New York State Senator introducing legislation to install cameras on NY Police guns:

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) ― In a flash, a police officer draws a handgun from its holster. Less than two seconds later, a red laser and bright light shine at whatever is in the gun barrel’s path while a mini-camera records it all.

That’s how mini-cams on police handguns would work under a proposal gaining support in New York, which would be the first state in the nation to require the technology. State police were briefed on the technology and are reviewing it for a possible pilot program, said Michael Balboni, the state’s deputy secretary for public safety.

The device could create a critical visual and audio record of police shootings for use in court, said state Sen. Eric Adams, a Brooklyn Democrat and former police officer. He is drumming up support for testing the cameras with the state police SWAT squad.

Adams said recordings from the $695 cameras couldn’t be altered by a police officer and would quell many questions after controversial police shootings, like the deaths in New York City of Amadou Diallo in 1999 and Sean Bell in 2006.

Police have not commented, but an ex-cop Republican lawmaker is on board:

Adams knows many police won’t embrace the idea at first.
There was no immediate comment from the police department and police officers union in New York City. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office said it will review any legislation that comes from Adams’ effort.

But in Albany, there is growing support.

Republican Sen. Dale Volker of Erie County, a former police officer who would be critical to passing the Democrat-backed bill, already sought funding for a pilot program. But that $300,000 request to test the technology in state police SWAT squads was cut in the budget this spring as part of efforts to close a deficit of about $5 billion.

I wonder what the ACLU and other civil liberty groups would have to say about this. In addition, there could be some concern that the “bright light shine” could turn on at the wrong time and put police officers in danger.

While most people will be looking at the Democrat primary results in West Virginia, between Clinton and Obama, the GOP will have all eyes focused on a special election taking place in Mississippi, and hope to hold on to the seat:

After losing two special elections in conservative-minded districts over the past two months, the GOP is now at risk of losing a seat in the heart of the Deep South — and is pouring all its resources into hanging on to it, including a rare campaign trail appearance by Vice President Cheney on Monday.

A third loss in Tuesday’s 1st District special election would prompt new predictions of electoral doom in November, hurt the party’s already flagging morale and usher in a new round of public finger-pointing among an already fractured GOP leadership.

Southern Democrats, turned off for decades by the party’s liberal-leaning leaders in Washington, seem to be coming home. This special election comes one week after Rep. Don Cazayoux (D-La.) picked up a House seat in the Baton Rouge area that Republicans had held for three decades.

All hands on deck for this race:

President Bush recorded an automated message sent to thousands of districtwide voters. Cheney appeared with Davis on Monday night. Popular Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour and Wicker campaigned alongside Davis.

Desperate for a win, aides at the NRCC have fired off automated calls from first lady Laura Bush, Arizona Sen. John McCain and Barbour to Mississippi voters to encourage them to turn out.

“In these closing hours, we need to go that extra mile to turn out the vote … and to remind everybody in the 1st District of what’s at stake when they go into the voting booth tomorrow,” Cheney said in his election-eve appearance. “What we need in Washington is a strong conservative congressman from Mississippi — not another Democrat going to bat for Nancy Pelosi.”

But despite the national support — and the fact that this district is one of the safest Republican areas in the nation — Davis is finding himself facing a tougher than expected battle. Childers, a gregarious courthouse official in Prentiss County, has demonstrated widespread appeal among the district’s largely rural population, and has effectively made the race a geographic referendum rather than an ideological one.

Even though a win is a win, this win doesn’t necessary mean the bleeding has stopped for the GOP as we move towards the 2008 elections, but a loss of this seat, piggybacked to the previous 2 losses over the last 2 weeks, certainly sends out red flags that a storm is coming.

More delegate math:

Barack Obama’s wave of superdelegate endorsements puts him within reach of the Democratic presidential nomination by the end of the primary season on June 3 — even if he loses half of the remaining six contests.

The Illinois senator has picked up 26 superdelegates in the past week. At that pace, he will reach the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination — 2,025 — in the next three weeks, when delegates from the remaining primaries are included.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s best chance to slow Obama is to move the goal posts. She will get that chance May 31 when the Democratic National Committee’s rules panel considers proposals to seat the delegates that had been stripped from Florida and Michigan. Those two states violated national party rules by holding their primaries in January and lost their delegates.

