Tuesday, Nov 11th
Last update10:01:16 AM GMT
Political Glance
n the spring of 2010, the conservative political strategist Ed Gillespie flew from Washington, D.C., to Raleigh, North Carolina, to spend a day laying the groundwork for REDMAP, a new project aimed at engineering a Republican takeover of state legislatures.
Gillespie hoped to help his party get control of statehouses where congressional redistricting was pending, thereby leveraging victories in cheap local races into a means of shifting the balance of power in Washington.
On the campaign trail, Rick Santorum says his career since the Senate has been a paid commentary role at Fox News and as a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. But a mandatory disclosure requirement for presidential candidates reveals something new: Santorum has maintained his lifestyle through a well-paid consulting gig with Consol Energy Inc and a lobbying firm called American Continental Group.
The disclosure, revealed earlier this week, comes as a surprise because Santorum has never mentioned the fact that he works for a lobbying firm, nor do any state and federal lobbying disclosures have him listed as a lobbyist or contractor to such a company.
The times they are a changin'. John Judis has written a piece I'd never thought I'd read at TNR. It's an elegant, factual, calm dismemberment of where the Obama administration has ended up on Israel-Palestine: on AIPAC's extendable leash, wagging its tail for a treat.
On the pure principles of UN recognition of a Palestinian state, John shows exactly how American politics has been slowly but fatally corrupted by the Greater Israel lobby in recent years with respect to Middle East policy. One logical stiletto:
Over the past year, I have obtained public records that shed light on how the Israel lobby works on US campuses. At UC Berkeley, my alma mater, as well as at UC Hastings School of Law, the documents reveal how the Israel lobby pressures university administrators to interfere with campus activity - both academic and political - that addresses Israel's policies towards and treatment of the Palestinian people.
My requests were made in the shadow of two high-profile backlash campaigns to counter events at UC Berkeley and UC Hastings School of Law. In March 2011, esteemed legal academics and practitioners attended a conference called "Litigating Palestine" at UC Hastings School of Law.
I’ve seen the Gallup Poll that found a majority of Republican voters believe world history began less than 10,000 years ago, back when man was trying to keep those damn dinosaurs from trampling through the flower garden.
[Lt. Gov. Jennifer] Carroll, in her fire-and-brimstone speech on Thursday, spoke disparagingly of how “some of our political leaders bow down to scientists and let them have the stage to push their evolution.” She made it plenty clear that the coming Republican revolution would no longer allow “the minority to poison the minds of the majority.”
Several states adopted new laws last year requiring that people show a photo ID when they come to vote even though the kind of election fraud that the laws are intended to stamp out is rare. Even supporters of the new laws are hard pressed to come up with large numbers of cases in which someone tried to vote under a false identify.
"I've compared this to the snake oil salesman. You got a cold? I got snake oil. Your foot aches? I got snake oil," said election law expert Justin Levitt, who wrote "The Truth About Voter Fraud" for The Brennan Center for Justice. "It doesn't seem to matter what the problem is, (voter) ID is being sold as the solution to a whole bunch of things it can't possibly solve."
An audience at the Republican presidential debate in Orlando did not greet a gay soldier with open arms Thursday. In fact, they booed him.
The jeering came after Stephen Hill, a soldier stationed in Iraq, asked via video about the recent repeal of the 1993 law that banned gay military personnel from serving openly in the military.
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