Alaska: Race is over

The prince has been dethroned. The long recount in Alaska is almost over, and not enough ballots remain to give convicted incumbent Senator Ted Stevens a chance of overtaking Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. Next stop: prison. So long, Citizen Stevens; I recommend the bologna sandwich with mac-‘n’-cheese. (More here, here, and here.)

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-NC) had already written up a resolution of expulsion from the GOP conference just in case Stevens managed to stage a comeback, but DeMint was persuaded to hold off until the election results were certain. Now the expulsion plan has been shelved, as Alaskan voters have done the job Senate Republicans should have done months ago.

Total Senate seats in Democratic hands in the coming Congress: 58. Number of Senate races with results yet to be determined: two (MN and GA). Chances of a filibuster-proof Democratic majority: long, but still within reach, at least in terms of party. Republicans may be virtually incapable of mounting a filibuster in a practical sense anyway, given their demonstrated aversion to anything resembling a sense of unity.

Both sides of p0rn, thru the Fairness Doctrine

Congratulations, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), you’ve said what may well win you the Single Stupidest TV Sound Bite of the 2008 Election Season award. And that takes some doing.

The very same people who don’t want the Fairness Doctrine want the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] to limit pornography on the air. I am for that… But you can’t say government hands off in one area to a commercial enterprise but you are allowed to intervene in another. That’s not consistent.

So Senator Schumer believes that you can’t regulate hardcore smut flicks and, at the same time, not regulate mainstream conservative talk radio, because that just wouldn’t be “consistent.” You see, it’s all or nothing when it comes to government intrusion. You can’t hide your kids’ eyes from a degrading cable goatsex simulcast, and still leave them free to turn the radio to Laura Ingraham. For the love of all that is sacred, Think Of The Children!™

Which side of this inconsistency bothers you more, Sen. Schumer? That mainstream conservative talk radio may be inappropriate and harmful to minors or those with delicate sensibilities? Or is it that bondage reels won’t give sufficient “equal time” to the submissive party for rebuttal?

More here, here, and here.

UPDATE: Barack Obama has won the election. First, congratulations, Mr. President-elect. Second, I ask that you resist Sen. Schumer’s entreaties for an appointment as your new Minister of Information.

America’s newest “ex-Marine” panics

Rep. John Murtha is drowning.

Camp Murtha has hurried out a mass mailing to the Congressman’s donor list begging for an additional $1 million so that he may cling to his seat for two more years. Such a cash infusion would supplement the eleventh-hour ad buys the DCCC have suddenly dumped on his district in an effort to save some of the votes their candidate is hemorrhaging. If his “racist, redneck” statemates decide they haven’t blown all their spare cash on Cheetos, Mountain Dew, and tractor pull tickets, perhaps they will come to the rescue of this pitiable, vestigial relic. Or perhaps not.

(Speaking of Murtha’s “racist” and “redneck” comments, check the latest mailing from his opponent Bill Russell, who is obviously having a ball with this. Bringin’ Jeff Foxworthy up north!)

A new Dane & Associates poll (H/T Miz Michelle) shows the race a statistical dead heat, with Murtha hanging onto a 1.8-point lead (45.5% to 43.7). With this many voters still undecided about a thirty-plus year incumbent, Murtha’s got plenty to worry about.

Republicans, on the other hand, finally have something to look forward to.

Kiss Alaska goodbye. Thank Ted Stevens.

Newly convicted Sen. Ted Stevens is digging in his heels, and this blogger sees no sign of any intent to resign, before or after the election. The man honestly thinks he won’t spend day one in jail; I don’t think he’s capable of envisioning a Senate without him.

National Republicans are abandoning him, the state party is clinging to him, his fellow senators (of both parties) are talking openly about expelling him, and local political experts are still saying he might eke out one final re-election victory.

News developments, analysis, and more wonkery below the break.

Welcome to the bighouse, Ted. Now what?

The Congressional Indicted Caucus officially has one fewer member. Senator Ted Stevens has been convicted on all counts. To quote a certain played-out, over-the-hill cartoonist: “Guilty, guilty, guilty!” (More here, here, here, and here.) For his part, Stevens has announced he will appeal, maintaining his innocence and lacerating the prosecutors for what I admit was some pretty messed-up lawyering.

I can’t say I’ll be sorry to see Sen. Stevens go, which will come as no surprise to WitSnapper readers (who may have read my thoughts on the man here, here, here, here, and elsewhere). His Senate seat will likely go to his Democratic opponent, Anchorage mayor Mark Begich, now effectively running unopposed. Republicans now are scrambling to assess their very limited options.

Bunches of scenario-weaving below the break.

Are Murtha’s days numbered? Polls say maybe.

Rep. John Murtha, whose claims to fame include Abscam conspiracy, slandering Marines, smearing half his own state as racist, and serving up enough pork in Congress to supply Oktoberfest, may be watching his custom-gerrymandered seat slip away.