…

Obama has 1,871.5 delegates, including endorsements from party and elected officials known as superdelegates. Clinton has 1,697, according to the latest tally by The Associated Press. That leaves Obama just 153.5 delegates short of the number needed to win the nomination at the party’s national convention this August in Denver.

There are 217 delegates at stake in the six remaining primaries, in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota. Even if Clinton wins most of those delegates, Obama could reach the magic number by the time South Dakota and Montana vote on June 3.

…

Clinton desperately needs to have the delegates from Michigan and Florida seated in a way that greatly benefits her.

“It would be helpful,” Wolfson acknowledged.

The Democratic National Committee’s rules and bylaws committee voted to strip all the delegates from Florida and Michigan because they violated party rules by holding primaries before Feb. 5. The same panel will consider reinstating them.

Under the votes cast in January, Clinton would have won most of the delegates in both states. However, neither candidate campaigned in either state and Obama had his name removed from the ballot in Michigan.

Reinstating all the delegates and superdelegates would increase the number needed to claim the nomination to 2,209, perhaps extending the campaign. But even under the best scenario for Clinton, Obama would still be left with a lead of about 100 delegates, with fewer than 300 superdelegates left to be claimed.

The speculation is over and the while the watch was on to see what he was going to do, he was called many different names, spoiler among them, now you can add Presidential Candidate to the list:

Former US congressman Bob Barr on Monday announced plans to run for president on the Libertarian Party’s ticket, in a move some analysts say could hurt Republican presumptive nominee John McCain.

“My name is Bob Barr and I’m a candidate for the presidency of the United States of America,” said the former Republican lawmaker, who played a key role in the congressional impeachment of former president Bill Clinton.

Barr said he was running because there was not “currently or anywhere on the horizon” any candidate who understood the principles of fiscal conservatism and basic principles on which he said America was founded.

The former Georgia congressman, who announced his plans at a press conference here, must first win the Libertarian Party’s nomination before throwing himself into the 2008 field for real.

The 59-year-old said he was not concerned about the prospect of damaging McCain, possibly among conservative voters whom the Republican candidate has had trouble courting.

“If Senator McCain … does not succeed in winning the presidency … it will be because Senator McCain did not present, and his party did not present, a vision, an agenda, a platform and a series of programs that actually resonated positively with the American people.”

Can’t argue with any of that. If people are attracted to a Ralph Nader or a Bob Barr candidacy, the fault lies with the other candidates not because Third Parties had the gall to nominate candidates and run.

Even though the field is crowded for the nomination to run for president in the Libertarian Party; with a millionaire sports handicapper and a far left wing former US Senator from Alaska who was lower tier 2008 Democrat presidential candidate among them, Bob Barr should be the front-runner to win the nomination the Libertarian Party Convention in the summer.

You can hear our interview with Bob Barr from 2 weeks ago.

You have to wonder what role, if any, Ron Paul plays in this. With Paul NOT endorsing John McCain, his endorsement could be key for Barr and could lead to a TON of money and millions of supporters from around the Country for Barr.

I wonder if this is over the line just a little:

Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tenn, an Obama supporter, compared Clinton to the Glenn Close character in “Fatal Attraction” – a spurned woman turned stalker who was apparently drowned in a bathtub only to jump up one more time to be shot dead.

“Glenn Close should have stayed in that tub, and Sen. Clinton has had a remarkable career and needs to move to the next step, which is helping elect the Democratic nominee,” Cohen said during a local TV interview. He later apologized for his comments.

A spurned woman turned stalker, drowned and shot dead?? Are we seeing a meltdown of the Democrat Party unfolding before our eyes?

With the prospect of Bob Barr running for president on the Libertarian ticket growing stronger with each passing day, many Republicans, while conceding that he has the right to run, can understand why he is running and agreeing that McCain is not Conservative, are urging Barr not to run anyway:

Former Rep. Bob Barr says a number of Republicans have been trying to persuade him not to run for president on the Libertarian Party ticket, but none has given him a convincing reason.

The former Republican congressman from Georgia formed an exploratory committee last month and told The Washington Times that he has since been subjected to the behind-the-scenes pressure from Republicans not to run.

Mr. Barr says even people who have tried to dissuade him understand why he thinks it important to raise issues from what he calls a “genuinely conservative” perspective and to offer alternatives to the positions of the two major-party candidates.

