It used to seem so simple: Gain a U.S. Senate seat by election or appointment, then take that seat. No more. “Al Franken is falsely declaring victory based on an artificial lead created on the back of the double counting of ballots,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who is chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said Tuesday, reacting to Franken’s double-digit lead in the recount over incumbent Republican Norm Coleman. Cornyn added: “Minnesotans will not accept a recount in which some votes are counted twice, and I expect the Senate would have a problem seating a candidate who has not duly won an election.” Any bets on how long it will take to seat all three new senators from Minnesota, Illinois and New York?
Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate said they will not seat Roland Burris, who was appointed Tuesday by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich to fill Barack Obama’s Senate seat. But it is unclear whether the Senate really can reject Burris, a former state attorney general who was the first African-American to win statewide office in Illinois. Blagojevich is still governor, and appointing a replacement is part of his powers.
In a Bush postmortem in the February Vanity Fair, two former advisers suggest Hurricane Katrina finished off George W. Bush’s presidency. “The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn’t matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn’t matter,” said former Bush pollster and campaign strategist Matthew Dowd.
Dan Bartlett, former White House communications director and later counselor to the president, said: “Politically, it was the final nail in the coffin.”
Another former top aide, Lawrence Wilkerson, likened the new president, circa 2001, to Sarah Palin during the past campaign, suggesting Vice President Dick Cheney and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had to cover for Bush’s ignorance of foreign policy. “It allowed everybody to believe that this Sarah Palin-like president — because, let’s face it, that’s what he was — was going to be protected by this national-security elite, tested in the cauldrons of fire,” Wilkerson said.
Most economists say that deficit spending is needed during a severe recession and that if the government cuts spending too much, it can trigger a depression, which is what happened in 1932. But Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman raised an interesting question about whether state spending cuts may undermine the federal spending. “Even as Washington tries to rescue the economy, the nation will be reeling from the actions of 50 Herbert Hoovers – state governors who are slashing spending in a time of recession, often at the expense of their most vulnerable constituents and the nation’s economic future,” Krugman wrote. Because states have balanced-budget requirements, Krugman supports directing some of the stimulus spending toward the states through funding for food stamps and Medicaid, state- and local-level infrastructure projects and aid to education.
It used to seem so simple: Gain a U.S. Senate seat by election or appointment, then take that seat. No more. “Al Franken is falsely declaring victory based on an artificial lead created on the back of the double counting of ballots,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who is chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said Tuesday, reacting to Franken’s double-digit lead in the recount over incumbent Republican Norm Coleman. Cornyn added: “Minnesotans will not accept a recount in which some votes are counted twice, and I expect the Senate would have a problem seating a candidate who has not duly won an election.” Any bets on how long it will take to seat all three new senators from Minnesota, Illinois and New York?
