Cross-Posted to the Debate Link CNN’s Political Ticker reports Mitt Romney pumping up his credentials against new Democratic front-runner Barack Obama: “Frankly, I don’t think Senator McCain, despite his service and his length of experience that that’s going to be able to stand up to the message that Barack Obama has brought forward,” he said. “We better think about somebody who can stand up with a message and go toe to toe with [Obama],” Romney said, adding...

The State Senate special election here still remains really tight. Republican Ray Cox currently holds a 220 vote lead with 66% of precincts reporting (42 of 63) RAY COX (R) 3556 50.08 KEVIN DAHLE (D) 3333 46.94 However, Northfield still largely hasn’t reported in. Northfield has nine precincts, eight of which still are yet to report (the one that is in went for Dahle 143 to 106 [56.75% - 42.06%]). Even beyond the college students, Northfield is considered at least liberal leaning, so it’s...

Again, I doubt this has any meaning whatsoever aside from amusing me. Results as of 8:51 Central Central College, Pella, Marion County (27 Obama, 12 Edwards, 10 Clinton, 1 Richardson) Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, Linn County (7 Obama, 5 Edwards, 2 Clinton, 1 Richardson) Grinnell College, Grinnell, Poweshiek County (39 Obama, 21 Edwards, 7 Clinton, 6 Biden) Luther College, Decorah, Winnesheik County (33 Obama, 14 Edwards, 11 Clinton, 4 Richardson, 1 Biden) If this did have meaning, though, I’d...

***Results as of 8:27 PM*** Senator Barack Obama : 35.25% Senator John Edwards : 31.02% Senator Hillary Clinton : 30.78% Governor Bill Richardson : 1.80% Senator Joe Biden : 1.01% Uncommitted : 0.11% Senator Chris Dodd : 0.03% Precincts Reporting: 1304 of 1781 Obama’s lead has been growing all night. It’s hardly over, but the trend lines are looking good for the Illinois Senator. One of my friends was caucusing in the Bettendorf B21 precinct. It went 2-2-1 Obama/Clinton/Edwards, but Obama...

You Iowans think you’ve got all the attention. Well I voted in the special election to fill Minnesota’s 25th State Senate seat. And with one precinct reporting, my candidate, Kevin Dahle is winning with a whopping 60% of the vote (out of 23 cast). His Republican opponent, Ray Cox, is reasonably moderate. In fact, I almost voted for him in 2004 — I was undecided until I was in the voting booth. He does, however, have a significant tendency to talk about moderation on election day...

Now if that doesn’t shake the GOP race up a bit…

Because the Democratic Party’s Iowa Caucus website breaks down results in absurd amounts of detail (and is updated literally by the minute), I’m going to track the voting around four small liberal arts colleges (I don’t do the big ones because they’re in big cities and it’s impossible to figure out which precincts actually contain the schools). I don’t pretend that this information has any specific use — I don’t know what percentage of caucusers are...

It’s a testament to how poll-starved I am that I can panic from seeing early numbers putting the Democratic order as Clinton/Edwards/Obama (with Obama lagging significantly) — numbers gathered from seven of 1781 precincts. I know in my heart that this is utterly meaningless, but yet I still feel dread. Cf. Jay Carney.

Argentina has been doggedly pursuing an investigation linking Iranian officials at the highest levels to the 1994 bombing of a JCC in Buenos Aires. Iran is not happy about this, and has just threatened to lodge a complaint with the ICJ if Argentina doesn’t cease its investigation immediately. It is unclear what legal grounds Iran is relying on for its complaint.

This is new: a conservative columnist pens an article defending the “stupid conservative”. Apparently, it’s better to be dumb — that way you’re not duped by charlatans who use “rationality” to defend gay marriage. Obviously, there is a lot of snark in my initial reaction to this, but honestly there is quite a bit of fear as well. There is a distressing anti-intellectual trend among many conservatives nowadays (read how right-wingers talk about global warming...

California Democrat Tom Lantos, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has announced he is retiring after being diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus. Lantos has been a passionate defender of human rights while serving in the House, and the only Holocaust survivor serving anywhere in Congress. Unsurprisingly, he has been a particularly early and vocal Congressional leader on Darfur. Via Kos, who had been supporting a primary challenge against Lantos due to his relatively-hawkish foreign...