“In the month since we formed our exploratory committee, not a single Republican who has spoken with me to try and convince me not to seek the Libertarian nomination has disagreed with my reasons for considering a run,” Mr. Barr told The Times yesterday in an e-mail exchange before leaving London on a flight to Atlanta.

Most Republicans who asked him not to run “also said they understand why I’d run and why John McCain is not conservative and will not seriously tackle the growth in government power and spending,” he said. “Some said they would vote for me if I ran, but for the sake of the Republican Party, they would prefer I didn’t.”

All I can say is, that while this Country is still a republic, with a representative form of government, where the people choose their representatives, Third Parties are allowed to field candidates to give additional choices to voters not happy with the current selection.

We certainly can’t have it both ways, meaning that those people who were ectastic that Ralph Nader ran in 2000, and affected Al Gore’s, can’t now be saying it’s unfair for Bob Barr to run, which may hurt McCain.

If this a problem, then perhaps the GOP should have nominated a better candidate than John McCain and this wouldn’t be an issue.

The Hillary deathwatch continues.

With all the problems that we are facing, and by the way, most of them our candidate is on the wrong side of, or at least leaning in the wrong direction, McCain will be going on a tour of America, to talk about… GLOBAL WARMING:

Sen. John McCain really does want to tempt the Republican base. …

We’ve gotten our hands on an advanced transcript of this weekend’s “The Chris Matthews Show” on NBC and the British Broadcasting Corporation’s Katty Kay offered this nugget during the show’s “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know” segment:

“John McCain is going to be doing more of these themed tours of America, and one of them is going to be on energy and global climate change. It could get him into trouble with Republicans, of course, and with the base, who don’t think there is much climate change going on, but it is something that he’s very passionate about and he’s going to be talking about it.”

Don’t know if you agree with me on this one, but to me its obvious that the McCain campaign has decided that with Obama as the Democrat nominee, he really doesn’t need the base and he can appeal to Independents and moderate Democrats who may have went with Clinton, to vote for him.

In just this week alone, McCain talked about trying again for comprehensive immigration reform, (Amnesty), agreed to address the open border, pro-illegal immigration attendees at the La Raza convention and now this.

Had enough yet?

And this is the GOP candidate!

Already deported once after being convicted for abusing a minor, illegal immigrant sneaks in again and this time kills a cop during a traffic stop:

Houston (AP) - An illegal immigrant from Mexico was convicted of capital murder Thursday in the 2006 shooting of a police officer during a traffic stop.

Jurors will now consider whether Juan Leonardo Quintero-Perez, 34, should get the death penalty.

Officer Rodney Johnson, 40, was shot four times in the head after arresting Quintero-Perez for driving without a license.

Records show Quintero-Perez was deported in 1999 after being convicted of indecency with a child, but he slipped back into Texas.

Enough is enough already. This is THE deciding issue for me in November, I don’t care what party, I don’t care what the chances are, I will vote for the person who will build that fence, will secure the border, enforce our laws and stop this madness, and neither party has a presidential candidate offering this.

With all three presidential candidates more interested in a path to citizenship, rather than securing the borders and enforcing laws ALREADY ON THE BOOKS, who is going to protect this Country, our children and citizens from this?

Who the hell is with me ??

Due to criticism from “Blue Dog” Democrats, who joined with GOP House members, over the domestic spending spree Nancy Pelosi added to the War Bill, the bill was temporarily removed from consideration:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday postponed consideration of a bill that would continue funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as a bloc of conservative Democrats balked at the high cost of including several of Pelosi’s favored domestic spending programs.

The Blue Dogs have objected to the creation of a program that would guarantee veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan a year of in-state college tuition for each year served in the war zones. The Blue Dogs said the House had not found any additional money, through spending cuts or tax increases, to pay for the program, a violation of pay-as-you-go rules imposed by House Democrats in early 2007.

These freshman Democrats, who have relatively quiet during their first tenure, are picking up the pace as their reelection nears.

Obama now leads in superdelegates too:

For the first time this campaign season, Barack Obama has surpassed Hillary Clinton’s support among superdelegates, according to the ABC News delegate estimate.

Sen. Obama, D-Ill., picked up two superdelegates this morning giving him a new metric to tout in addition to his current commanding leads in pledged delegates, popular votes, states won, and money raised.

