I’ll be the first to say that the comment isn’t funny and isn’t appropriate – but the response is way over the top, perhaps indicating serious emotional instability on the part of Terry McAuliffe.

During a recent appearance on behalf of Bob McDonnell — the Republican candidate for governor — Huckabee wisecracked that if McDonnell's supporters bump into someone who isn't planning on voting for the Republican, they should "let the air out of their tires and do not let them out of their driveway on election day."

The joke is a Huckabee favorite: he recited it countless times at campaign stops nationwide during his failed bid to win the Republican nomination in 2007 and 2008.

Nevertheless, McAuliffe — who made more than a few surrogate appearances of his own on behalf of Bill and Hillary Clinton — is accusing of Huckabee of inciting "voter suppression."

"Let's be clear," he said in a statement. "There are no jokes to be made about denying people the right to vote in this country. It's not a laughing matter. This is a right that people fought and died for, so as public figures, we must be sure that we are setting the standard."

McAuliffe, who has made a point of highlighting his creation of a voting rights institute when he led the DNC, accused McDonnell of "standing by silently as Mike Huckabee encourages his supporters to suppress the vote."

Oh come on – like anyone really believed that was anything more than a lame attempt at humor that we’ve been hearing for a couple of years out of Huckabee. But more to the point, it isn’t Republicans who are documented as engaging precisely the tactics Huckabee joked about.

IÂ’ll side with the Huckster on this one.

“As someone who served as a Governor for 10 years, I can say if these are the type of things Terry McAuliffe worries about and make him break down and cry, then he won’t last 10 days as Governor much less four years and he doesn’t deserve the people of Virginia’s vote.”

H/T Hot Air

Posted by: Greg at 03:06 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 362 words, total size 3 kb.

Public official uses taxpayer funds to pay illegal aliens for to clean her house. Criminal charges ensue.

A six-count federal indictment against Hidalgo County Commissioner Sylvia Handy is only the "tip of the iceberg," law enforcement officials said.

FBI agents arrested the embattled elected official and her husband at their Weslaco home Thursday morning, alleging they paid two women - both of them illegal immigrants - to work as servants using taxpayer funds.

Prosecutors accuse the pair of women of providing child care and housekeeping services to Handy's family while collecting county paychecks under assumed identities over a period of five years.

But authorities close to the case said their initial probe into the 52-year-old commissioner's hiring practices has since spawned separate investigations into allegations of witness tampering, bid-rigging and kickbacks involving county contracts.

Further state and federal indictments are expected against the commissioner and other alleged accomplices, they said.

Many further details follow in a rather complete article on the situation in Hidalgo County. But oddly enough, one thing is missing from the piece. No where is Handy’s political party mentioneed, despite the fact that she is a prominent member of a major political party. And what would that party affiliation be? A little check on the matter shows that it starts “D” and ends with “emocrat”. I wonder – why the omission?

Posted by: Greg at 02:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 230 words, total size 2 kb.

I’ll be honest – I find it galling that prosecutorial misconduct was the likely deciding factor in the 2008 Alaska Senate race. I even called upon Ted Stevens to resign so that there could be a replacement candidate in the race. But even now that the dirty tricks of certain prosecutors have come to light, I find this idea unacceptable.

Alaska GOP Chairman Randy Ruedrich said a special election should be held "so Alaskans may have the chance to vote for a senator without the improper influence of the corrupt Department of Justice."

"The only reason Mark Begich won the election in November is because a few thousand Alaskans thought that Senator Ted Stevens was guilty of seven felonies. Senator Stevens has maintained his innocence and now, even the Department of Justice acknowledges its wrongdoing," Ruedrich said in a statement.

Sorry, friends, that isnÂ’t how it works, even in a race as close as this one was. The reality is that we could point to some injustice or untruth that was the deciding factor in a great many races. Do we really believe that there should be do-overs for that reason? Of course not. So while conduct that ought to lead to criminal charges against and/or the disbarment of the Stevens prosecution team (or at least of some members of that team) has been conclusively demonstrated and implicitly acknowledged by the Attorney General, that is not a sufficient reason for overturning the results of an election.

Posted by: Greg at 11:45 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 254 words, total size 2 kb.

After all, the Second Amendment is as much a part of the Bill of Rights as the First Amendment.

An effort to limit the number of guns people can buy has failed again in the Illinois House.

The measure would have capped gun purchases at one a month, although the state police would have been authorized to grant exemptions.

Violations of the one-a-month limit would have been punishable by up to a year in prison.

Call me an extremist on the matter, but I find this sort of legislation every bit as repulsive as legislation that would limit Americans to buying one book or attending one church service a month. Any legislator who supported this bill needs to be removed from office for violating their oath of office – or at least tar-and-feathered by their constituents.

Posted by: Greg at 11:32 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 150 words, total size 1 kb.

I hate smoking. I find it a disgusting, dirty habit – and one that has taken the lives of many family and friends over the years. I would not be terribly upset to see the possession and use of tobacco banned for health reasons. That is not going to happen.

The state of Texas, though, is about to take a step that I oppose – raising the age for tobacco use to 19.

Though they are legally considered adults and can serve in the military, 18-year-old Texans would be considered minors when it comes to smoking under a bill passed unanimously through a Senate committee Tuesday.

The measure would increase the legal age for buying tobacco products to 19, and would cut off an estimated $12.5 million in tax revenue for the state over the next two years.

San Antonio Democrat Sen. Carlos Uresti pushed the same measure in 2007, but after winning approval in the Senate it fizzled out in an end of session backlog of bills in the House.

Supporters say raising the legal age will prevent teens from smoking an extra year and keep cigarettes out of high schools, where they can be passed along to younger students.