One poll recently released has Murtha’s Republican opponent, Bill Russell, pulling within the margin of error in the upcoming election, while another poll leaked to Miz Michelle by her Pennsylvania source shows Russell with a comfortable lead.

No need to remind me that I just tossed up the world’s longest freakin’ post on how I think the polls this year are about as useful for toilet paper as they are for predicting elections. However, given that Murtha is a guy who has held this seat since 1974, who typically considers a 2-to-1 victory margin on Election Night a squeaker, who lives in a district with a 63% Democratic registration roll, and who is running in a “we all hate Republicans worse than liver worse than root canals” year, it is absolutely unheard of that Russell, a Republican Iraq hawk who won a spot on the ballot with a write-in campaign, could be giving Murtha the race of his life.

I don’t think it’s petty of me to note how anxiously I am looking forward to seeing Murtha assuming long overdue civilian status, bringing with him little but his shredded dignity, his Abscam souvenirs, his various coffee mugs from his favorite defense contractors, and his pending slander suits.

UPDATE: Commenter MommaMT (see below) is kind enough to alert me that the “worse than liver” expression is not quite apt in significant parts of Pennsylvania. I hope my substitution is satisfactory.

The Fairness Doctrine, resurrected from the Pit

Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) has finally made public intentions toward a plan whose existence many Democrats have been trying to deny for years: bringing back that speech-suppressing abomination, the Fairness Doctrine. (Links here and here, and with audio here and here).

More on the Doctrine’s history, why it’s a dangerous assault on the Constitution, and why Democrats like Bingaman love it so much and want it back so badly, below the break.

Murtha: “Rednecks,” not “racists.” Better?

Two words for Rep. John Murtha:  Stop digging.  Fertheluvvagawd, stop digging.

Rep. Murtha made news last week with his announcement that western Pennsylvania was overrun with racists, and that was why Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was having trouble finding traction in that part of the state.  A day or two later, he apologized for those remarks, and for good measure he cancelled a scheduled debate that night with his opponent this year, Bill Russell, ostensibly to escape probing questions about why he’d say something so inexplicably boneheaded.

Today, he figured he’d “clarify” those remarks.  He scaled back the scope of his name-calling to “certain segments” of the region, and in the process called western Pennsylvanians “rednecks” instead, adding that such folks frequently had trouble accepting a black candidate (in effect, repeating the “racist” smear he’d just apologized for a week earlier, only applied to slightly fewer people).

Just days after classifying western Pennsylvania as racist, Murtha took a step back from those comments, albeit a small one. 

“What I said, that indicted everybody, that’s not what I meant at all. What I mean is there’s still folks that have a problem voting for someone because they are black,” Murtha said. 

Murtha said the history of southwestern Pennsylvania is rife with racism. 

“This whole area, years ago, was really redneck,” Murtha told Channel 4 Action News.

And the Bill Russell campaign ad footage just keeps on coming.  At this rate, look for the next Murtha/Russell debate to be rescheduled for sometime in late 2011.

Allahpundit and Miz Michelle have more.  Gateway Pundit has more links.

Stevens trial: It’s all over but the sequestering

Testimony ended Monday as the defense rested its case in Sen. Ted Stevens’s corruption trial, apparently back on track after a major snafu by prosecutors led a judge to threaten a mistrial three weeks ago.

Closing arguments were delivered after Sen. Stevens himself was cross-examined, by what must have been a very exasperated prosecutor.  The Los Angeles Times describes a very cagey senator who, though expensive items were left at his house by their owners and never retrieved, somehow didn’t count as “gifts:”

Public integrity attorney Brenda Morris repeatedly challenged Stevens on the witness stand Monday, saying his explanation that the items in question were not gifts, even though they remained at his homes, was not plausible.   

Morris asked Stevens about a $2,700 Brookstone massage chair delivered to his home in Washington in 2001. Stevens has taken the position that the chair was a loan from a friend. But he acknowledged on cross-examination that it remains in his home to this day.

“How is that not a gift?” Morris asked.

“We have lots of things in our house that don’t belong to us, ma’am,” Stevens replied.

I’ll bet you do, Senator.  It’s going to be tough to convince a jury, I think, that you were never billed for any of them.

Stevens is accused of accepting over $200,000 in gifts, including home renovations, furniture, and sculpture, and failing to report it to Congress’s ethics office as required by federal law.

Who’da thunk it? WaPo pins crisis on Democrats

An editorial in Monday’s Washington Post sets the record straight — at long, long, long, long, long, long last — on who bears the lion’s share of the blame for the current economic collapse. (Link via Captain Ed.)

Now that the worst is over and people have settled on the Bush Administration and John McCain as the blameworthy ones, the WaPo has jumped in to save the day with their brilliant revelation (which the hobos of the blogosphere have been screaming at the top of our virtual lungs for weeks now) that everybody’s got it precisely backwards.