Rep. Donald Payne, D-N.J., switched his endorsement from Clinton to Obama and Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., endorsed Obama. DeFazio was previously uncommitted.

With these endorsements, Obama has the support of 267 superdelegates and Clinton has 265 superdelegates.

Newt Gingrich had sage advice for GOP leadership as we move closer to the 2008 elections, and with the memory of the disastrous 2006 elections still fresh in everyones mind:

warning that his fellow Republicans are facing peril in the fall elections unless they change course, a prediction made by a former Republican House speaker.

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned on Tuesday that Republicans must immediately “chart a bold course of real change” otherwise they will “suffer decisive losses this November.”

GOP House Minority leader John Boehner wasn’t interested:

That apparently didn’t sit too well with Boehner as he faces an uphill battle to reclaim control of the U.S. House of Representatives since more than two dozen fellow House Republicans are leaving this fall or running for another office. And last weekend, they lost a Republican seat in Louisiana in a special election.

“Listen a lot of people have a lot of ideas and advice for me and our leadership team about what it is that we should do,” Boehner told reporters

We can list many reasons that Newt is right, and Boehner’s response is not appropriate, but the bottom line is that Boehner is the MINORITY leader, end of story.

House Democrats are divided over the issue of illegal immigration and a bill to secure the borders first vs. offering a path to citizenship:

WASHINGTON - House Democratic leaders worried about the November election want to thwart enforcement-only immigration legislation supported by colleagues in districts where immigration is a hot-button issue, a leading House liberal said Thursday.

“People who are very committed to comprehensive reform but who are charged with the responsibility for the next elections think about Lou Dobbs and the power of this issue in different local election contests,” said Howard Berman, D-Calif.

Dobbs is a CNN anchor who advocates tough action against illegal immigration. He frequently criticizes the “comprehensive” approach, which would couple strict enforcement with a path to citizenship for the nation’s estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

Speaking at an immigration-policy conference, Berman said leading House Democrats want to avoid a vote on legislation that would require employers nationwide to check the legal status of all workers with a federal verification system.

Supportive Democrats and a whole bunch of Republicans have joined together to force a vote:

The bill’s chief sponsor is Heath Shuler, a freshman Democrat from North Carolina, where a decade of heavy illegal immigration has roiled the political waters.

Shuler is one of 10 Democrats who have signed a petition that seeks to force House leaders to schedule a vote on his bill.

Meanwhile, 178 Republicans have put their names on the petition, bringing it within 30 signatures of the 218 it needs to force the issue.

NumbersUSA has been at the forefront of this issue, keeping its members up to date on who is signing the petition and who is holding out. It is important that this bill be received and voted on by the House. If we can get that far, it will pass and perhaps, FINALLY, we will see some improvements in our fight against illegal immigration.

Nine months ago, before going to do one of those, (Guess who made this statement?), “jobs that Americans will not do", 37 year-old Illegal Immigrant Guadalupe Gutierrez-Juarez, raped a 10 year old girl who gave birth to a baby yesterday:

We broke the unbelievable story last night of a 10-year old girl in St. Anthony who gave birth to a baby. She’s now one of the youngest kids in the country to become a mother. Residents both on and off camera were shocked and in dismay over the situation, today this is what they had to say about our story.

That person is this man, 37-year old Guadalupe Gutierrez-Juarez. Juarez is actually an illegal immigrant, and is now behind bars in the Fremont County Jail on other rape charges. Since we broke this story exclusively yesterday, we’ve been checking with sources throughout the North Valley for more information.

The criminal complaint against Gutierrez-Juarez says the rape of the 10-year old happened between November and January. As we told you last night the girl gave birth at Madison Memorial this weekend and both mother and child are doing well. If convicted the illegal immigrant could face life in prison, a $50,000 fine ,or both. Whether he ever serves anytime behind bars will be up to the judge who if he places him on probation, could deport him.

Just another disgusting and deplorable story, perputrated by someone who shouldn’t have been here to begin with, but, as you know, that lettuce has to get picked, and Americans won’t do it, at least that’s what we are told.

Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the type of man that a President Obama would meet with, has fired another verbal salvo at Israel:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Thursday that the state of Israel is a “stinking corpse” that is destined to disappear, the French news agency AFP reported.

“Those who think they can revive the stinking corpse of the usurping and fake Israeli regime by throwing a birthday party are seriously mistaken,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Ahmadinejad as having said.

