Will Notre Dame win by more or less than the average 20 point margin of victory over Georgia Tech tomorrow?

I’ll vote “less”.  We’re only going to win by two touchdowns, 27-13.

In April, the New York State City Council passed a ban on metal bats in high school sports.  The ban was sponsored by Republican City Councilman Jim Oddo, on whose first campaign I volunteered.  Today, a judge upheld the ban, saying that while the law was passed without a factual basis, it was within the City Council’s rihts to pass such a law.

As a baseball purist, I don’t like metal bats, night games, relief pitching, or the designated hitter, but that’s beside the point.  Baseball league, not legislatures, should determine the rules for their own games, and parents and players should exercise their own judgment as to whether they choose to participate under those rules.  If they don’t like those rules, talk to the league, form a new league, or don’t participate.  The judge agreed, but he also knew that it wasn’t his call to make.

“Supreme Court Justice John Koeltl”, no matter how awkward of a pronounciation,  has a certain ring to it.

Idaho Republican Sen. Larry Craig will resign from the Senate amid a furor over his arrest and guilty plea in a police sex sting in an airport men’s room, Republican officials said Friday.

Craig will announce at a news conference in Boise Saturday morning that he will resign effective Sept. 30, four state GOP officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

AP

It’s for the best, not just for the Republican Party, but for the country.  I heard on the radio today on my way from work that Governor Otter already has a replacement ready.

Silvia Aloisi writes for Reuters about an upcoming film to highlight the Venice film festival.  The Venice film festival will be showing “Redacted” by director Brian De Palma along with at least eight other films focusing on the Iraq conflict.  “Redacted” is about the worst atrocities committed by US troops in Iraq.  De Palma is extremely biased in his film and is clear about his agenda.

De Palma, 66, whose “Casualties of War” in 1998 told a similar tale of abuse by American soldiers in Vietnam, makes no secret of the goal he is hoping to achieve with the film’s images, all based on real material he found on the internet.

“The movie is an attempt to bring the reality of what is happening in Iraq to the American people.  The pictures are what will stop the war.  One only hopes that these images will get the public incensed enough to motivate their congressman to vote agaist this war.”

This guy hates America and is dedicated to enraging  others with hatred for America as well.  But let’s look at some actual facts.  Any American who has been found guilty of crimes is prosecuted and punished in full light of public disclosure.  There is no attempt to cover up.  These incidences have been very few and when they happen are dealt with.  Mr. De Palma makes no attempt to show the amount of American blood, and treasury that has gone to help the people of Iraq or around the world for that matter.  He has made no attempt to distinguish between a few renegade individuals and that of the mission, objectives and heart of the American military and policy.  He does not mention that the few incidents that he bases his entire film on where daily occurrences under Saddam Hussein.  He ignores that the fact the Al Qaeda and the islamist extremist in Iraq are the ones whose proclaimed mission it is to kill, torture innocent people.

This aggressive propaganda is what we are up against, and we as a country need to combat it with new innovative and creative strategies to promote what America is about, as well as freedom and democracy.

As expected, Sen. John Warner announced that he will not seek reelection.  So what’s a conservative to do?  Neither Tom Davis nor Jim Gilmore seem like suitable replacements.  Gilmore’s a big spender.  Davis is a social liberal, even going so far as to support taxpayer funding of abortion in some circumstances.  Goodlatte for Senate anyone?

Offering federal help for strapped mortgage holders, President Bush is proposing to aid hundreds of thousands of borrowers hard hit by the housing slump.

The president on Friday was to talk about several initiatives and reforms to help homeowners with risky mortgages keep their homes, a senior administration official said Thursday. Bush also was to discuss efforts to prevent these kinds of problems from arising in the future.

The official said Bush will direct Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson to work on an initiative to help troubled mortgage holders get services and products they need to keep them from defaulting on their loans. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the initiatives ahead of the presidential event.

AP News

I’m going to get right to the point.  This is a bunch of crap.  This is a prime example of the  growing problem in the Republican Party that is causing us to lose Libertarians, independents, and Reagan Democrats.  What right does Bush have to bail out people who have defaulted on their mortgages using our tax dollars?  What kind of slap in the face is this to those of us who are responsible home owners?  Nobody told these people to take out a mortgage they couldn’t afford and this whole concept of predatory lenders is bogus.  Did the lenders hold a gun to their heads and force them to sign a mortgage they couldn’t afford?  Of course not.

