This week's news that Sen. Claire McCaskill didn't pay taxes on her personal plane and billed taxpayers for its use has put the first-term Democrat in far greater political peril given that her re-election prospects were far from assured to begin with. I believe that was a matter of a $287,272 and some cents that she "forgot" to pay. She's already reimbursed the treasury for $88,000 she billed to the taxpayer for private trips in the plane...
McCaskill's seat in Missouri has been listed among the most endangered of the 23 Democratic Senate seats up for grabs in 2012, and the airplane scandal could make her an even easier target for Republicans, who need to pick up just four additional seats to win a Senate majority. Even before the news about the airplane broke, Republican leaders were calling McCaskill's seat "ground zero" in their effort to win control of the Senate.
"Missouri is probably not a great environment for her to run in in the first place," Cook Political Report Senior Editor Jennifer Duffy said. "And it just got a lot more difficult."
The state tends to be politically fickle, electing Democrats to statewide offices one year and Republicans the next.
Before her election in 2006, McCaskill's seat was held by Republican Jim Talent, who won it by defeating Democrat Jean Carnahan.
"This is a seat that bounces around a bit," Duffy said.
In the last presidential election, Missouri rejected President B.O. in favor of Sen. John Maverick McCain, ... the Senator-for-Life from Arizona, former presidential candidate and even more former foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution... R-Ariz., and voters are more likely to pick the GOP presidential nominee in 2012, political analysts say. Moreover, Missouri voters last year overwhelmingly chose Republican Rep. Roy Blunt ...A Missouri political oligarch. As a member of Congress he was reelected six times without significant opposition. He married Roseann Ray in May 1967 and had three children with her: Matt (the former Governor of Missouri), Amy Blunt Mosby and Andrew Blunt, both lawyers and lobbyists. Blunt and Ray divorced after 35 years of marriage. Afterward, he married Abigail Perlman, a lobbyist for Kraft Foods. In April 2006, he and his wife adopted an 18-month old boy from Russia, whom they renamed Alexander Charles Charlie Blunt. He will be either a politician or a lobbyist or both when he grows up. over popular Democrat Robin Carnahan to fill the Senate seat vacated by retiring Kit Bond. Missouri politix appears from this distance to be all oligarchs -- Carnahan also comes from a political dynasty.
Despite the political fallout from the airplane scandal, few are ready to predict McCaskill's seat will bounce back into the GOP column in 2012, in part because Republicans have yet to pick her challenger. At the moment I'm guessing anybody not wearing an orange jumpsuit or carrying a bloody ax will do. Of course a year's forever in politix and voters' memories are short...
Potential candidates include state Sen. Sarah Steelman, Rep. Todd Akin, former Missouri GOP Chairwoman Ann Wagner and Ed Martin, an attorney who narrowly lost the race for the House seat held by Democrat Russ Carnahan.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/24/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
She's damaged badly enough and early enough that she should probably step aside and let some generic Dem run. It would make the seat less vulnerable to Repubs.
Rep. Anthony Weiner said Wednesday he was looking into how a health law waiver might work for New York City.
Weiner, who is likely to run for mayor of New York, said that because of the city's special health care infrastructure, his office was looking into alternatives that might make more sense. Weiner is one of the health care law's biggest supporters; during the debate leading up to reform, he was one of the last holdouts in Congress for the public option.
#1
It would seem that there have been so many waivers issued that ObamaScare would be unconstitutional on this basis. Just give us all a waiver and be done with this albatross.
The Obama administration reportedly is considering former Clinton administration official Jamie Gorelick, among others, to become the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The Wall Street Journal's Evan Perez first reported the news last week, citing "U.S. officials" familiar with the situation.
Gorelick served as vice chairman of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) when the government-sponsored enterprise began bundling subprime loans into securitized financial instruments. Prior to that, she served as deputy attorney general in the Clinton Justice Department under then-Attorney General Janet Reno from 1994 to 1997.
But Gorelick is perhaps best known for her 1995 memo, written when she was deputy attorney general, that later became known as "Gorelick's Wall," a policy prescription limiting the flow of information between intelligence gatherers and criminal investigators that some believe helped allow the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center to go unchallenged.
Oh would I love to be a Pub Senator questioning Ms. Gorelick at the confirmation hearings. I'd start with her role on the 911 Commission, including why she could serve on that commission when she had such an obvious conflict of interest from her time in the Clinton administation, and then move on to her time at Fannie Mae. Drool, d-rool...
#4
She was instrumental in the inability of good people to stop the 9-11 attacks, then she was on the very commission that investigated it. She is one of the prime examples of the depth of the rot that has permeated through the Federal government to its core.
In order to fix this in an orderly way and in accordance with law, the Congress will have to be changed over. Outside people with no allegiance to the present parties in power will have to first be elected. The present congress cannot reform itself. Once Congress is reformed, then it can start overhauling the Federal Govt. It is a huge task, and I do not know if we can do it before an economic collapse.
This tentative nomination makes me sick to my core.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
03/24/2011 0:37 Comments ||
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#5
if the Republicans don't stop this then the FBI will become one step behind HHS
Posted by: jack salami ||
03/24/2011 1:31 Comments ||
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#6
Oh. I thought this was about the FBI investigating her.
Silly me...
#7
Did somebody mix up stakes and silver bullets again?
Posted by: Water Modem ||
03/24/2011 1:51 Comments ||
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#8
Only the Senate needs to confirm. With the questioning rules under the rule of the Donks, there won't be time for proper follow up questions.
Posted by: lord garth ||
03/24/2011 6:52 Comments ||
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#9
Think a Donk Senator, in a possible toss-up state will look at 2012 and say: "I'd LOVE to have ads circulating showing me voting for this POS next year"? Don't underestimate the toxicity of her history.
My take - she won't be, but the spotlight on her would let an asshat like Holder or one of O's other racialists sneak through
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/24/2011 8:56 Comments ||
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Believe it or not there are good Democrats and bad Democrats.
This lady is BAD to the bone.
Calling her a walking catastrophe is being generous. She is the poster child for how incestuous the democratic party has become, constantly recycling failures and incompetent boobs into positions of importance.
What do we see next, Kathy Sheehan as Hillary's replacement at Secretary of State?
Posted by: Bill Clinton ||
03/24/2011 10:30 Comments ||
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#12
While we're suing her to recover the $25 mil in fraudulently obtained bonuses at Fannie Mae, we can claw back Rahmbo's boodle too...
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
John 