“Today the reason for the Zionist regime’s existence is questioned, and this regime is on its way to annihilation.”

Ahmadinejad further stated that Israel “has reached the end like a dead rat after being slapped by the Lebanese” - referring to the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006.

Knowing that Obama would be that kind of a President, would be a reason I could pull the lever for McCain, once again having the GOP give Conservatives a candidate not to vote for, but instead the Democrats giving us a candidate to vote against.

Apparently, the donors with the most money do:

WASHINGTON — In a heated phone call with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi late last month, Hillary Clinton supporter Harvey Weinstein threatened to cut off campaign money to congressional Democrats unless Pelosi embraced a new plan by the movie mogul to finance a revote of the Democratic presidential primaries in Florida and Michigan, according to three officials who were briefed on the contents of the conversation.

The three officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly about the private phone conversation, said Weinstein, a top supporter of Clinton’s presidential campaign, appeared determined to buy Clinton more time in her battle against Sen. Barack Obama by pushing for the revote and pressing Pelosi to back off her previous comments that superdelegates should support the candidate who’s leading in pledged delegates in early June.

And Clinton has NO intention of giving up. This is a slobberknocker!!

Pat Toomey, the former Congressman from PA, who came within 1% of defeating Arlen Specter in the 2004 US Senate PA primary, now serves as the President of the Club for Growth. The CfG is dedicated to defeating RINO’s and liberals across the Country.

The GOP establishment loves the defeating liberal part of the mission statement, but the RINO part? Not so much:

The Club for Growth Political Action Committee has long been attacked for intervening in Republican primaries and targeting the party’s most economically liberal incumbents.

In 2000, Pennsylvania Rep. Jim Greenwood called the Club “cannibals.” When the Club ran ads against Ohio Sen. George Voinovich and Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe for resisting President Bush’s 2003 tax cut, Karl Rove deemed the ads “counterproductive.”

And Newt Gingrich, the man who ushered in a conservative Republican majority in 1994, once denounced the Club. “Their strategy is explicitly wrong,” he said. “The key is to elect more Republicans and have a bigger majority and be more inclusive.”

Now comes Oklahoma Rep. Tom Cole, the man charged with rebuilding the GOP majority in the House. In a New York Times Magazine article, he denounced the Club for Growth’s involvement in a special election in Ohio’s fifth congressional district.

“The problem I have with the Club is I think they’re stupid,” Mr. Cole said. “They spend more money beating Republicans than Democrats.”

Don’t you just love the comment by Cole? Doesn’t that show you all you need to know about what the problem is with the GOP?

This is just more typical establishment bunk that they feel the only important thing is that the candidate has an ® next to their name.

The CfG record stands on it’s own:

In 2000, Rep. Tom Davis, then the chairman of the National Republican Campaign Committee, denounced the Club for supporting Scott Garrett’s challenge to New Jersey Rep. Marge Roukema. Mr. Cole and the entire Oklahoma establishment backed Tom Coburn’s primary opponent in the 2004 Senate race, Oklahoma City Mayor Kirk Humphreys, viewing Mr. Coburn as too conservative to be electable. Led by President Bush, the GOP cavalry rallied behind liberal Arlen Specter in 2004, and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Joe Schwarz of Michigan in 2006.

Mr. Chafee, you may recall, is the same senator who refused to vote for the president in 2004, and voted against the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and Justice Sam Alito’s nomination.

Not many people remember, or perhaps didn’t even know that much of the RNC’s money problems came before the Amnesty bill fiasco, but actually in 2004 & 2006 when the RNC dumped MILLIONS of dollars into PRIMARY races to protect Arlen Specter and Lincoln Chafee against Republican challenges.

I certainly stopped giving money to them then and the Amnesty bill was the finally straw in me even being an RNC “member.”

So I say to the CfG, good luck to you and keep up the good work.

Mr. Toomey, you sir, are a Conservative…… with ATTITUDE!

What a difference a few days make. Just this past Monday and a few days after Congressman Fossella’s arrest in Virginia for drunk driving, the Republican party, (at the National and State level), stood by the long time incumbent. Even the very influential New York State Conservative Party offered support, which came with a disclaimer:

Party officials are praising the embattled Staten Island Republican for apologizing for his drunken-driving arrest. There’s no talk of pressuring Fossella to step down or take a pass on his reelection bid this fall, they say, even if he ends up serving a short jail term for the offense.