These people chose to purchase homes that were beyond their means and now it’s biting them in the rear end.  The only ones to blame are themselves.  Anybody with a half a brain knows that you are taking a gamble with an ARM loan, which is what the majority of these have people who are defaulting have.  When I had bought my house I saved up the money for the down payment and I got a fixed rate loan.  I wasn’t stupid.  I knew the low interest rates weren’t going to last forever.  I also bought a home that I could afford.  It wasn’t anything grand and the neighborhood was questionable, but that’s what I could reasonably afford at the time.  Sure I could have bought a $200,000 house with a low adjustable rate mortgage, but what would have happened when the Fed started raising interest rates month after month?  I never missed a mortgage payment because I was responsible.  Bailing these people out only encourages further neglect.

And the left still thinks Bush is a conservative.

His Iowa showing is helping him across the country.

Huckabee, who scored a stunning second-place in the Republican Party of Iowa straw poll on Aug. 11, received support from 14 percent of Iowans and 9 percent of New Hampshire Republicans in the new ARG poll. He had been at 1 percent in each state in July. Huckabee stands at 9 percent in South Carolina, up from 3 percent in July, and is tied with former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney for fourth place.

Thompson’s Iowa support remained stuck at 13 percent for the second month after peaking at 14 percent in June, according to the poll. He trails Huckabee in New Hampshire and is down from 13 percent in July to 8 percent. The former U.S. Senator from Tennessee is also off his peak in South Carolina, down from 27 percent in July to 23 percent this month.

Don’t count out the former Arkansas Governor.

I know what you are thinking. Immigration, campaign finance, etc. The man has a whole host of bad policy ideas. It is probably just not possible at this point for him to repair the damage he has done with conservative voters, and conservatives should be very wary of considering him as the nominee.

That said, I think this video is very powerful testimony of why McCain, while he would not be a great President, is a great American.

Now, along comes the Republicans greatest attempted power grab yet. They are asking California voters next June to change the way the state’s electoral votes are allocated – from a winner-take-all system to a congressional-district-by-congressional-district system.

Democrats have been carrying California in recent elections. Even if they were to carry the state in 2008, Republicans would get about 20 electoral votes under these new rules.

On the surface this sounds reasonable – award electoral votes to whichever party carries a particular congressional district. It might be reasonable if it didn’t constitute unilateral disarmament by the Democratic Party.

Politico

Setting aside the former Congressman’s unabashed hypocrisy and bias, I do agree with him that the GOP in California is trying to pull a fast one.  Having California switch from a winner take all system to awarding electoral votes by Congressional district would be damning to the Electoral College.

Currently, Maine and Nebraska have this system and have had it for quite some time.  Nobody has ever really made a fuss about it, probably because they receive a small amount of votes and the entire state in both cases is generally slanted towards one party anyhow.  Throwing California into the mix, however, could throw an election and you are going to have an onslaught of states racing to change their systems as well.  It will be no different than the muddle of primary moves going on across the country right now.

I suspect that California voters will reject this ballot initiative when they vote this fall because of the majority of Democrat voters in the state and it is the Democrat Party that gets hurt by this move.  It was attempted in Colorado a few years ago and failed there.  The Electoral College is there for a reason and they should stop trying to tamper with it.

After a long period of what some would say has been flirtatious coyness, Sen. Fred Thompson is finally formalizing his campaign over the next week starting today with his closest supporters:

Fred Dalton Thompson will tell his supporters that he is running for president today in a 4 p.m. conference call with 800 to 1,000 elected and party officials from around the country, a source close to the campaign said today.

On the call, Thompson will detail his plans for the future, which are expected to include an appearance on Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” on Wednesday night — even as his rivals debate on Fox — and could be followed by a formal announcement the next day.

The confirmation of Thompson’s plans end a months-long flirtation with the public about whether the former senator and Hollywood actor would seek the Republican nomination for the presidency.

In addition to the 4 p.m. call with supporters, Thompson’s campaign will also hold a concurrent 4 p.m. call with top donors. Thompson will speak on both calls, the source said.

I think he has lost a bit of momentum as far as excitement goes, but he has remained steady in the polls and is still on top of everyone but Rudy nationally and is ahead in a few state primary polls in the south.

I think on one hand waiting has been good, because most people aren’t paying attention to primaries right now that aren’t occurring until next year (except people like us), but on the other hand with several states moving their primary dates up and up closer to Jan. 1 he will have to hit the ground running.

Two Senate Republican colleagues, including John McCain, called Wednesday for Sen. Larry Craig to resign. The White House, too, expressed disappointment in the case of the Idaho Republican caught in a men’s room undercover police operation. Arizona Sen. McCain and Norm Coleman of Minnesota, the state where Craig was arrested, became the first senators to join Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., urging Craig’s resignation.

