release

Lince Chaffee now says that he may not be a Republican going forward. Those of us who can count on one hand (the left hand, of course) the times he’s actually vted with the party, are pretty sure he hasn’t been a Republican for years anyway.

In the wake of the Democratic victories int he House and possibly the Senate last night, a few things come to mind, both good and bad.
A Self-Inflicted Wound
The root causes of last night’s Republican loss will be debated for quite some time. Without a doubt, though, the Democrats could not have won last night [...]

Jonah:
I for one welcome our new Democratic overlords.
The joke was inevitable.

Glenn sez:
My prediction: If they’re bad for the GOP they’ll leak early. If they’re good for the GOP, they won’t.
And what do we hear this lovely afternoon? Crickets.

Scott McClellan never would have said this:
Senior aides to Mr. Bush scoffed at suggestions that the announcement of the verdict had somehow been orchestrated by the White House.
“Are you smoking rope?” Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said Saturday in anticipation of the verdict. “Are you telling me that in Iraq, that they’re sitting around [...]

If you’ve read Enders Game you know that Orson Scott Card has a thoughtful, balanced, and human approach to the horrors of war. In his column today, Card turns his gaze on our foreign policy challenges in Iraq. The result is educational and compelling. If you read only one thing today, skip [...]

Heard a little something this morning:
Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the [...]

What if the Democrats can’t even win the House race that has Mark Foley’s name still on the ballot?

The Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee had a stiff primary challenge, and looked vulnerable for perhaps the first time in his long career. A wave of scandals had dogged his party in the previous year, and rumor had it that the feds would be indicting him for corruption. If only he [...]

I never for a moment imagined that we’d be able to get through the month of October without some major scandal or stumble by Democrats. Even then, my wildest dreams never approached what actually happened — John Kerry insulting our troops in Iraq:

If the Republicans were worried last week about the base turning out, [...]

Just this afternoon, in a move that could forever change the course of this nation’s history, Duncan Hunter announced that he will be taking the first step on a long road - his quest to win the White House in 2008.
Although it is tempting to pledge our fealty now to this candidate this afternoon, getting [...]

Frank J. on the Tennessee Senate race:
When a dog whistle blows, only dogs hear it and start barking. When someone “blows a racist whistle” only the racists should hear it and start making noise. But, when each of these ads first appeared, the only barking I heard was from the nutroots.
Link via RedState.

In a move that demonstrates both political cynicism and the difficulty of true anonymity on the Internet, the people behind the website Stop Sexual Predators (the site that first publicized the emails, innocuous compared to the messages revealed later, from then-Congressman Mark Foley to former Congressional pages) have been revealed.
At least, their computers have. [...]

Some facts, and a speculative conclusion:
The whisper in Washington is that Karl Rove has been bragging for weeks about his planned October Surprise for the 2006 midterm elections.
Almost exactly a month ago, rumor had it that Osama bin Laden had recently died of typhoid fever.
Previously, when bin Laden was rumored to [...]

Wild Bill at the Passionate America blog got an email from attorney Stephen Jones, on behalf of former Congressional Page and infamous prankster Jordan Edmund. While this may be an “Oh, crap!” moment for Bill and his family, it’s a chance for me to engage in a little translation of lawyer-speak to ordinary English:

Dear [...]

Q: What website announced, on September 17th, 2006, “Welcome to out [sic] new server… Better equipped to deal with any sudden traffic spikes…” ?
A: BlogActive, a web site devoted to exposing closted gay officials who fail to vote according to the site’s legislative agenda.

George Will, via ReidBlog:

After the 1936 election, in which President Franklin Roosevelt shellacked the Republican nominee in all but two states, a humorist wrote: “If the outcome of this election hasn’t taught you Republicans not to meddle in politics, I don’t know what will.” If, after the Foley episode — a maraschino cherry atop the [...]

We now know about some suggestive e-mails, some explicit instant messages, a long history of close contact with the Page program (including one alleged instance of showing up drunk at the Page residence) - so question One is, did Foley actually have sex with any of these pages or was he just chasing wild geese?
How [...]

By now the entire world knows that Former Congressman Mark Foley sent sexually explicit email and instant messages to former Congressional pages. When he knew he was about to be exposed, he resigned and checked himself into rehab.
His once-promising career is over. His reputation is destroyed. He may even face criminal charges [...]

Torture works.
Thanks to ABC correspondent Brian Ross, we know that several high-level Al Qaeda members in U.S. custody broke down under expert interrogation - some lasting for mere seconds, none more than just over two minutes. In the process, they gave up valuable information leading to the arrest of several operative and the foiling [...]