Still catching up. I will be tossing random items in here over the weekend:
McJoan at Daily Kos has a thread up about Rand Lewis' likely bid for the ID-01 Democratic nomination, which has also gotten play this week from CQ Politics and Ridenbaugh Press.
Hat tip to MountainGoat, who spotted this laughable essay at Idaho Chooses Life about those scary liberals Phil Batt, Robert Ring, and Bruce Newcomb. I predict that it's only a matter of time before mainstream Idahoans wake up to the fact the Idaho Legislature now has the most dysfunctional GOP leadership our state has seen in decades. Too bad we need to wait until November 2008 for another chance at course correction. That is, unless a few moderate GOP legislators decide that their party has been hopelessly hijacked by extremists and hacks and they flip sides to join the Democrats for the 2008 session.
Bill Sali has an op-ed out this week in which he criticizes House Democrats for including domestic spending in the bill to reduce the U.S. presence in Iraq. "Too often legislation is a confusing cocktail of essential items laced with pure political pork. When there are 10 things in a bill that you support and five things you don't, pork politics compels your vote according to your stake in the political smorgasbord," he wrote. I rarely agree with Sali, but he is right that legislation ought to be tightly focused and not laden with side pork projects. It ought to be that way, but it isn't. Of course, Sali doesn't mention that Republicans have always done the same thing - so he, too, is playing politics with the issue. Welcome to Washington.
Saturday ... Just noticed that John Edwards is getting some very impressive endorsements from members of Congress, including Jim Oberstar of Minnesota and David Obey of Wisconsin, who are chairs, respectively, of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and the House Appropriations Committee. If anything, Edwards' campaign seems to have gained some steam in the week since he and Elizabeth announced that her cancer has returned. ... meanwhile, about 100 people showed up for the local Barack Obama campaign kickoff in Boise this afternoon, which was one of several thousand events taking place today in all 50 states. Channels 2, 6, and 7 sent reporters, as did Boise Weekly.
Oh the Irony. Today at the statehouse, while waiting for the House to finish debate on the highway funding bill, Senate Democrats tried to amend a bill (H330) that 1)transferred money to the Economic Recovery Reserve fund 2)appropriated money to a Commerce Dept slush fund and 3) appropriated money from the Public Education Stabilization fund to offset loss of Craig/Wyden funds.
These were three sepatate motions in JFAC, but got combined into a single bill. Vote against the slush fund and you're voting against replacing Craig/Wyden.
The motion to amend failed and the bill passed, both strict party line votes.
Kudos to Kate Kelly, David Langhorst and Clint Stennet for winning the debate, too bad none of the R's were listening.
Posted by: kurt | March 30, 2007 at 10:47 PM