divvying up the spoils of victory by naming some of the chairmen for committees. As expected, Wisconsin's Dave Obey pulled in the big one.

Although the results of yesterday’s meeting were expected — Rep. Dave Obey (D-Wis.) will chair Appropriations, Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) Ways and Means, Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) Energy and Commerce and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) Financial Services — the gathering raised an obvious question among House Democrats: whether committee chairmen would cooperate with Democratic leaders or whether some would chart their own course on certain issues.

The Hill has the rest of the story here.

Assembly Republicans fail first test on health care

The new leadership team in the Wisconsin Assembly has failed on health care before they even have one day of session.

Earlier this week, Speaker-elect Mike Huebsch (R-West Salem) sent a letter to the Farm Bureau asking them not to vote to support the Wisconsin Health Plan. What arrogance it takes to send a letter to a group of people that are really struggling to be able to afford health care and ask them to continue to sit and wait for the state Republicans to do something about it. Especially when the person writing the letter receives top-notch health care from the state taxpayers.

Huebsch could have written a much shorter letter that would have conveyed the same message. He should have just said "Please continue to support us even though we continue to completely ignore the issues you are facing." Or how about "Please don't make us look bad or actually have a discussion on health care. We just want to tinker around the edges and make it look like we want to solve the problem."

Can anyone blame the Farm Bureau for finally looking elsewhere for leadership on the health care issue? Here is what Wisconsin farmers are facing:

The Farm Bureau conducted a survey of farmers this spring and found that one-third of Wisconsin farmers were either uninsured or only had catastrophic health insurance coverage. The Farm Bureau said those farmers who purchased their own increase paid 93% more in premiums and out-of-pocket costs, compared to those who get insurance from off-farm employment. The average out-of-pocket cost for farmers purchasing their own health insurance is $8,826, compared to $4,245 for those obtaining insurance from off-farm sources.

The response from the Republicans? During the last campaign, Assembly Republicans offered up increased pricing transparency and health care savings accounts. So they are basically offering a program for farmers to see more clearly the health care they can't afford and a tax cut they can't afford to take advantage of as a "solution."

Note to Wisconsin Republicans: This is a big part of why you lost the senate and nearly lost the assembly. You laughed at the very basic commercial on health care done by farmer Kathleen Vinehout in her campaign to unseat Senator Ron Brown, but the commercial and her campaign speeches all talked about an issue that many Wisconsin residents are really struggling with every day. And that's why she won.

The Wisconsin Health Care Partnership Plan is a bold plan that seeks to get everyone in the state health care coverage and make it more cost effective by simplifying our health care system. It would be comprehensive coverage with co-pays and everyone would be allowed to buy into the plan.

People like Huebsch who are ideologically opposed to the government solving the health care crisis, while they use their own government paid-for health care, like to say this plan will be the biggest tax ever on Wisconsin businesses. There are two problems with that argument. One, is that businesses aren't stupid. This is money they are already shelling out and the total grows in giant leaps every single year. Two, the Wisconsin AFL-CIO had a study done on the program and found that it would have saved money for Wisconsin employers.

As the rising cost of health care continue to eat at business profits, more of them will be looking for a bold solution like the Wisconsin Health Plan. Wisconsin businesses cannot compete with businesses based in other countries without a radical reform of our health care system. The Wisconsin AFL-CIO, the Wisconsin Health Plan bill's bipartisan bill authors Senator Decker and Representative Terry Musser, and now the Farm Bureau know this and are looking to make big changes.

Wisconsin Assembly Republicans can either help develop major reform or lose their majority to a group of people that will.

UPDATE: I have mixed up which comprehensive health care proposal Huebsch was referring too. The message doesn't change, but the proposal are different. Huebsch is referring to the Wisconsin Health Plan or the Gielow/Richards plan (AB1140), not the Wisconsin Health Care Partnership Plan introduced by Decker and Musser. Both have bipartisan backing and numerous groups behind them. The Assembly Republicans should get in the game instead of trying to stop reform from happening.

Bush/Webb "spat" has another layer

Even though conservatives are trying to make Senator-elect Jim Webb look bad after his recent verbal joust with President Bush, as usual, there is more to the story. Turns out, President Bush was warned to steer clear of the topic because Webb's son had just had a close call in Iraq and probably wasn't up to chit chat about it. In fact, Webb tried to be the gentleman in the situation and avoided the receiving line so he didn't have to talk to President Bush about Iraq at all.