McCain told CNN the decision was Craig’s to make, “but my opinion is that when you plead guilty to a crime, you shouldn’t serve. That’s not a moral stand. That’s not a holier-than-thou. It’s just a factual situation.”

“I think he should resign,” McCain said.

Breitbart

It’s not often I find myself seeing eye to eye with Senator McCain, but on this we agree.  Craig should resign.  The man pleaded guilty and was convicted of a crime, hence he is not fit to continue in public office.  For him to stay puts another black eye on an already beaten and battered Republican Party.

Additionally, I am disgusted by the actions of the Idaho GOP:

The Idaho Republican Party took a measured, wait-and-see stance while Democrats remained mum, content to let Republicans sort through the fallout. The GOP’s biggest names reminded voters of Craig’s tenure in the Senate and his powerful seat on the Appropriations Committee.

So in other words, the State party is telling their followers to tolerate Craig’s criminal indiscretions because he brings home the bacon and buys their votes?

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  Hillary Clinton isn’t the biggest threat the Republicans face next year.  The Republicans largest obstacle is the Republicans.

Okay, not quite, at least not yet.  Wyoming Republicans have decided to hold their caucuses on January 5.   Iowa and New Hampshire are certain to respond, with both states now likely to move into December.  At this rate, we’re going to have a Republican nominee before we have a National Champion (please God, not that school out west again).

Frankly I’m a fan of the old system.  It’s not perfect, but it allowed a few small states to vet the candidates for the rest of us.  In some ways, it wasn’t fair to the rest of us in states like New York because the nominee was decided before we got to cast our votes, but nobody can actually meet a significant portion of New York’s population.

This massive race to be first and early hurts the system in two ways.  First, it has turned the race into not much more than a fundraising contest.  Yes, there was an aspect of that before, but there was the possibility of an especially good candidate to break through.  Now that’s much more difficult, if not impossible.  Second, it will leave our candidate out there like a pinata for almost a year.  The media attention will be almost all bad on a single person rather than having candidates seen as big winners at least through March.  This is easier for the Democrats due to the liberal media, and the extra couple of months are sure to hurt the nominee, whoever that happens to be.

Former Senator Max Cleland aide locked up after crashing John Edwards party

It seems that ailing Communist leader Fidel Castro has made his 2008 Democrat ticket endorsement from his death bed. In his latest editorial writing, Castro says Clinton/Obama should lead America.

 “The word today is that an apparently unbeatable ticket could be Hillary for president and Obama as her running mate,” he (Castro) wrote in an editorial column on U.S. presidents published on Tuesday by Cuba’s Communist Party newspaper, Granma.

If there ever was a rally cry for Conservatives across the Country…maybe this will finally fire up the base to get active in keeping a Republican in the White House.

The Republican front-runner, Jim Ogonowski, is a candidate with a compelling life story that has attracted national attention to the race and brought in money from around the country. The district also has a strong Republican history and one of the most conservative electorates in the state. And for the first time in six years, a Republican congressional candidate in Massachusetts does not have to contend with the power of incumbency.

US Representative Martin T. Meehan, who held the seat for 14 years, created the vacancy when he announced in March that he was resigning to become chancellor of the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.

“Open seats in Massachusetts are extremely rare, and an open seat where Republicans are competitive is even rarer,” said Torkildsen, now chairman of the Massachusetts Republican Party.

The GOP has been updating its e-mail list with plans to mobilize volunteers to hold signs, knock on doors, and work the phones.

“We think it’s an opportunity for us,” Torkildsen said. “There’s no such thing as an easy Republican win in Massachusetts, but it’s definitely going to be a competitive race.”

Boston Globe

I really like this Ogonowski and I hope he can pull this off.  He’s about the only one who could, and I think he probably would if there was not so much animosity toward this current administration.

https://www.jimogonowski.com/home

Sen. Mitch McConnell said Sunday that he thinks “there’s a good chance that in September we’ll go in a different direction.”  He also expressed a lack of faith in the Iraqi government and, though not suggesting a date for withdrawl, said that he expects that the President will start on a course that would allow for fewer troops stationed in the Middle East.  This comes at a time when  some have said that democracy no longer should be a priority in Iraq.

