Dems considering getting special interest groups to foot the bill for a mail-in, do-over special election primary in Florida.
TPMmuckraker has learned the outlines of the compromise version of the surveillance bill worked out between House and Senate Dems.
Immunity out. Exclusivity in.
At least for now.
Late Update: So much for compromise. Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s office is now saying he would not agree to the compromise outlined by a senior House aide.
I’m starting to think that covering American politics is far easier than covering Canadian politics. But trying to cover the interplay between them both? A challenge of an entirely different magnitude.
This NAFTA story offers no easy answers, no obvious heroes, and a passel of possible villains pointing their fingers at each other.
Here’s the latest from the Canadian Press:
Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton never gave Canada any secret assurances about the future of NAFTA such as those allegedly offered by Barack Obama’s campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office said Friday.
With the NAFTA affair swirling over the U.S. election and Canadian officials skittish about saying anything else that might influence the race, it took the PMO two days to deliver the information.
After being asked whether Canadian officials asked for â or received â any briefings from a Clinton campaign representative outlining her plans on NAFTA, a spokeswoman for the prime minister offered a response Friday.
“The answer is no, they did not,” said Harper spokeswoman Sandra Buckler.
That response will come as a relief to the Clinton campaign, which has angrily denied that it has engaged in the kind of double-talking hypocrisy of which it accuses Mr. Obama.
The ChiTrib looks at Clinton’s claims of foreign policy experience. And the verdict is not a good one. I refer back to my point from yesterday — she doesn’t need to be a seasoned foreign policy hand. But she’s setting herself up for a fall when she claims to be.
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) pulls out all the stops, a trifecta of racist smears against Obama:
An Iowa Republican congressman said Friday that terrorists would be “dancing in the streets” if Democratic candidate Barack Obama were to win the presidency.
Rep. Steve King based his prediction on Obama’s pledge to pull troops out of Iraq, his Kenyan heritage and his middle name, Hussein.
“The radical Islamists, the al-Qaida … would be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on Sept. 11 because they would declare victory in this war on terror,” King said in an interview with the Daily Reporter in Spencer.
King said his comments were not meant to demean Obama but to warn how an Obama presidency would look to the world.
“His middle name does matter,” King said. “It matters because they read a meaning into that.”
Late Update: That’s the AP version above, but it’s worth reprinting the relevant passage from the original report in the Spencer Daily Reporter:
King said he would support presumptive GOP nominee John McCain in part because of alternatives coming from the Democratic Party.
“I don’t want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name – whatever their religion their father might have been,” he said. “I’ll just say this: When you think about the option of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States — I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?”
He continued: “I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror.”
King thinks radical Islamists will say the United States has capitulated because the Obama administration would be pulling troops out of any conflict associated with al-Qaida.
“Additionally, his middle name (Hussein) does matter,” King said. “It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world. That has a special meaning to them. They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name. They will be dancing in the streets because of who his father was and because of his posture that says: Pull out of the Middle East and pull out of this conflict.”
He continued: “There are implications that have to do with who he is and the position that he’s taken. If he were strong on national defense and said ‘I’m going to go over there and we’re going to fight and we’re going to win, we’ll come home with a victory,’ that’s different. But that’s not what he said. They will be dancing in the streets if he’s elected president. That has a chilling aspect on how difficult it will be to ever win this Global War on Terror.”
I guess these things run in cycles. But let’s get real and admit that Hillary Clinton is getting the free ride of all free rides on her repeated invocations of foreign policy experience. As part of her foreign policy experience Clinton claims “I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland.”
The whole quote is as follows …
You know, I was involved for 15 years in, you know, foreign policy and security policy. You know, I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland. I negotiated open borders to let fleeing refugees into safety from Kosovo. I’ve been standing up against, you know, the Chinese government over women’s rights and standing up for human rights in many different places. I’ve served on the Senate Armed Services Committee. And I was the only senator of either party asked to be on an important task force put together by the Pentagon under this administration to figure out what to do with our military going forward.
Now, the Chicago Tribune reports that the borders in question were opened the day before Clinton arrived in the region. But the Northern Ireland claim is the kicker. George Mitchell, who’s obviously a friend, has called Clinton’s role ‘helpful’, according to CNN. But the UK papers today have David Trimble, a key unionist leader and former First Minister and Irish historian Tim Pat Coogan both pooh-poohing her claims. Coogan says her role was “part of the stage effects, the optics.”
These are the sorts of puffed up claims that get other candidates held up to mockery and derision. But Clinton is using them as cudgels in her effort to portray Obama as a lightweight with no experience dealing with foreign policy crises. And basically she’s getting a pass. I guess it speaks to the advantages of staying on offense, which can never be gainsaid. But she’s still getting a big pass on this and a lot else.
Late Update: Here’s the Clinton campaign’s argument (with testimonials) about Hillary’s role in the Northern Ireland peace process.
We’ll be bringing you the latest on today’s vote as it unfolds.
The caucus gets underway at 11 ET.
CNN’s politics page has a big feature story headlined “Fellow Legislator Saw Little ‘Bold’ About Obama” with a introspective, solemn pic of Obama. Then you read the story. And the colleague is a guy named Dan Cronin, a Republican.
Shouldn’t they have spoken to one of the Republicans who now has positive things to say about Obama? Oh, wait …
Late Update: Turns out Cronin is actually a member of McCain’s Illinois leadership team. (Good catch by TPM Reader TK) At this point, this amounts to CNN being spoofed. Correction or some explanation is in order, guys.
The election to fill former Speaker Denny Hastert’s vacant seat is today.
As we reported this week, the race for what has been a normally safe Republican seat is going so badly for the GOP that the National Republican Congressional Committee — which is already struggling to keep up financially with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — has been forced to spend more than $1 million to keep the seat in the R column.
The race is so tight that the NRCC yesterday emailed congressional staff on the Hill asking them to send any of their spare interns over to the RNC to do phone-banking for the GOP candidate, The Hill reports. Is that legal? Not clear, but what happened next is a no-no:
A staffer working for Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio) apparently broke House rules Friday, forwarding a request that congressional staffers send interns to the Republican National Committee (RNC) to make campaign-related phone calls.
The episode started when an aide at the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) sent an e-mail Friday to congressional staffers. The e-mail asked the GOP aides to send interns to the RNC to make phone calls for Jim Oberweis (R), who is running for former House Speaker Dennis Hastertâs (R-Ill.) vacated congressional seat in a special election Saturday.
âIf you have interns sitting around today, please send them over to the RNC…to phone bank for Oberweis,â the e-mail states.
Matthew Lillibridge, a staff assistant in Chabotâs office, forwarded the e-mail to aides in other congressional offices, apparently violating House rules against using House resources for campaign purposes. Lillibridge used his House e-mail address, forwarding the e-mail to other addresses on the House e-mail server.
We’ll be bringing you the results on the IL-14 race tonight as they come in.