Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest: Heinrich &
Griego win vote at New Mexico Democratic convention

post from Daily Kos on 13 March 2012 08:00:03 AM. © Daily Kos

Want the scoop on hot races around the country? Get the digest emailed to you each weekday morning. Sign up here.Leading Off:

? NM-Sen, NM-01: New Mexico Democrats held what they call their pre-primary convention on Saturday, where delegates vote to choose which candidates will get an automatic spot on the ballot. Anyone who scores more than 20% earns a ticket, though you can petition your way on if you fail to hit that threshold. (However, says the New Mexico Telegram, no one has ever won a primary that way.)

In NM-Sen, the first of the two marquee races, Rep. Martin Heinrich scored 55% of the delegate vote, compared to 45% for Auditor Hector Balderas, a tally which the Telegram calls "smaller than expected." Meanwhile, in the race for NM-01, all three candidates made it on to the ballot as well: State Sen. Eric Griego, a progressive favorite, had the most support, with 41%, while former Albuquerque mayor Marty Chavez scored 33% and Bernalillo County Commissioner Michelle Lujan Grisham took 26%. Matthew Reichbach points out another bonus for winners: They get to appear first on the ballot.

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orning-Digest-Heinrich-Griego-win-vote-at-New-Mexico-Democratic-convention

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Mike's Blog Round Up

post from Crooks and Liars on 13 March 2012 08:00:00 AM. © Crooks and Liars

Our Common Good: What?s the matter with Kansas? Among other things, its war on women.

Burnt Orange Report: Obama DOJ rejects Republican voter ID law that could keep one million Texans from the polls.

The Reaction: Half the Republicans in Alabama and Mississippi still think President Obama is a Muslim.

Booman Tribune: Florida GOP Representative Cliff Stearns still thinks President Obama?s birth certificate may not be legitimate.

No More Mister Nice Blog: 65 year old Mitt Romney opts out of the Medicare system his own plan would inevitably end.

Speaking of which, your quote of the day: ?We don't want to get rid of it [Medicare] in round one because we don't think it's politically smart. But we believe that it's going to wither on the vine because we think [seniors] are going to leave it voluntarily.? (Newt Gingrich, 1996.)

Guest blogging Mike's Blog Round Up today is Jon Perr from Perrspectives. Send your tips, recommendations, comments and angst to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.

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Lakeside Diner

post from Firedoglake on 13 March 2012 07:45:27 AM. © Firedoglake

A variety of links to articles/interviews/speeches on current topics that may be of interest.[...]

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Independent's Day

post from They gave us a republic... - Front Page on 13 March 2012 07:41:28 AM. © They gave us a republic... - Front Page

By @MBersin

A short Twitter conversation yesterday with St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger - it started with this:

No Labels ? @NoLabelsOrg
36% of Americans identify as independents, but politicians keep moving toward the extremes. 12:15 PM - 12 Mar 12
Retweeted by Tony Messenger

[emphasis added]

Michael Bersin ? @MBersin
@tonymess Uh, you might want to check out the connections between No Labels and Americans Elect. Astroturf 501c4 1:59 PM - 12 Mar 12

Tony Messenger ? @tonymess
@MBersin Both organizations have a place in the political conversation, in my opinion, though I wish all the funding was transparent. 2:06 PM - 12 Mar 12

"...I wish all the funding was transparent."

I'm hoping that was intended irony.

The connections between No Labels and Americans Elect, bastions of High Broderism:

No Labels and Americans Elect: A List of Known Connections
Jim Cook 7/28/2011
Americans Elect is a 501c4 corporation founded last year and headquartered inside the Washington DC beltway that does not disclose the identity of the people who are funding it.
No Labels is also a 501c4 corporation founded last year and headquartered inside the Washington DC beltway that does not disclose the identity of the people who are funding it.
A major goal of Americans Elect is to run its own candidate for President of the United States in 2012. A major goal announced by No Labels at its launch is to organize in all 435 congressional districts and spend money to influence campaigns for Congress in 2012....

Go, read the whole thing.