I’m going back to Minnesota on New Year’s Eve (that should be a fun plane trip), so this is it until 2008. Y’all are wonderful. Have a safe New Year’s, and see you soon!

Cross-posted to The Debate Link Earlier today, the co-chairman of “Veterans for Rudy in New Hampshire” made a rather impolitic remark on how Rudy was the guy who will “chase them [Muslims] back to their caves or in other words get rid of them.”". Kind of indicative of the sort of fellow who supports Rudy Giuliani, but I figured that the story would take a predictable course: the speaker would backtrack, saying that he only meant “Islamofascists” or something of...

Jon Swift has collected a “best of 2007″ round-up, with every blogger contributing their own favorite post of the year. I ended up choosing The Chronicle of Madison’s Tomb: Why “Roe Rage” has Nothing To Do With Legal Theory”. I want to thank everyone who gave their input on my list of finalists — it was a good year of blogging, if I do say so myself. But you should certainly check his list out — there are some excellent posts up there, and Jon put a...

Eric L. Goldstein, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006), 239 pages excluding index and endnotes. The book is about the shifting relationships Jews had with Whiteness, race, and Blacks. My review is in the classic law review sense of the term — I use the book as an excuse to talk about what I want to talk about — in this case, how the “Whitening” of Jews paradoxically made them more likely to support civil rights than when...

Politicians are normally rational creatures. This isn’t to say that they act in ways that I find preferable. Rather, though they upset me rather often, normally it’s based on at least a perception of political gain. When they do dumb things, it’s usually based on a miscalculation of the same. That being established, what was Gordon Smith’s angle, defending Trent Lott’s comments on Strom Thurmond (specifically, that he should have been elected to the Presidency on his...

In 2004, after the Presidential debates had concluded, conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan noted an interesting omission from the question list. Neither George W. Bush nor John Kerry had ever been asked about torture. Abu Gharib was still of relatively recent vintage, and it seemed like the sort of topic that should have gotten some play. But no. We got a free pass. It’s easy to keep on torturing when nobody is reminding us that we do it. It’s harder when you have to stand up in front...

Courtesy of Atrios: Obama: The system sucks, but I’m so awesome that it’ll melt away before me. Edwards: The system sucks, and we’re gonna have to fight like hell to destroy it. Clinton: The system sucks, and I know how to work within it more than anyone. Any quarrel?

Cross-Posted to The Debate Link CNN’s political ticker reports that Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is going to endorse fellow pro-war Senator John McCain (R-AZ) tomorrow. I’m not sure anyone should find this surprising. Lieberman is not exactly enamored with the Democratic Party after primary voters dumped him 2006, and the Party is likewise not thrilled at Lieberman’s increasingly reactionary conservative stances on foreign policy. The odd thing, in a sense, is that Lieberman...

Should prosecutors launch investigations into the other 88 players (mostly White and Latino) named in the Mitchell Report? If not, should they drop the case against Bonds?

Cross-posted to The Debate Link Michelle Cottle has an important observation on Fred Thompson: With only three weeks to go until the caucuses, is it really possible that Thompson is going to at last get serious about the race and exert some sort of effort? I’ve always gotten the sense that ol’ Fred likes to think of himself as a clutch player, the type of fella who doesn’t need to work up a sweat in the early going then comes to life in the last few minutes of the game to carry...

Cross-posted to The Debate Link Stephen Suh at the new Cogitamus Blog asks for defenders of torture policy to tell us why we were wrong back in the 1940s when we stood strong against torture. We prosecuted Japanese military officers after WWII for waterboarding our guys. Even the Mississippi Supreme Court, at the height of Jim Crow, declared it beyond the pale. Why were they mistaken? My TMV co-blogger Pete Abel thinks the era of the culture war is over as foreign policy and national security take...

…before the ten of them started beating up a group of Jews on the Q train in New York City.

Does anyone know why Mike Pence (R-IN) of all people voted “present” on Steve King’s (R-IA) resolution promoting the importance of Christianity? Pence is as hard-core a conservative as you’ll fine — and no enemy of the Christian wing of the party. What’s up?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an incredible woman. But she is flatly wrong when she alleges that “moderate Muslims” have not been outspoken in their criticism of human rights violations by their peers. Indeed, the example she choices, the “Qatif” case in Saudi Arabia, is a textbook example of an atrocity that came to Western ears due to the tremendous outrage it sparked amongst Arab Muslims both here and in that country.