I don't know how many of you read Daily Kos, but I would guess that at least the elected Democratic officials have somebody checking over here every once in awhile.  Please help spread the word.

Our Party is in danger of fracturing because our nominating process is almost certain to result in a train wreck (see also here) in which no candidate has a sufficient majority of pledged delegates to win the nomination going into the National Convention in August.  This train wreck will only intensify as credentials fights loom over seating the Michigan and Florida delegations.

It is now almost certain that your votes will decide the nomination.  Supporters of each candidate will cry "foul!" as unelected individuals, entitled to a vote by virtue of their positions only, decide who our nominee is going to be.  Follow me over the flip to find out how you can save the Party.

Today's tracking polls have Hillary Clinton ticking upwards and Barack Obama holding steady.  Gallup has it at Clinton 48, Obama 41 (yesterday was Clinton 44, Obama 41), while Rasmussen has Clinton 45 (43), Obama 37 (37).  Several possibilities: 1) the pundits were right; the Edwards vote really did split down the middle; but the folks who were naturally anti-Clintons decided right away, while the folks who were going to go with her took a bit longer; 2) Hillary really did get a post-debate bump, as folks who had heard media reports to the contrary found that she was indeed a civil, likeable person; 3) the intense tightening was statistical noise.

All we can say is that this race is very, very close right now, and that Super Tuesday is  likely to be a wash, with Hillary winning slightly more delegates than Obama.  And everything is still within the MOE but suggests a slight Hillary lead going in.  Follow the jump for analysis from an Obama supporter who's trying to be objective.

We are in for a long haul.  The nomination will not be decided until at least late March.

The conventional wisdom in Washington, which is often wrong, but to which I subscribe in this case, as I have heard it from too many low-level insiders in the campaigns, on the Hill, and elsewhere -- low-level insiders who work for not-so-low-level insiders -- has been for years that the Democratic primary in '08 would come down to Hillary and anti-Hillary, and the only question was who anti-Hillary would be.  This view is subscribed to by those I know in the Clinton campaign, too.  There are enough folks, both independents but also longtime influential Washington Democrats, who either don't like the Clintons or don't see Hillary as able to overcome the R turnout that might be engendered by her nomination to make the rise of an anti-Hillary inevitable.  Of course, there are lots of people who absolutely love Hillary as well. I'm commenting on what the dynamics are, not what they should be.

Yeah, I'm an Obama supporter, but I'm also a realist.  Reality is this thing's a crap shoot and will be for quite some time.  If you're not sick enough of analysis by folks who live inside the Beltway Bubble by now, follow the jump to get my take.

As has been repeated several times on dKos today, Tony Snow is right that the Constitution of the United States does not directly number oversight among the powers of Congress.  Diarists and others have presented different rationales for where this power should come from and why it should apply to the White House.

The reason there is confusion is because oversight is not a Constitutional power of Congress.  The power of Congress to investigate is inherent in the grant to it in Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution of "all legislative powers herein granted."  Follow me past the flip as I destroy the argument that Congress has no oversight authority over the Lunitary Executive.

The big news item of the day, so far, apparently, unreported on dKos, is that an Iraqi appeals court has upheld Saddam Hussein's death sentence.  According to Iraqi law (almost an oxymoron these days), Saddam must hang within 30 days.

Hanging has been around nearly as long as humanity itself.  How will the U.S.-sponsored Iraqi government kill Saddam?  This is a diary about hanging and what we know about how Saddam will die. Warning:  This diary is not for the squeamish!

It's all over in Virginia, but the pundits don't seem to realize it.  The media insists on painting the race as "too close to call."  A simple look at Virginia election law concerning recounts and provisional ballots demonstrates conclusively that there is almost no way that George Allen can overcome the approximately 7,000-vote lead Jim Webb had in the unofficial results.

The following simple points will be addressed in this diary:
* - The official canvass will change numbers little, if at all.
* - Almost no provisional ballots will count, and even if they did, they'd go for Webb.
* - A recount will change nothing

Call the race already, networks and wire services.  This thing is over.

My father, a retired Unitarian minister, sent me this one recently.  Food for thought next time you are faced with a wingnut trying to convince you gays are evil -- or, for that matter, with any other kind of biblical literalism.

From the bizarre to the truly bizarre.  You've all read McJoan's front page post in which she notes that more people support Russ Feingold's resolution of censure of George W. Bush than oppose it.  Also listed in the ARG poll to which she cites is the question:  "Do you favor or oppose the United States House of Representatives voting to impeach President George W. Bush?"

Yes:  42
No:   49

Note that this is not even qualified by the question of whether he was involved in illegal wiretaps or anything else. This is more than favored impeaching Bill Clinton on the eve of the House vote to impeach him.  Full results and comparisons are below.

How appropriate!  The Department of Homeland Security is about to choose the location for its headquarters facility, and it has apparently decided on St. Elizabeth's Hospital, which began life over 150 years ago as the Governor Hospital for the Insane and then became the United States Government Hospital for the Insane.  Its most notable resident at the moment is John W. Hinckley, the attempted assassin of Ronald Reagan.

The Washington Post is reporting this morning that:

Federal officials are looking to move some of the Department of Homeland Security offices to the St. Elizabeths Hospital campus in Southeast Washington, a plan that would create a massive federal facility and possibly relocate thousands of regional employees.  Federal agencies could eventually occupy as much as 4.5 million square feet on the west campus of St. Elizabeths, a historic site with breathtaking views of downtown, according to the General Services Administration and city officials involved in the effort. In comparison, the Pentagon has a floor area of 6.5 million square feet.

As Armando notes in his front page story, the New York Times is now reporting that at Bush's behest, the NSA has conducted widespread warrantless electronic surveillance of American citizens.