I’m torn on where things stand in Iraq, and I think it’s problematic that so few seem to be in the same position.  On the one hand, it would be dangerous to our long-term security interests to allow the terrorists to drive us out of Iraq.  Yes, we are making progress in terms of the number of attacks, but we have a very long way to go.  With every terrorist we kill, we are killing someone’s friend, son, husband, neighbor, and in so doing constantly creating new enemies.  I’m all for killing terrorists, but this also has a way of creating new ones.

At the same time, the Iraqi government has proven itself totally inept.  It speaks volumes that they took a month off when no measurable political progress has been made at the national level since their elections back in 2005.  They seem to be totally confident that they never have to make any progress because we’ll take care of it, whatever “it” happens to be.  Al Maliki is in way over his head and is starting to make nice-nice with governments that are hostile to the United States.

I don’t claim to have all of the solutions, even any of them, but until some leaders start acknowledging and addressing the serious concerns of the other side, i.e. that our national security will be threatened if we allow the terrorists to take over in Iraq and that we’re in a bad situation that will not improve until we demonstrate in a concrete way that they need to take some responsibility for their own country, we’re not going to get anywhere.  Serious problems call for serious leaders.  As strong as my distaste for Sen. Warner is, I give him credit for at least proposing something.  Of the 535 other elected officials serving in Washington, can’t somebody else come up with a serious solution to a serious problem?

The president praised and defended Gonzales during brief remarks in Waco, Texas. “After months of unfair treatment, that has created a harmful distraction at the Justice Department, Judge Gonzales decided to resign his position and I accept his decision,” Bush said. “It’s sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person like Alberto Gonzales is impeding from doing important work because his good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.”

The Politico

I really don’t know if this is a good thing or not, but personally I didn’t like Alberto Gonzales.  I believe he played a role in the prosecution of the border guards, but that is just my own opinion.  In any case, I’m glad to see him go.

Senator Craig is in some trouble.

Sen. Larry Craig was arrested in a “lewd conduct incident” in the men’s public restroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in June, according to an arrest report obtained by Roll Call. (For those without RC subscriptions, the article can be read here.)

He was arrested by a plainclothes officer responding to a complaint at the restroom, which has a problem with improper sexual activity. He pleaded guilty Aug. 8 to a misdemeanor disorderly conduct charge, but not before having shown an officer his business card, showing him to be a U.S. senator and asking, “What do you think about that?”

He is claiming it was a misunderstanding, but he has already entered a guilty plea and taken a relatively serious penalty for this, one years probation.  He claims he was just following advice of counsel, but clearly pleading guilty makes it difficult if not impossible make that argument convincingly.  I’m sure Sean will have more to say about what this means for the GOP in 2008, but needless to say, this is more very bad news.

UPDATE:  Senator Craig is claiming that he should have had advice from counsel, not stating that he was following counsel when he pled guilty.  My apologies.

We’ve had the union debate, the gay debate, and now, the cancer debate.

Armstrong will return to Iowa just a month after riding in the Register’s Great Annual Bicycle Ride Across Iowa to co-host candidate forums on cancer with Matthews on Monday and Tuesday at the U.S. Cellular Center in Cedar Rapids.

Since no major candidate is a doctor (Sorry Dr. Paul), the only thing that the participants in this debate can do is pledge to spend money on the problem. Do we really need a whole debate for this? Couldn’t this be taken care of as part of a health care debate? What about diabetes, AIDS, heart disease, etc? Do we need separate debates for each one? Newt is right, this process is completely insane. Obama is sticking to his pledge and not showing up. Hillary however, will attend. In her case, its probably a smart move. She doesn’t wow the crowds, but she keeps putting one group after the other in her pocket in a slow methodical way.

The DCCC has successfully recruited Michigan Senate Minority Leader Mark Schauer to run against freshman Rep. Tim Walberg.  For those of you who don’t remember, Walberg defeated Rep. Joe Schwarz in last year’s primary in a challenge that was largely financed by the Club for Growth.  Schwarz continues to look at the possibility of another run, probably either as a Democrat or as an independent.  Since taking office, Walberg has established a reasonably conservative record on spending and a generally conservative record on other issues.

This race is extremely important for two reasons.  First, Democrats are looking to return to their entrenched majority status, and this is the type of district that would get them there.  It has a slight Republican lean, but if a Democrat were to take it and hold it for a cycle, he could probably stick around there for quite a while.  Second, the Party establishment often makes the case that conservatives can’t win, at least not consistently, in districts like these.  If Schauer wins, they’ll have a stronger case.  If Walberg holds on, we’ll have another example of a conservative winning and holding a swing district, making supporting conservatives, or at least not actively opposing them, more difficult for the old guard.