Back to the Twitter conversation:

Michael Bersin ? @MBersin
@tonymess Both organizations are almost one and the same. Transparency? Heh. That'll be the day. And the myth of the political independent. 2:17 PM - 12 Mar 12

Tony Messenger ? @tonymess
@MBersin Myth of the political independent? So I don't exist? 2:23 PM - 12 Mar 12

Michael Bersin ? @MBersin
@tonymess Anecdote does not equal data. 2:25 PM - 12 Mar 12

Tony Messenger ? @tonymess
@MBersin Perhaps we need more than 140 characters. Are you saying there's no such thing as a political independent? 2:26 PM - 12 Mar 12

Michael Bersin ? @MBersin
@tonymess More than 140 is a good idea. True independents exist, just not in the numbers groups like No Labels and "conv wisdom" promote. 2:29 PM - 12 Mar 12

Not old media conventional wisdom:

Setting the Record Straight: Correcting Myths About Independent Voters
Alan I. Abramowitz, Senior Columnist July 7th, 2011
....It's true that independents are a diverse group. But that's mostly because the large majority of independents are independents in name only. Research by political scientists on the American electorate has consistently found that the large majority of self-identified independents are "closet partisans" who think and vote much like other partisans. Independent Democrats and independent Republicans have little in common. Moreover, independents with no party preference have a lower rate of turnout than those who lean toward a party and typically make up less than 10% of the electorate. Finally, independents don't necessarily determine the outcomes of presidential elections; in fact, in all three closely contested presidential elections since 1972, the candidate backed by most independent voters lost....

Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Voter ID, Afghanistan
and more

post from Daily Kos on 13 March 2012 07:30:02 AM. © Daily Kos

Visual source: Newseum

The New York Times looks at the Justice Department's rejection of an extremely restrictive

The department said the law clearly disadvantages Hispanic voters, who lack photo ID?s at a much higher rate than the state?s overall population. The Voting Rights Act requires that states and counties with a history of racial discrimination prove that new voting laws don?t discriminate in purpose or effect, and Texas was unable to meet that test.[...]
In a letter to Texas elections officials, the Justice Department said the state submitted no evidence that it is suffering from a voter-impersonation problem that would be solved with an ID requirement. But, at the department?s request, Texas did submit data showing how the requirement would affect Hispanic voters, and the numbers were disturbing. Nearly 11 percent of Hispanic registered voters lack a driver?s license or government-issued card, compared with nearly 5 percent of non-Hispanic voters. (Hispanics were the only minority group analyzed because it was easier to identify their last names)

Frank Bruni also takes on discrimination in The New York Times:

Hussy. Harlot. Hooker.
Floozy. Strumpet. Slut.
When attacking a woman by questioning her sexual mores, there?s a smorgasbord of slurs, and you can take your rancid pick. Help me out here: where are the comparable nouns for men? What?s a male slut?
A role model, in some cases. In others, a presidential candidate. [...]
Decades after the dawn of feminism, despite the best efforts of everyone from Erica Jong to Kim Cattrall, women are still seen through an erotically censorious prism, and promiscuity is still the ultimate putdown.
It?s antediluvian, and it?s astonishing. You?d think our imaginations would have evolved, even if our humanity hasn?t.

Eugene Robinson at The Washington Post echoes what many are saying in the wake of this week's massacre of civilians by a lone U.S. soldier:

What are we accomplishing, aside from enraging the Afghan population we?re allegedly trying to protect? How are we supposed to convince them that a civilian massacre carried out by a U.S. soldier is somehow preferable to a civilian massacre carried out by the Taliban? How does it make any of us safer to have the United States military known for burning Korans and killing innocent Muslim children in their beds? [...]This is supposed to be a period of transition from U.S. occupation to Afghan government control. But what do we expect to accomplish between now and 2014, when our troops are supposed to come home? We can be confident that the Afghan government will still be feckless and corrupt. We can anticipate that the Afghan military will still lack personnel, equipment and training. We can be absolutely certain that the Taliban insurgents will still constitute a threat, because ? and this is what gung-ho advocates of the war fail to grasp ? they live there. To them, Afghanistan is not a battlefield but a home.