Let’s see – you can drive a car at 15 in this state. You can get married without parental permission at 18. You can join the military – even be drafted – at that age as well. Heck, you can vote. But we are not going to let you smoke? This is even more asinine than the law restricting alcohol to those over 21, because tobacco use does not raise the safety issue that alcohol does.

So it is really simple – ban tobacco, or let all adults buy and use it. And do the same for alcohol s well.

Posted by: Greg at 11:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 309 words, total size 2 kb.

It seems like someone was out to get Ted Stevens – and was even open to suborning perjury and hiding evidence to get a conviction.

The Justice Department moved to dismiss former Sen. Ted Stevens' indictment this morning, effectively voiding his Oct. 27 conviction on seven counts of filing false statements on his Senate financial disclosure forms.

The decision by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder comes after a new prosecution team discovered a previously undocumented interview with the star witness in the case that sharply contradicted the most dramatic testimony in the four-week trial. The information had never been turned over to the defense, the Justice Department said in its motion.

"After careful review, I have concluded that certain information should have been provided to the defense for use at trial, Holder said in a statement released this morning. "In light of this conclusion, and in consideration of the totality of the circumstances of this particular case, I have determined that it is in the interest of justice to dismiss the indictment and not proceed with a new trial."

The government is seeking dismissal of the charges "with prejudice," meaning that they cannot be filed again.

Personally, I’m not sorry to see Ted Stevens out of public life. I think he was one of the things that has been wrong with the GOP in recent years. However, the method used – with the obvious impact on the 2008 senatorial election in Alaska – is most disturbing. It appears that there was a rogue element in the Justice Department that was more interested in scalps than in justice.

In the end, Stevens was convicted of trying to hide illegal gifts from political supporters and friends. What the evidence shows is that Stevens made serious efforts to get bills so that he could pay for the gifts. We now know that the Justice Department attorneys attempted to hide that from the court. Unfortunately, the Obama Justice Department has not committed to taking serious actions against those who perpetrated this manifest injustice.

Posted by: Greg at 11:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 351 words, total size 2 kb.

Because, you know, they didnÂ’t say what he wanted to hear on the issue of representation of the District of Columbia in the House of Representatives.

Justice Department lawyers concluded in an unpublished opinion earlier this year that the historic D.C. voting rights bill pending in Congress is unconstitutional, according to sources briefed on the issue. But Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who supports the measure, ordered up a second opinion from other lawyers in his department and determined that the legislation would pass muster.

* * *

In deciding that the measure is unconstitutional, lawyers in the departmentÂ’s Office of Legal Counsel matched a conclusion reached by their Bush administration counterparts nearly two years ago, when a lawyer there testified that a similar bill would not withstand legal attack.
Holder rejected the advice and sought the opinion of the solicitor generalÂ’s office, where lawyers told him that they could defend the legislation if it were challenged after its enactment.

Quite a different standard between the two positions by the two sets of lawyers. One is examining it from the standard of “is it constitutional?” The other gave an answer based on the standard “is it defensible?” That is a big difference, friends – and that Holder would reject the advice of those he calls the best and the brightest in the Justice Department on the matter is rather telling. Especially since this has been the consistent opinion of the OLC dating back to roughly the Kennedy Administration. After all, the District of Columbia is, self-evidently, not a state, for if it were there would never have been a need to amend the Constitution to grant it electoral votes in a presidential election.

There are three ways to proceed here that are in keeping with the Constitution:

1) Pass an amendment giving the District representation in Congress.

2) Include the population of the District with Maryland for representation purposes, and give it representation in that manner (the territory of the District was granted to the Federal Government by Maryland over two centuries ago).

3) With the approval of Maryland, admit Washington, DC as a state.

And for those who argue that Congress should grant voting representation to the District, IÂ’d like to ask why the same should not be granted to inhabitants of Puerto Rico, Guam, the US Virgin Islands, and every other territory in which US citizens are denied the right to vote?

Posted by: Greg at 11:44 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 425 words, total size 3 kb.

Good grief! What were members of ObamaÂ’s staff thinking? Like the Queen of England doesnÂ’t have an iPod?

An Obama aide reports that Mr. Obama gave the queen an iPod loaded with video and photos of her 2007 trip to the United States, as well as other songs and accessories, and a rare songbook signed by Richard Rodgers, of Rodgers and Hammerstein fame.

According to reports, the queen gave the Obamas a silver framed signed photograph — a gift she gives to all visiting dignitaries.

Well, perhaps a bit better than the faux pas with the Browns, especially the Richard Rodgers songbook – but I’m sure that the BBC can readily supply Her Majesty with all the video of that 2007 visit that she could ever want – and we know that she probably has an iPod. Would someone get him to beef up his protocol staff so as to avoid any future such embarrassments?

H/T HotAir

Posted by: Greg at 11:41 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 165 words, total size 1 kb.

Well, on this one point, anyway.

You’ll note that Michelle Obama failed to curtsey when she met the Queen. Dare I say “Good for you, Michelle!” Or perhaps “You go, girl!” We are Americans. We do not have royalty, nor do we engage in subservient rituals towards foreign royalty – we are not subjects. As such, I’d argue that Mrs. Obama took just the right approach here, behaving with grace and dignity – a point on which I disagree with at least one prominent conservative blogger who I generally admire.

Posted by: Greg at 11:30 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 100 words, total size 1 kb.

1 The system is available 24 7 from any location in the convenience of the home work and while on vacation and on the road. tramadol valium %-P acomplia eme

Posted by: kursiv at Wed Nov 4 12:30:33 2009 (yzfj0)

2 Cats with upper respiratory problems should be encouraged to drink lots of fluids. buy ambien itstst ambien fprnfb valium >:-DD

Posted by: zitate at Wed Nov 4 21:12:53 2009 (47mpH)

Hide Comments | Add Comment