As has also been noted by Armando, myself, and others, this situation closely parallels the Supreme Court case of Youngstown Sheet and Tube v. Sawyer, in which the Court ruled that if, in the legislative history of an act, Congress examines and decides in the final legislation against granting a particular power to the Executive Branch, that power is effectively denied to the Executive, and if the Executive assumes that power, it is acting extralegally.

I say we sue the bastards in a massive class action.  How we do that and what obstacles such a suit might face are detailed after the break.

The media have been reporting that I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby faces up to 30 years on the charges that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald brought against him in his 22-page indictment yesterday.  Specifically, the statutes prescribing the offenses with which Libby is charged call for maximum sentences as follows:  10 years for obstruction of justice; 5 years each for perjury and false statements to a government official.  Since there are two charges each of perjury and false statements, if Libby were sentenced to the maximum on each count, and the sentences were set to run consecutively rather than concurrently, 30 years would indeed be the maximum sentence under the applicable statutes.

But this will not happen.  Under the most likely circumstances, Libby faces no more than nine years.  Find out why after the break.

If Patrick Fitzgerald is indeed either contemplating the indictment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney or contemplating naming them as unindicted co-conspirators in the plot to out Valerie Wilson as a CIA agent, we are entering uncharted legal waters.  The one example history presents us, that of Watergate, differs in a very important respect:  Leon Jaworski, the Watergate special prosecutor, had a House Judiciary Committee that was willing to take action and provide a remedy in the form of impeachment.  Since the current House Judiciary Committee is obviously not so inclined, Fitzgerald is essentially faced with three options:  1) Indict Bush and Cheney and provoke a constitutional crisis on the question of whether a sitting President is indictable; 2) Name Bush and Cheney as unindicted co-conspirators and watch them get off scot free, to be tried only in the court of public opinion; or 3) Do nothing and let them get off without even public criticism.

Can a sitting President be indicted?  

Here we go again.  The Christofascists are back, exploiting what will probably end up as the worst natural disaster in American history--the predictions of 10,000 dead would surpass the 6,000 total of the 1900 Galveston hurricane--to promote their worldview.

Franklin Graham, Billy Graham's son, on Fox News(where else?):

This happens when we take God out of our schools and God out of our society.

More Wingnuttery after the break...

It looks like J.K. Rowling, noted beatnik and probable liberal, has launched a broadside against Chimpy McCokespoon on the very first page of the new Harry Potter book released at midnight tonight, _Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

The thesis of the first chapter of the book is that not only has her fictitious Minister of Magic become aware of Lord Voldemort's return to power, but the muggle Prime Minister has as well (read the dust jacket of the book.)

The second sentence of the book (fair use for political commentary, if you are Rowling's agent) is:

He was waiting for a call from the President of a far distant country, and between wondering when the wretched man would telephone, and trying to suppress unpleasant memories of what had been a very long, tiring, and difficult week, there was not much space in his head for anything else.

To my mind, this is Rowling's way of slapping Dubya in the face.  Thoughts? Update [2005-7-16 3:52:19 by DC Pol Sci]:Does Rowling visit dKos?!?!?!? The lowest grade one can get on one's OWLs turns out to be...."Troll." ;-)

I have seen NOTHING on this, but here I am sitting in the room.  The Senate Committee on Rules and Administration is about to convene a hearing on "the issue of voter verification in the federal elections process."  It will only be on Senate Television, and I don't see anything about a Webcast.
Update [2005-6-21 11:29:49 by DC Pol Sci]: You want to know the *real* kicker? *Dodd* is against a voter-verified paper audit trail. Why? Well, he wrote what became HAVA, and he says that it's not necessary; that HAVA itself requires enough accountability. Guess ol' Chris is committed to our being in the minority for the foreseeable future...

In our fury at Kittykiller Frist for planning to usurp what little power Democrats have left to stop the rightward lurch of the country, we have forgotten the most persuasive argument against the Nuclear Option.  This is an argument that is not dependent on your politics.  It is one that all of us, left, right, and center, can agree upon.  And that is, simply, that extremist judges make extreme law.  The Nuclear Option will result in extremists of both parties predominating in our judiciary and will result in an outcome that I call, for lack of a better term, "legal schizophrenia."

Follow me for a few moments on a whirlwind tour of the institutional environment of American politics and law.

The Senate recessed today at 1:26 p.m., after approving the budget; invoking cloture on the nomination of Bush's appointee to head the Environmental Protection Agency, Stephen Johnson; and then approving him by a voice vote.  Johnson advocates the testing of pesticides on small children, but that's another story.

The real story, of course, is that Kittykiller Frist failed to pull the trigger on the nuclear option prior to the Senate's weeklong recess (they're back on May 9, which actually means May 10, because Congress really only works three days a week).  He had earlier promised to do so.

Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla Owen got passed out of the Judiciary Committee last week, but the Committee yesterday postponed its scheduled vote on William Pryor.  I have been unable to ascertain whether they also postponed their scheduled votes on Brett Kavanaugh and Terrence Boyle, although I suspect that they did so, because we would have heard something about it otherwise.

Huge false alarm to start out with. Because I work up there a lot, I know a bit about Senate procedure, and when Inhofe of Oklahoma got up and made a unanimous consent request that the Senate debate the Bond amendment to the transportation bill, then to a motion to table it, and then to take up judicial nominations, I assumed we were about to witness the nuclear option in action.

However, the "judicial nominations" turned out to be two district judges in North Carolina who had been passed out of the Judiciary Committee on March 3. They are expected to pass rather easily and, though the subject of a "hold" by John Edwards when he represented North Carolina, are not expected to be the subject of a filibuster.