The Atlantic's Robert Wright writes about the lessons learned from the massacre in Afghanistan:

The overarching lesson is that once you launch even the best intentioned and most justified of wars, you become a hostage to fortune. Stuff happens--political stuff, geopolitical stuff--and suddenly events have spun out of control. The downsides of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars turned out to be many, many times worse than their proponents said they'd be. (Though there was so little debate about the Afghanistan war that "proponents" is a misleadingly distinct category.) And if you look at the people now saying we should bomb Iran, they tend to be the people who were the most full-throated in their reassurances that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars would work out really nicely.

Robert Kurzban pens a thought-provoking piece on hypocrisy:

Arguments from the right fare little better. Framing the debate in terms of threat rings hollow. The institution of marriage is not the sort of thing that needs defending; more marriages, albeit in novel configurations, don?t threaten the institution. People eating beef Wellington for breakfast would not require defending the institution of breakfast by defining the meal as two eggs, toast, coffee, with orange juice optional. Opponents of same-sex marriage want to use the coercive power of the state to prohibit a particular contract between two citizens, an agenda at odds with the typical philosophical leanings of those on the right.

Finally, Michael Gerson takes on Republican Rick Santorum's attacks on teleprompters and speechwriters:

The idea that a leader should carefully craft his public words, sometimes with the advice and help of others, is not particularly new. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison were known to polish George Washington?s prose. William Seward contributed to Lincoln?s first inaugural, though it was Lincoln?s edits that gave the speech its music. Sam Rosenman captured FDR?s distinctive voice, as Ted Sorensen did for JFK. Richard Goodwin helped Lyndon Johnson rise to the rhetorical demands of the civil rights struggle. ?At times, history and fate,? said Johnson, ?meet at a single time in a single place to shape a turning point in man?s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.?
Such collaboration is not a species of fraud. It is a process in which a leader refines his own thoughts, invites suggestions by trusted advisers and welcomes the contributions of literary craft to political communication. A very few presidents ? Lincoln may exhaust the category ? have no need of consultation on policy or style. But political mortals generally benefit from it.

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undup-Voter-ID-Afghanistan-and-more

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Feds Pull The National Security Card In Abramoff
Case Against Ex-Delay Aide

post from TPMMuckraker on 13 March 2012 07:01:44 AM. © TPMMuckraker

Nearly six years after he pleaded guilty in the Jack Abramoff scandal, a former aide to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay will likely going to be sentenced in the near future. But because of a joint motion granted by the federal judge hearing the case against Tony Rudy, the public wouldn't see the filing listing agreed upon facts in the case.

The reason? National security.

The feds and Rudy's defense team says that the disclosure of "sensitive information related to national security matters" likely "would compromise and negatively impact ongoing intelligence efforts." They said the sensitive information had "no relationship to the Department of Justice's investigation of Jack Abramoff or related persons."

Abramoff said the request was as big of a mystery to him as it was to TPM. "Not a clue," he said in an email to TPM. "Wow."

A DOJ spokeswoman declined to comment, as did Rudy lawyer Kelly Kramer. "I didn't realize you all were still monitoring the Abramoff cases," she wrote in an email.

Rudy is the last remaining defendant in the Abramoff case who has yet to be sentenced, though several are in the appeals process. Though he pleaded guilty on March 31, 2006, the feds continued to delay his sentencing because he was cooperating against other defendants. Under the plea deal federal prosecutors would recommend a sentencing of between two years and two years and six months and Rudy will pay at least $250,000 in restitution. A sentencing date hasn't yet been set.

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_security_card_in_abramoff_case_against_ex-delay_aide.php

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Limbaugh syndicator suspends national ads for two
weeks to let things calm down

post from US Politics | AMERICAblog News on 13 March 2012 07:00:18 AM. © US Politics | AMERICAblog News

Wow, someone is in real trouble.

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Tuesday Open Thread

If you believe in a cause, you must be willing
to put yourself on the line for that cause.

Adam Clayton

Born March 13, 1960

video details and more

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http://www.myleftwing.com/diary/27824/tuesday-open-thread

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A few more thoughts on Professor Henry Louis
Gates

This is a continuation of my discussion that I started earlier this week. Most of this grew out of[...]

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Margaret Kimberley hits the sweet spot
(principles!)

Call a Georgetown law student a slut, and the liberal universe goes into supernova. Destroy Somalia and Libya, or obliterate due process of law, and the same people just yawn. Attorney General Eric Holder "asserts that the president can in fact decide to[...]

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iciples

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