That would change only if there are embarrassing new revelations on top of what Fossella called a one-time-only “mistake” and “error in judgment.”

“My hope is that we’ve seen the worst of it,” said state Conservative Party Chairman Mike Long. “He was wrong. He has stated he was wrong. Let’s hope that’s all there is to it, and we will go on from there.”

And it appears things have changed:

The Washington Post reported yesterday afternoon that Republican insiders say there is little chance Mr. Fossella, who has spent more than a decade in Congress, will seek re-election.

Last week, Mr. Fossella was arrested for drunken driving in Alexandria, Va., with a blood alcohol content level of 0.17%, more than twice the legal limit. If convicted, he faces a mandatory five-day jail term.

Compounding his troubles is a growing focus on Mr. Fossella’s relationship with a woman who reportedly picked him up from the police station after his arrest, Laura Fay, and his relationship with her young daughter.

When Mr. Fossella was pulled over, he told police that he was driving to see his sick daughter on nearby Grimm Street — where Ms. Fay lives with her daughter, the Daily News reported. The congressman’s wife and three children live on Staten Island.

In addition to that, there are reports that Republican officials have told big donors to stay clear of Fossella and some have even suggested that donors ask for their donations be returned.

On top of everything else going on, the GOP certainly didn’t need this to deal with, a safe district possibly opening up due to scandal and becoming vulnerable to a Democrat pickup.

This story sure opens up a whole bunch of pandora box items regarding the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

But first the story. An Ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee, Abdallah Salih al-Ajmi, who was free on bail in Kuwait awaiting trial that he helped raise money for Al Qaeda, carried out a suicide bombing in Mosul:

Three years ago, Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti soldier who deserted to fight in Afghanistan alongside the Taliban, sat in a detention cell at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, while lawyers argued whether he was an “enemy combatant.”

Last week, a Dubai-based television channel reported that al-Ajmi was killed carrying out a homicide bombing in Mosul, Iraq.

While the report did not specify which attack Abdullah carried out, Iraqi officials reported that Mosul was hit on April 26 by three homicide attacks, killing seven people.

Why was someone who was “declared a threat to the United States and its allies” released?

This is just another example, and there seems to be one or more everyday, of an issue that John McCain is on the wrong side of. Not only did he sponsor the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which made everything comfy cozy for the detainees, he has been vocal in his wanting the facility closed and shutdown altogether.

While the Democrats are fighting for terrorist rights, lawyers trying to get these people released, and GOP leaders demanding the facility be closed, who is bothering to make sure the terrorists are staying locked up?

In his effort to unseat GOP Senator Norm Coleman, things were looking really good for comedian turned liberal talk radio host turned politician Al Franken.

Fundraising was no problem, thanks to his Hollywood friends, name recognition was high, (hey, the guy was on Saturday Night Live!!), and of course the climate for the GOP is anything but sunny these days.

But along comes a GOP blogger from Minnesota, who dug up an itty-bitty problem for Al Franken; He owes $70,000 in 17 States in back taxes:

Eagen, Minn. (AP) - Senate candidate Al Franken wants to talk about jobs, health care and global warming. Republican blogger Michael Brodkorb wants to talk about Franken’s failure to pay all his income taxes on time.

Guess what everyone is talking about?

From the kitchen table in his tranquil suburban neighborhood, Brodkorb for the last year has used his blog “Minnesota Democrats Exposed” to launch a furious political assault on Franken. He’s labeled the former comedian and liberal commentator a “mean-spirited and un-Minnesotan” candidate who’s running a “desperate and ridiculous” campaign.

That’s routine stuff in the world of political blogging, but in the last two months Brodkorb has scored two direct hits that have the Franken campaign reeling. Brodkorb scooped the traditional media by detailing extensive bookkeeping problems in New York and California that ultimately prompted Franken, this week, to pay about $70,000 in back taxes to 17 states.

The stories have knocked Franken off balance as he prepares to take on Sen. Norm Coleman, in what’s expected to be one of the most expensive and toughest-fought U.S. Senate races this year.

The power of the “New Media” continues to shine and political blogging has been at the forefront of that “movement.”

