Earlier today we brought you the unfortunate news that the winner of the Democratic nomination for Lt. Governor in Illinois, Scott Lee Cohen, was arrested in 2005 for a vicious assault on his then-girlfriend. According to police reports, Cohen slammed the victim’s head against a wall and left “mild abrasions from [a] knife wound” on her neck and “minor scars on her hand from her trying to defend herself against the arrestee swinging the knife at her.”
If that wasn’t enough, also problematic for his political future is that his girlfriend was a prostitute, though he says he did not know it and only understood that she worked at a massage parlor.
But now it’s all been cleared up. Read More
You may have heard that Larry Kudlow, the former Reagan economic adviser, diehard supply-sider, and CNBC host, is considering running against Chuck Schumer for U.S. Senate from New York.
How can Kudlow hope to match the fund-raising prowess of the incumbent Schumer? Thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision on corporate contributions in the Citizens United case, we got it covered, a top Kudlow supporter and pal tells TPMDC.
“People who are worried about their taxes, particularly medium- and large-size businesses, would be more interested in helping Larry Kudlow than Chuck Schumer,” John Lakian says.
TPMDC caught up with Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and asked him about the shadow Republican budget drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) that the House GOP leadership is running away from:
“That’s their budget plan. He’s the ranking Republican member on the Budget Committee. That is their so-called roadmap. And it’s a roadmap right into the economic ditch that we got ourselves to begin with.”
More of Brian Beutler’s interview with Van Hollen here.
Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) tries distancing himself from his budget chairman’s Social Security-privatizing, Medicare-eliminating budget that carries deficits forward for the next 50 years — but when asked by TPM which parts of the proposal he disagrees with, he can’t say.
Two days after the Illinois primaries for governor, Democratic challenger Dan Hynes has conceded to incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn, but the too-close-to-call Republican primary result is still up in the air, with only a few hundred votes separating the top two vote-getters.
It turns out the winner of the Democrats’ lieutenant Governor’s primary in Illinois has a pretty nasty assault rap for attacking his girlfriend back in 2005. According to police reports he slammed her head against a wall and left “mild abrasions from [a] knife wound” on her neck and “minor scars on her hand from her trying to defend herself against the arrestee swinging the knife at her.”
The charges were eventually dropped because the victim didn’t show up on a court date.
From a political perspective, also not helpful for Cohen is that his girlfriend at the time was a prostitute, though he says he thought she just worked at a massage parlor.
House Republicans don’t have an official budget yet. But they have what amounts to a first draft. The official budget will be released in March or April and will be authored by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee in consultation with the other Republicans on the Committee. But Ryan has released a budget he’d like. And it’s actually fairly detailed. And if you read it, which we have, you start to wonder why Democrats aren’t making a bigger deal out of it.
What’s in it? A few interesting things.
First, it calls for big cuts in Social Security benefits for everyone currently under 55 years of age. On top of the cuts it also calls for privatizing Social Security. Read More
Daniel Pipes is always devising new and ingenious rationales for why bombing Iran is good for America, but his latest brain-child is counter-intuitive, since Pipes is the last person who’d want Obama to succeed: The President must bomb Iran to save his presidency.