A less than inspired choice:
President Bush asked Congress to eliminate an $8.2 million research program on how to decontaminate buildings attacked by toxins — the same day a poison-laced letter shuttered Senate offices.
For the Democrats, this one spins itself. For the Republicans – good luck…
On Bush’s meeting the press:
…certain facts of the interview were favorable to the president…this interview was in the Oval Office, on the president’s home ground, in front of the big desk…Mr. Bush’s interview was taped. Saturday. Taped is easier.
…six million people saw it, and many millions more will see pieces of it, and they will not be the pieces in which Mr. Bush looks good. The president seemed tired, unsure and often bumbling. His answers were repetitive, and when he tried to clarify them he tended to make them worse. He did not seem prepared. He seemed in some way disconnected from the event.
Ouch.
And the author?
Peggy Noonan. Double ouch.
In Maine, Kerry scores his tenth first place finish, Dean his fourth second place finish, and Kucinich his second third place finish.
Zach points out some good news from the Detroit Free Press:
All of the Democratic presidential aspirants — from front-runner Sen. John Kerry on down — are backing a key labor-organizing proposal that would make it easier for unions to add new members.
In interviews with the Free Press, each candidate supported so-called card checks for union organizing, a process in which a union wins the right to represent workers after a majority of them in a workplace sign a union card.
Human Rights Watch documented (using Yale as a case study) the extent of employer abuses under the NLRB system in the US; the AFL-CIO illustrates the same point with a comic book.
The Center for American Progress fact-checks Bush’s claims in this morning’s Meet the Press interview. It ain’t pretty.
Because it worked out so well the last time:
In what may be the first subpoena of its kind in decades, a federal judge has ordered a university to turn over records about a gathering of anti-war activists.
In addition to the subpoena of Drake University, subpoenas were served this past week on four of the activists who attended a Nov. 15 forum at the school, ordering them to appear before a grand jury Tuesday, the protesters said. Federal prosecutors refuse to comment on the subpoenas.
In addition to records about who attended the forum, the subpoena orders the university to divulge all records relating to the local chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, a New York-based legal activist organization that sponsored the forum. The group, once targeted for alleged ties to communism in the 1950s, announced Friday it will ask a federal court to quash the subpoena on Monday.
From the Times:
His stand on issues is important, and I don’t want to denigrate that, but the top Democrats in this state, myself included, want one thing,’ Mr. Dingell said in an interview on Saturday. ‘We want a Democratic presidential candidate who can fight Mr. Bush on good and even terms and who can win, and we think that’s John Kerry.’
Mr. Dingell said that he had endorsed Mr. Kerry only after receiving assurances during two hourlong discussions with him that he would protect jobs here. Similarly, Governor Jennifer M. Granholm of Michigan said she had endorsed Mr. Kerry after he agreed to ‘fix’ Nafta.”
Kerry wins both states, with Dean second in both and Kucinich and Edwards third in Washington and Michigan respectively.
The first results from Michigan show Kerry with a majority of the vote, with Edwards and Dean 40 points behind him in a near tie for second place.
Democracy is messy:
Edwards state director Derek Albert, however, said most of the moved sites were affecting minority voters and were robbing them of their right to vote. ‘This is worse than in the ’60s,’ said Albert, who also is chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party Black Caucus. ‘This is horrible. This election needs to be stopped. Because this is not right.’
Dean state director Daren Berringer had said changing polling places at the last minute hurt voters, especially in low-income areas such as Detroit where people might not have arranged transportation to get to a caucus site outside their neighborhood. ‘They’re walking to their polling place and they’re finding their caucus site has been changed,’ Berringer said. ‘The sites in Detroit and Southfield are in minority areas. This is direct voter disenfranchisement.’
Lorenzo Morgan said that he and his wife called the Democratic party’s toll-free number and were told to vote at one caucus site, only to find it closed. The couple had to drive around to try to find their right caucus site. ‘They’re afraid even to tell us where to vote,’ said Morgan, 66, as he came into a caucus site at Bethany Baptist Church in Detroit to vote for candidate Al Sharpton. Other people coming to the church also said they had been told their caucus sites were somewhere else…
Democratic National Committee member Joel Ferguson, a black Kerry supporter from Lansing, agreed there were problems with some of the caucus sites being moved. But he said the Dean and Edwards campaigns were trying to make a bigger deal out of it than it was because their candidates were losing. “Some of our people got lost. Some of the other people (for other candidates) got lost,” Ferguson said. “We just have to do a better job in the future. But I don’t think it taints the election.”
With 21% of Washington precincts reporting, the Times has Kerry, as expected in 1st place with 43% and Dean behind him with near 28%. The more interesting result is what looks like a third place finish for Dennis Kucinich, who with 14.5% is just shy of the threshold to get delegates and has more support than Edwards (4.9%) and Clark (4.5%) combined.
Josh Eidelson 