You just have to love Jersey politics. During the public comment portion of a public meeting, the Mayor of Hackensack had police remove a citizen from the meeting for daring to get into a heated discussion with the Mayor:

Police removed a local activist from a public meeting on Tuesday on the orders of Hackensack Mayor Jorge Meneses following a heated discussion about the firing of eight city EMS workers, according to a report in The Record of Bergen County.

The report said police escorted Arlene Schatz, the president of the Hackensack Taxpayers Association, from the council meeting at city hall after a back and forth exchange with Meneses during the public comment portion of the meeting. Meneses said he took issue with her suggestion that the council was receiving money in return for allowing Hackensack University Medical Center to build a cancer center.

Imagine the nerve of a tax paying citizen daring to question a publicly elected official.

You know you are in trouble when in the middle of 2 Wars, just 7 years after 3,000 Americans were murdered, the US Government releases a guide “Words that Work and Words that Don’t: A Guide for Counter-Terrorism Communication", and suggests dropping any reference to Islam or Muslim when discussing terrorism:

U.S. officials are being advised in internal government documents to avoid referring publicly to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups as Islamic or Muslim, and not to use terms like jihad or mujahedeen, which “unintentionally legitimize” terrorism.

“There’ s a growing consensus [in the Bush administration] that we need to move away from that language,” said a former senior administration official who was involved until recently in policy debates on the issue.

Instead, in two documents circulated last month by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), the multiagency center charged with strategic coordination of the U.S. war on terror, officials are urged to use terms such as violent extremists, totalitarian and death cult to characterize al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

“Avoid labeling everything ‘Muslim.’ It reinforces the ‘U.S. vs. Islam’ framework that al Qaeda promotes,” according to “Words that Work and Words that Don’t: A Guide for Counter-Terrorism Communication,” produced last month by the center.

So, what does the guide suggest instead?:

Instead of calling terrorist groups Muslim or Islamic, the guide suggests using words like totalitarian, terrorist or violent extremist — “widely understood terms that define our enemies appropriately and simultaneously deny them any level of legitimacy.”

By employing the language the extremists use about themselves, the guide says, officials can inadvertently help legitimize them in the eyes of Muslims.

“Never use the terms ‘jihadist’ or ‘mujahedeen’ … to describe the terrorists,” the guide says. “A mujahed, a holy warrior, is a positive characterization in the context of a just war.

Are you as frustrated as I am? Is this what these people are hired to do? Created little “coloring books” to hand out on how to refer to terrorists that meets the politically correct litmus test.

Why is there such a rush to make everything so bland and tippy-toe around the problem for fear of “offending” someone. This has a trickle down effect in the way we handle airport screening of passengers and other procedures to protect us from WHO IS TRYING TO KILL US.

From John McCain:

“Unless we enact comprehensive immigration reform I don’t think you can take it piecemeal,” he explained Monday, answering a question about providing visas for skilled workers.

“In other words,” he said, “because as soon you and I start to talk about the highly skilled workers, our agricultural interest people are going to say, ‘Look we need ag workers, too.’ And then somebody’s going say, ‘We need the DREAM Act,’ and then somebody’s going to say, ‘We’ve got to enforce our border.’”

Throughout the Republican primary battle last fall, McCain faced relentless questions about his support for the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, the 2007 bill that would have allowed illegal immigrants to remain in the United States if they faced certain penalties. Opponents labeled it “amnesty.”

Since clinching the nomination, McCain has largely avoided speaking about wide-ranging immigration reform, arguing primarily that the government needs to focus on securing the border with Mexico before taking on other measures.

On Monday, he lobbied for a broader approach that includes a temporary guest worker program and tamper-proof ID cards.

“We get in this kind of a circular firing squad on immigration reform in the Congress of the United States,” McCain said, “and the lesson I learned from it is we’ve got to have comprehensive immigration reform.”

(via kausfiles)

In case there was any doubt left that Obama would be the Democrat nominee:

Returns from 98 percent of North Carolina precincts showed Obama winning 56 percent of the vote to 42 percent for Clinton, a triumph that mirrored his earlier wins in Southern states with large black populations.

That made Indiana a virtual must-win Midwestern contest for the former first lady, who was hoping to counter Obama’s persistent delegate advantage with a strong run through the late primaries. Returns from 88 percent of the state’s precincts showed Clinton with 52 percent of the vote to 48 percent for Obama.

Obama won at least 63 delegates and Clinton at least 57 in the two states combined, with 67 still to be awarded.