Political News

Let me just get through a few of these stories and then get off the computer.

• All partisans are sometimes guilty of jumping on polls that support their views. I try to be balanced about this and warn that the only poll that matters is the one on Election Day. But clearly you should not go out there with polls that seem completely at odds with the facts. A case in point in CT-SEN: that Zogby poll showing Joe Lieberman with a 20-point lead on Ned Lamontis rejected by this poll showing it down to 7. There was no way that 20-point lead was credible. And with 3 debates coming up featuring the Republican candidate, Alan Schlesinger, his numbers can only come up, which spells doom for Holy Joe. I agree with this post that Lamont should focus on Schlesinger as the real opponent to drive up his name ID and return Republicans back to the fold.

• CT-04: Chris Shays has a novel answer to the Mark Foley scandal - At least he didn't kill someone like Ted Kennedy. Or, like Laura Bush, you recall. And at least Diane Farrell didn't vote to kill 600,000 Iraqis. I mean we can just keep going back in time and blame everyone for every death that's ever happened. Or we can talk about the issue at hand.

• Speaking of the issue as hand, another Republican talking point goes down in flames as the idea that Democrats timed the release of the Foley emails is shown to be ridiculous. Of course it is, many news outlets, including Fox News, had the emails for months.

• CA-11: Boy, Richard Pombo must be scared to death, he's now lying about well-documented ties to Jack Abramoff. That he has to refute
these questions at all shows he's in big trouble.

AP reports:

On more than two dozen other occasions from 1996 through 2001, Abramoff associates called or met with members of Pombo's staff, including his chief of staff, the records indicate. As the contacts picked up, Pombo voted Abramoff's way on a bill important to Abramoff's clients.

And:

The records, covering 1996 to 2001, indicate contacts beginning in March 1996 between officials at Abramoff's then-law firm, Preston Gates, and Pombo's staff.

One focus was legislation in the Resources Committee, of which Pombo was then a junior member, to give the Marianas a nonvoting delegate to Congress. Then-Marianas Gov. Froilan Tenorio was opposed. Abramoff and his associates lobbied the Hill, including a July 29, 1996, contact with Pombo's office.

Three days later the bill was narrowly defeated in committee. Pombo voted no.

"I have great news!" Abramoff wrote to Tenorio on Aug. 1, 1996. The delegate bill "was DEFEATED at the markup which finished about an hour ago. … We were able to add four conservative Republicans to the block of Democrat opponents and defeat the bill by a vote of 13-12."

• CA-04: Holy fucking crap:

Doolittle said he would vote for war in Iraq again "if the same facts were before me" because it has meant protection for the United States.

Doolittle rolled religious beliefs into Iraq, noting that the Bible tells him Armageddon will take place the Middle East.

"I don't know how long it's going to go," Doolittle said. "It's a kill or be killed world unfortunately. I don't know how to solve the problem but it's better to be on the offensive than sitting here and letting people be killed."

We have an admitted end-timer basically saying "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" and "everybody's going to die when the Rapture comes anyway, so who cares?"

You can't leave someone like this in Congress.