But President Bush sought him out and brought up the subject anyway. And he got what he deserved. Eleanor Clift sums it up nicely:

It’s justice long overdue for a president who has so abused the symbols of war to get his comeuppance from a battlefield hero who personifies real toughness as opposed to fake toughness. Bush struts around with this bullying frat-boy attitude, and he gets away with it because nobody stands up to him. Bush could have left Webb’s initial response stand, but no, he had to jab back—“That’s not what I asked you.” Webb is not one to be bullied. He knows what real toughness is, and it’s not lording it over people who are weaker than you, and if you’re president, everybody by definition is weaker.

You can find the rest of Clift's article here.

WI 8th CD will see push for "100 Hours" agenda

An article in The Hill newspaper is outlining a plan by a coalition of liberal leaning groups to build support for the "100 Hours" agenda of Speaker-elect Pelosi and House Democrats. The Green Bay area 8th CD is on the list of 86 Congressional Districts that will be targeted.

The plan looks to build support quickly for numerous items:

The groups will focus their efforts on 54 Republican and 32 Democratic districts, most represented by moderates, hoping to build support for four parts of the Democrats’ “100 Hours” agenda: raising the minimum wage, allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, cutting student-loan interest rates and repealing tax breaks for oil companies.

You can find the story here.

Senator Mark Miller vindicated

Yesterday a staffer for Senator Dan Kapanke (R-a district the dems will soon pick up) issued a letter saying that he is the one that made the copies of a campaign plan for the senate democrats. Of course, his story doesn't really match up with the one told by Republicans earlier this year. It's hard to keep your story straight when you are lying.

Senator Mark Miller (D-Monona) was telling the truth all along. Anyone that knows Miller knew he was telling the truth. Miller is a straight shooter.

The letter from the staffer takes a page out of the federal Republican play book of this year. When you are caught doing something bad, claim you have a medical or drinking problem. Now, I'm sure the staffer does have a medical problem. It's just not relevant to the story. That part was put in there for sympathy purposes. I doubt it will generate much though.

The whole letter is worth a read. The staffer tries really hard to make himself sound like he was doing some sort of good deed. I don't know this guy, but I'm willing to bet he knew exactly what he was doing. He was trying to score some points with the Majority Leader and help his team win the elections in the fall.

If he was truly concerned with illegal activity, other than his own, he would have turned the document over to the Chief Clerk's office or the Ethics Board. Instead, he chose to give it to the senator he knew to be in charge of getting Republican Senators elected in the fall.

Seth over at In Effect has some good questions on this too. The Republicans really fed the right half of the Cheddarsphere a lot of bull on this one. They used their bloggers to create a lie. What will this mean for the right down the road? Will the rightie bloggers be less willing to help in the future?

A war of words with grave consequences

Frank Rich of the New York Times has a very well-done piece posted at Truth Out on just how dangerous President Bush has become on Iraq. Rich correctly notes that President Bush will never be able to solve the problems or even change the strategy in Iraq since he seems totally unaware of what the problems really are...

The most startling example was his insistence that Al Qaeda is primarily responsible for the country's spiraling violence. Only a week before Mr. Bush said this, the American military spokesman on the scene, Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, called Al Qaeda "extremely disorganized" in Iraq, adding that "I would question at this point how effective they are at all at the state level." Military intelligence estimates that Al Qaeda makes up only 2 percent to 3 percent of the enemy forces in Iraq, according to Jim Miklaszewski of NBC News. The bottom line: America has a commander in chief who can't even identify some 97 percent to 98 percent of the combatants in a war that has gone on longer than our involvement in World War II.

The Bush Administration has done tortuous twists of words to avoid saying anything that would suggest we are even considering anything close to withdrawal or anything short of "winning" - even though no one can identify what winning would mean. Unfortunately, unless they watch The Daily Show, many Americans haven't really noticed.

In the case of "civil war," it fell to a morning television anchor, Matt Lauer, to officially bless the term before the "Today" show moved on to such regular fare as an update on the Olsen twins. That juxtaposition of Iraq and post-pubescent eroticism was only too accurate a gauge of how much the word "war" itself has been drained of its meaning in America after years of waging a war that required no shared sacrifice. Whatever you want to label what's happening in Iraq, it has never impeded our freedom to dote on the Olsen twins.

