Saturday, October 28, 2006

ACLU Withdraws Legal Challenge to “Patriot Act” (11:19 pm)

The American Civil Liberties Union has dropped a three-year-old lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the USA Patriot Act, months after Congress rewrote parts of the law.

The ACLU said Friday it is withdrawing the lawsuit because of “improvements to the law.”

“While the reauthorized Patriot Act is far from perfect, we succeeded in stemming the damage from some of the Bush administration’s most reckless policies,” Ann Beeson, the New York-based associate legal director of the ACLU, said in a written statement.

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

New York Times Endorses Ned Lamont (11:05 pm)

The Senate Race in Connecticut

Ned Lamont has run a far less polished campaign than Mr. Lieberman, but the more we see of him, the more impressed we are by his intelligence and his growing sophistication about the issues facing the nation. He is very much in the Connecticut mold of basically moderate, principled politicians, and his willingness to take on Mr. Lieberman when no one else dared to do it showed real courage and conviction. He would make a good senator. More important, he has the capacity to continually become a better one. We endorse Ned Lamont for Senate.

via DemFromCT at dailykos

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Jim Webb: “Sombody told me yesterday that I’ve written more books than George Allen has read.” (9:25 pm)

GregP at dailykos, who shot the accompanying two-part video, reports on Jim Webb’s energizing response to George Felix “Macaca” Allen’s recent attempted smears.

part 1

part 2

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Gen. JC Christian, Patriot, Helps Clarify the GOP Message for Bob Corker in Tennessee (11:09 am)

posted by Brian Zick | 1 comment

Two New Lamont Ads (10:37 am)

Wes Clark for Ned Lamont

Card Players for Lamont

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Polling and Prognostication, Statistics and Wishful Thinking (7:38 am)

DemFromCT at dailykos has an informative commentary on the variable factors being weighed, and how they are differently interpreted by Democrats, Republicans and non-partisan professionals.

In the end, someone’s right and someone’s wrong. If the Republicans retain the House, there are going to be a good number of embarrassed professional and academic prognosticators. OTOH, whereas most of the reasons to believe there’s a strong Democratic wave are based on published data, the reasons for Republican optimism are based on conjecture, anectodes, head games and fear.

posted by Brian Zick | 2 comments

Friday, October 27, 2006

Letterman v O’Reilly (10:35 pm)

Not exactly a friendly conversation. O’Reilly was outclassed and outmaneuvered at every turn. (But, of course, he never does well when he has to let someone else talk.)
Norm at onegoodmove has the video.

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Hastert’s Office Obstructed Corruption Investigation (6:19 pm)

Steven T. Dennis for Congressional Quarterly reports:

Two former House committee investigators who were examining Capitol Hill security upgrades said a senior aide to Speaker J. Dennis Hastert hindered their efforts before they were abruptly ordered to stop their probe last year.

The former Appropriations Committee investigators said Ted Van Der Meid, Hastert’s chief counsel, resisted from the start the inquiry, which began with concerns about mismanagement of a secret security office and later probed allegations of bid-rigging and kickbacks from contractors to a Defense Department employee.

Ronald Garant and a second Appropriations Committee investigator who asked not to be identified said Van Der Meid engaged in “screaming matches” with investigators and told at least one aide not to talk to them. Van Der Meid also prohibited investigators from visiting certain sites to check up on the effectiveness of the work, the investigators said.
(…)
Investigators said that in addition to allegations of bid-rigging and kickbacks, they were looking into allegations that some security upgrades would fail to work.

via Justin Rood at TPM Muckraker