From the AP:
“Senator Craig gave us his word” that he would resign by Sept. 30 if he could not overturn the guilty plea, said Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., who chairs the GOP campaign committee overseeing next year’s Senate elections. “I wish he would stick to his word.”
“It’s embarrassing for the Senate, it’s embarrassing for his party,” Ensign said. Asked if Craig’s staying would be a distraction for the party, Ensign said: “It may be a personal distraction for me.”
Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who faces a tough re-election campaign next year in a state where opposition to the Iraq war is strong, spoke with reporters Thursday before Craig announced his plans to stay and fight.
“I would hope that he would live up to what he said he would do _ not put the Senate through the wringer on this, respect the institution,” Coleman said. “Clearly, his ability to serve his people was severely compromised.”
Gov. Bill Richardson (D-NM) and Rep. Tom Udall (D-NM) appear to take their names out of the running for Pete Domenici’s seat.
Meanwhile, someone please explain to CNN that the Dems already control the Senate.
Late Update: TPM Reader JM chides: “Given their performance over the past nine months, are you really sure about this?”
Seems as if everyone, even outside of the liberal blogosphere, is starting to realize that Bush’s plan is just to leave the messes he has created to his successor, which is accompanied by the growing sense of how badly he has failed across a broad spectrum of issues.
“It’s hard to find something he has done that really has improved the situation a great deal,” Stephen J. Wayne, a Georgetown University presidential scholar, tells the AP.
Or as former Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd puts it: “We’re in a worse place than we were in 1999.”
Problem of armed American contractors run amok in Iraq to be solved by implementing “management feedback loop.”
Remember the New Hampshire phone-jamming case? Well, the House Judiciary Committee is now investigating how the Justice Department handled the case.
Verbal gymnastics are more offensive when they’re about oral sex than they are when they’re about state-sanctioned torture.
White House spokesperson Dana Perino dances around the torture question for a second day, as the White House press corps all but rolls its eyes: