Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Roundup for 13 September 2006

...Sen. Jon Kyl, R-AZ is upset that the Senate Judiciary committee passed a domestic surveillance bill sponsored by Dianne Feinstein, D-CA, that seems to contradict another, White House-approved, bill that the committee had already passed.

From TBO.com:

A central premise of the Feinstein legislation was "totally contradictory to legislation we just passed," said Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz. "What kind of message does that send to our colleagues?"

The White House-approved plan would give the President all of the authority that he wants; the Feinstein bill would not.

This should be interesting when it gets to the floor. I almost think that we are better off if the bills make it to the floor before the general election, rather than after. At least if the bills hit the floor before the elections, they might worry about a voter backlash against them for shredding the Constitution. Again.

There's no telling what some lame-duck senators might do. For that matter, there's no telling what lame-duck House members might do. And there will be a bunch of each.

Expect the Pederson campaign to add this to the litany of examples of Jon Kyl walking in lockstep with the Bush White House.

...In CD1, Democratic challenger Ellen Simon, along with Libertarian David Schlosser, has challenged incumbent Republican Congressman Rick Renzi.

No word from Mantech's Public Affairs Office...errrr...the Renzi campaign... was available at the time of this writing.

...Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, issued a press release touting the strong candidates among Arizona's Democratic primary winners.
"In Arizona, Democrats chose strong candidates in Gabrielle Giffords for the 8th Congressional District -- who despite the strong interest of national Republicans still drew more voters than the Republican primary winner. She and Ellen Simon in the 1st CD will join other great Democrats like Harry Mitchell in the 5th, and Jim Pederson in the U.S. Senate to give the Grand Canyon State and Gov. Janet Napolitano a delegation in Washington that will make them proud."

Yeah it's a press release, but he's right. Though I am still amazed at Ellen Simon's margin of victory.

Still tired after spending most of yesterday at the polling location. It wasn't as hot as it was a few weeks ago, but I'm still a little burnt.

Later!!

2 comments:

Michael Bryan said...

I can't say that I'm all that surprised by Ellen Simon's margin. The money explains most of it. The rest is that she's just a much better candidate that most of the other candidates. Mike Cacciopolli (Sp?) turned out to be too brash, abrasive, and frankly holding a rather too elevated opinion of himself. The surprise was how well Susan Friedman did by coming in second. She proves that a smart, articulate, hard-working canidate can always come in second without any money. If Simon didn't have half-a-million to drop on her race, we would likely have Friedman challenging Ranzi now.

Craig said...

Yeah, the money was important, even very important, but her organization probably counted for more.

If money was all that it takes, Steve Huffman would have gotten the Rep nod for CD8, not Randy Graf.