![We Forgive You. Now Git.]()
by Linda Morgan
To begin with, let’s get a snip of this morning’s op-ed up on National Review:
Arlen Specter belongs to a type familiar to Congress: the time-serving hack devoid of any principle save arrogance. He has spent three decades in the Senate but is associated with no great cause, no prescient warning, no landmark legislation. Yet he imagines that the Senate needs his wisdom and judgment for a sixth term. He joined the Republican party out of expediency in the 1960s, and leaves it out of expediency this week.
Indeed. At the end of the day,what we have here is the second in a line of what will be many ‘victims’ of what are now being called the Tea Party protests. The first, I think, was John McCain.
Now, you’re going to be hearing, over the next weeks and months between now and the mid-term elections, how the supposed GOP swing to the extreme right has cost the Republicans the 2008 election. These charges have come from such as Lindsay Graham and Ramesh Ponnuru, among others, and of course from staunch Democrats, who it would appear are simply pulling themselves up on any available handhold. Specter, in particular blames that factor on his leaving the party. But it’s not so. In truth, the movement of the party for the time that Specter has been in office, has been to the left… The exception… Reagan.. being their wildest success. That leftward march since Reagan has damaged the party, and the country and culminated in the GOP losses in 2008. The Tea Parties have been a [...]
![We Forgive You. Now Git.]()
by Linda Morgan
James Joyner at OTB, this morning brings news abot the latest action of Eric Holder’s Justice Dept:
Attorney General Eric Holder has dropped the case against Ted Stevens, NPR’s Nina Totenberg reports.
A jury convicted Stevens last fall of seven counts of lying on his Senate disclosure form in order to conceal $250,000 in gifts from an oil industry executive and other friends. Stevens was the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, however, he lost his bid for an eighth full term in office just days after he was convicted. Since then, charges of prosecutorial misconduct have delayed his sentencing and prompted defense motions for a new trial.
According to Justice Department officials, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has decided to drop the case against Stevens rather than continue to defend the conviction in the face of persistent problems stemming from the actions of prosecutors.
The judge in the Stevens case has repeatedly delayed sentencing and criticized trial prosecutors for what he’s called prosecutorial misconduct. At one point, prosecutors were held in contempt. Things got so bad [...]
I'm saddened, frustrated , and absolutely disappointed. The story of Mark Sanford was a roller coaster that dumped me off a cliff at the end. Allow me to take you through this sequentially.
I've spent the past 36 hours dramatically changing my thoughts about how I might speak to the unusual story of South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's mysterious disappearance. Mark was the head of the Republican Governor's Association (now headed by Haley Barbour), and considered a potential candidate for the 2012 Presidential nomination.
First I thought, after hearing that he had been missing for several days after driving off in a bodyguard's SUV, that this guy was a little weird. I could, at that point, conceive of only one type of circumstance that might explain this behavior, and that would be some kind of kidnapping or other threat by an outside party. Barring such a circumstance, I figured running for President didn't sound like something that could be on his calendar... disappearing on purpose and intentionally avoiding everyone with no explanation just didn't sound like an event that would instill anyone's confidence. The good news, I thought, is that he certainly hadn't disappeared because of an extramarital affair. No one would draw this much attention just so they could spend time with an alternate squeeze.
Later on I heard he was hiking in the Appalachian Trail. Clearing his head, evidently. According to his staff, this was not unusual, so my thoughts about the man didn't change much, just continuing to seem very odd and unlikely to be a kidnapping but rather just some eccentricity. South Carolina officials were [...]