Preoccupation with other "news" items has allowed situations like the following to develop with little coverage:

Tell that to the Americans in Anbar Province. Back in August the chief of intelligence for the Marines filed a secret report - uncovered by Thomas Ricks of The Washington Post - concluding that American troops "are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar." That finding was confirmed in an intelligence update last month. Yet American troops are still being tossed into that maw, and at least 90 have been killed there since Labor Day, including five marines, ages 19 to 24, around Thanksgiving.

Civil war? Sectarian violence? A phase? This much is certain: The dead in Iraq don't give a damn what we call it.

How many more young soldiers will have to die before President Bush and his team change more than the terms used to describe what is happening in Iraq?

You can find the rest here.

Congress will address electronic voting

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) is going to push for paper trails and audits for electronic voting. You can find out more here.

Hat Tip: American Progress Action Fund.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out

Good riddance to Bolton. A true embarrassment for our country.

From TPM Muckraker:

Next year marks the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. As far as anniversaries go, it seems like a good one to recognize, doesn't it? It should not be a real bone of contention to say that one is against slavery; and, upon hearing of the anniversary of its abolition in one region, to acknowledge that as a good thing; to recognize the cost of the practice in the millions of lives uprooted and forced into extreme suffering; and to celebrate the efforts which ended the horrific practice.

To do so, a number of Caribbean countries got together to propose a commemorative resolution before the United Nations.

Guess who refused to sign? That's right: Ambassador John Bolton's United States.

You can find the rest here.

Lame-duck Congress still has time for political games

The Republicans in Congress don't feel like they have to finish their work and pass the remaining appropriations bills that they left behind to hit the campaign trail, but they do have time to pander to their base. Even if it means making things up.

The extremists in Congress are trying to make sure they pass a bill to require doctors to tell women something that they can't prove.

...lawmakers this week will push legislation requiring physicians to ask women whether they want anesthesia for their fetuses before ending pregnancies.

This is the so-called fetus bill. Problem is, the lawmakers pushing this bill have no idea whether or not that is even remotely true.

Of course, reality is a bar most anti-abortion extremists never feel they have to hurdle. From Minnesota Public Radio:

But the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says there is no legitimate scientific information indicating that a fetus experiences pain. The organization also cautions that a higher dose of anesthesia for women undergoing the procedure puts them at greater medical risk.

But really, why should the anti-abortion extremists care start caring about the health of women now?

If Congress has time to play politics, they have time to finish the appropriations bills. If they leave them behind for the next Congress, the Republicans should never be allowed to be in charge of our money again.

Halloween's bonus

Mayor Dave might not be a fan of Halloween on State Street, but UW Hockey Coach Mike Eaves is probably pretty happy we have it. Halloween helped snag one of the hottest hockey recruits to hit the ice in a while.

Kyle Turris is such a good hockey player that the NHL came calling. Luckily, he was touring our campus on Halloween. He loved the energy of the Kohl Center during a hockey game, but from what he told Andy Baggot of the Wisconsin State Journal, it was seeing the huge party on State Street Halloween night that sealed the deal.

He told Baggot that after the hockey game, he walked passed the crazy party on State Street on the way to the hotel with his parents. By the time they got back to the room, he said, "I knew right away. I said, Mom, Dad. I want to go here.'"

Check out which seat is not on this list

Yes, it's really early. And a lot could happen in the next two years. The new little congresspeople haven't even been sworn in yet. But, I still think it's interesting that the WI 8th Congressional District is not on the list of ten U.S. House seats most likely to change hands in 2008 from the Washington Post's political blog. You can find the post here.

Federal government agency thinks electronic voting sucks

The Washington Post has an article today with the National Institute of Standards and Technology saying that electronic voting cannot be made secure. The report validates the claims many critics of the new voting system have been saying from day one:

NIST says in its report that the lack of a paper trail for each vote "is one of the main reasons behind continued questions about voting system security and diminished public confidence in elections." The report repeats the contention of the computer security community that "a single programmer could 'rig' a major election."

Hopefully the new Congress will tackle this issue right away.

You can read the rest here.

Voting map

For all of the stat geeks out there, DailyKos has a map shows Wisconsin's voting by Congressional District. The big patch of blue in the NE corner of the state is very fun to see.