I had heard (and it was hardly a surprise) that Ted Kennedy had been working to complete an autobiography in the last months of his life. But I didn’t realize it was coming out so soon. September 14th, True Compass.
Here’s some documentary footage of Sen. Kennedy at a hearing on health care in Eastern Kentucky from 1983.
(The footage is from Appalshop, a documentary film company in southeastern Kentucky.)
Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), a member of the Gang of Six purportedly negotiating a bipartisan health deal, today embraced the ‘death panel’ canard, though he didn’t use the phrase itself. Good to know he’s got a veto on any reform legislation.
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) has no shortage of competitors in 2010. In addition to Democratic challenger, Rep. Charlie Melancon, he’s always drawn improbable Republican primary challenger and porn star Stormy Daniels (and even a “conservative independent” third-party challenger you may not have heard of.).
But yesterday came word that he may be challenged in the Republican primary by retired Army Gen. Russel Honore, best known for leading the Army’s deployment in Louisiana and the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
Honore is a very interesting possibility in terms of potentially shaking up the race. Unlike most others associated with Katrina, Honore came out of it with a very good reputation. And while some national observers did not realize it (because of his very very light complexion), Honore is African-American. (‘Is’ is a fraught word in this context. Honore identifies himself as an “African-American Creole”, which is to say a person of mixed race descended from the French-Spanish-African population of Louisiana from the pre-United States period.) I know enough about Louisiana politics not to be stupid enough to try to understand it. But some Republican GOPers in Louisiana and nationally might see his entry as not totally unwelcome, even an opportunity to unload the thoroughly damaged Vitter.
From WaPo …
At age 34, two years before his first election and two decades before he would run for governor of Virginia, Robert F. McDonnell submitted a master’s thesis to the evangelical school he was attending in Virginia Beach in which he described working women and feminists as “detrimental” to the family. He said government policy should favor married couples over “cohabitators, homosexuals or fornicators.” He described as “illogical” a 1972 Supreme Court decision legalizing the use of contraception by unmarried couples.
The 93-page document, which is publicly available at the Regent University library, culminates with a 15-point action plan that McDonnell said the Republican Party should follow to protect American families — a vision that he started to put into action soon after he was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, when asked whether he’d support retired Gen. Russel Honoré if he gets into the Louisiana Senate race as a Republican, “Oh, man, I’ll support that guy any way he goes.”
Who might fill Ted Kennedy’s seat? That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
Lawyers for indicted former Republican congressman Rick Renzi of Arizona are trying to have the federal government held in contempt on the grounds that the Justice Department leaked to the media about his public corruption case for political reasons.
It’s an interesting twist because we now know that Harriet Miers, as White House counsel, asked DOJ to leak in Renzi’s favor right before the 2006 midterm elections. And while DOJ apparently resisted her request, a later leak — of still unknown origin — favorable to Renzi made it into press in time for the election and Renzi was re-elected.
The metal contraption, the robotic pose, where to start? What’s the caption? Here are some more bracing photographic evidence of Tom DeLay’s start at Dancing with the Stars.