Dug up fresh, daily.
POLITICS AS USUAL: GOP Candidate for governor Josh Penry is not quitting the senate. He’s going to fulfill his obligations as Senate Minority Leader while crisscrossing the state campaigning and raising cash. Poor Penry, even if he wanted to quit, politics have trapped him. Will he be a goldbricking quitter? Or will he just practice politics as usual, collecting a tax-and-spend salary from the strapped state while pursuing his own ambitions? Welcome to the Palin party.
RIGHTS VS RIGHTS: The debate over hate crimes legislation and other legislation attached to the hate-crimes Pentagon Bill continues in Washington. Conservatives in the Senate argued the right to free expression was more important than the right to protection from violence that might arise as the result of free expression. But provisions were already in place to protect freedom of expression, so it was a curious argument. They then argued against the federal government’s right to make a nationwide hate crime law, saying that it would trammel states’ rights to decide on their own how to prosecute hate crimes. But this seemed to ignore the entire tragic lesson of the civil-rights-era South. They then argued against states’ rights by saying an individual’s right to carry a concealed weapon trumps all state rights to decide such a matter. “A state’s border should not be a limit on this fundamental right!” None of this will be on the test.
CAMPAIGN CASH DECONSTRUCTION: Patterns emerge. Telling lists. Numbers and variety of individual and organizational donors. There are layers upon layers, water flowing under the water, carrying the water.
RECYCLING DELIBERATIONS: They’re going on everywhere in the state. Today was recycle-debate day. The problem of the garbage never goes away. Here and here and here!
Written and compiled by John Tomasic and David O Williams.