They’ve finally clued in to the fact that the culprit was the deliberate loosening of lending standards by Democrats so that poor people (read: people to whom no sensible lender would ever think of issuing a mortgage) would be able to take out a home loan, regardless of ability to pay the thing back.  Not only that, but Bush and McCain in particular pushed more than once to exercise tighter oversight over this lax new policy’s primary vehicles, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  These efforts at better regulation were stiffarmed at every turn by Banking Committee Democrats in the House such as Barney Frank and Maxine Waters, and those in the Senate such as Christopher Dodd and — the horror! — Barack Obama.  Dodd and Obama each took more campaign money from Fannie and Freddie lobbyists than all 98 of their Senate colleagues, which is an achievement for Obama, who has been in the Senate less than four years.

In Hot Air’s “Quote of the Day,” Allahpundit cites Orson Scott Card (described in an Editor’s Note as “a Democrat and a newspaper columnist, and in this opinion piece he takes on both while lamenting the current state of journalism”):

If you [in the journalistic trade] want to redeem your honor, you will swallow hard and make a list of all the stories you would print if it were McCain who had been getting money from Fannie Mae, McCain whose campaign had consulted with its discredited former CEO, McCain who had voted against tightening its lending practices.

Then you will print them, even though every one of those true stories will point the finger of blame at the reckless Democratic Party, which put our nation’s prosperity at risk so they could feel good about helping the poor, and lay a fair share of the blame at Obama’s door.

Read the whole opinion piece, because it’s a scorcher.

Murtha grasps at petty little straws UPDATE: “Oh, hey, sorry, just kidding. But not about the murder.”

Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), America’s newest “ex-Marine,” is still living in his own big fat bloated bubble of denial.

The congressman accused eight Marines in 2006 of the murder of Iraqi civilians after a firefight in Haditha, without any evidence to back it up except a sensational story in TIME Magazine.  Today, now that six of the eight have had their charges dropped, one other acquitted of all charges, the last still awaiting court-martial on reduced charges, and two of the Marines filing or preparing to file lawsuits against him for slander and defamation, he is repeating his smear to the Pittsburgh Tribune Review:

U.S. Rep. John Murtha stands by a controversial remark he made previously that U.S. Marines killed women and children “in cold blood” in Haditha, Iraq, in November 2005.

The blunt description changed how American troops engaged Iraqis and improved overall conditions in the war, Murtha, an 18-term Democrat from Johnstown, said today during a wide-ranging interview with Tribune-Review reporters and editors.

“There are all kinds of things that have happened that have made a difference, but one of the big differences is that we are not bullying our way through like we used to,” said Murtha, a former Marine and decorated Vietnam combat veteran. “The rules of engagement are clear — and it’s changed. One of the things that has made it better in Iraq is we are no longer just breaking down doors.”

“It’s my obligation to speak out. I try everything I can to get things done,” Murtha said.

Right.  He’s a real prince, that Jack Murtha.  See you in court, pal.  Here’s hoping you graduate to Citizen Murtha real quick, courtesy of the targets of your other bizarre smear:  your own constituents, whom you tarred today as racists for not uniformly supporting Barack Obama (Allahpundit and Miz Michelle have more).

Tool.

UPDATE: Murtha apologizes a day later in a media release for calling Western Pennsylvanians racists.  No apology to be found about sliming the Haditha Marines (twice now).  And Murtha’s Iraq vet opponent Bill Russell gets a neat new campaign ad out of it.

Too bad he can’t get in Murtha’s face about it now, because Murtha has suddenly cancelled their debate tonight. Reminds me of that video of Murtha running for the elevator, no?  Hopefully Russell can put together a nice little ad slamming him for that.

Foley successor Mahoney continues tradition

“Faith and Family” candidate-turned-congressman Tim Mahoney (D-FL) has taken his predecessor’s sex-scandal inclination and transformed it into a tradition.

Mahoney is the man who was elected to replace Rep. Mark Foley in 2006, who had resigned in disgrace after a scandal arose over some exceedingly creepy text messages he sent to some underage congressional pages.  Now it turns out Mahoney has become mired in a sex scandal of his own, in the form of money paid to a former staffer to shut her up about the affair they had had (which ended after the staffer found out about the other affairs Mahoney was having).

I have to give the Link of Honor to Gateway Pundit on this one, as he was on the scent of this story a month ago. He posted a link to a cached version of a local West Palm Beach area online newspaper article about Mahoney, attached to which was a reader comment alluding to the affair and the hush money.  I didn’t link to it, as I thought the lead was too tenuous (the comment had no source, no link, and no name to the user).  However, DCCC Chairman Rep. Chris Van Hollen says himself that he took notice when the post went up, and as GP notes, it’s just not possible that Speaker Pelosi or Caucus Chair Rahm Emmanuel heard nothing about it from van Hollen until the story broke yesterday in the press (their claims to the contrary notwithstanding).  Hot Air has more.

Those who know me are well acquainted with my taste for irony.  In this case, if irony were Snickers bars, this story would leave me lying on the floor in a diabetic coma with my teeth rotting out of my head right now.