How did convicted felon Sen. Ted Stevens win reelection in Alaska when pollsters predicted a major loss? It could have something to do with the fact that roughly one-third of the ballots have yet to be counted, and thousands more were just discovered.
Brad Blog:
This just in from Alaska, where thousands of new ballots continue to be found each day, since it was first reported that turnout in 2008 was 11% lower than in 2004. Thousands of ballots, nearly a third of them, remain uncounted nearly a week after the election. Their numbers could explain the strange results so far in races --- such as those of the felonious Sen. Ted Stevens (R) and the under-investigation Rep. Don Young (R) --- for which pollsters had predicted decisive losses for the Republicans.
Even with the newly acknowledged ballots and even with Alaska’s once-popular Gov. Sarah Palin and popular Sen. Barack Obama both on the Presidential ballot this year, turnout numbers still remain slightly below those from 2004. The Anchorage Daily News, with numbers somewhat out of date from those now posted below, called it all “puzzling” over the weekend, and pointed out much of what we’ve detailed here in previous posts.
Obama Wants Lieberman To Remain In Democratic Caucus President-elect Barack Obama has informed party officials that he wants Joe Lieberman to continue caucusing with the Democrats in the 111th Congress, Senate aides tell the Huffington Post.
Obama's decision could tie the hands of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has been negotiating to remove Lieberman as chair of the Homeland Security and Government Reform committee while keeping him within the caucus. Lieberman has insisted that he will split from the Democrats if his homeland security position is stripped.
Aides to the president-elect did not return requests for comment. Senate officials were unclear whether Obama would be comfortable with Lieberman maintaining his current committee post.
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that he would welcome Lieberman into the GOP, though he has little to offer in terms of committee assignments.
If Lieberman were to continue caucusing with the Democrats without being punished for his campaign conduct -- Democrats say he broke a promise not to campaign negatively against Obama -- the progressive community will undoubtedly be up in arms. For Obama, however, the move may be a shrewd gesture towards reconciliation, in the process taking a potentially taxing political fight off the table.
"What does Barack Obama want?... He's talked about reconciliation, healing, bringing people together. I don't think he'd necessarily want to spend the first month of this president-elect period, this transition period, talking about a Senate seat, particularly if someone is willing to come forward and is willing to be a member of your family in the caucus in that sense."
A Democrat close to Lieberman, meanwhile, said he thought that keeping Lieberman in the fold "would be a good move for Obama as a way to make real his promise of new politics, a less partisan Washington and more unity. He would do so at some risk. Obviously there is a liberal wing of the party that wants Joe punished... "
There is, perhaps, one measure by which Democratic leadership can still reconcile the competing realities of Lieberman's future in the caucus. One Democratic aide said that the party was considering letting the Connecticut Senator keep his post at homeland security but forcing him to relinquish one or both of his spots on two more high-profile committees: Armed Services and Environment & Public Works.
Lieberman is in line for leadership roles in both of those committees should the current chairs leave their posts. On Armed Services, the two senators ahead of him are Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd. On Environment and Public Works, current chair Barbara Boxer may face a tough reelection campaign in 2010 and second in line, Sen. Max Baucus, already heads another committee.
If Democratic leadership were to keep Lieberman on homeland security but impede any chance of ascending to these other posts, that may be enough to placate progressive activists demanding punishment while keeping the Connecticut Senator in the caucus.
On Fox News Sunday yesterday, John Podesta, President-elect Barack Obama’s transition chief, said Obama would move swiftly to overturn a range of executive orders by President Bush, “whether that’s on energy transformation, on improving health care, on stem cell research.” Podesta explained, “I think across the board, on stem cell research, on a number of areas, you see the Bush administration even today moving aggressively to do things that I think are probably not in the interest of the country.”
Asked about it during today’s press briefing, Dana Perino defended Bush’s stem cell policy and insisted that Bush had never, in fact, banned stem cell research:
Unfortunately, the president’s position on stem cells has been misconstrued over the years, with the suggestion that President Bush put a ban on research for embryonic stem cell research. That is not true. … The President made a very important choice after a lot of careful deliberation.
Watch it:
It’s technically true that Bush did not ban stem cell research — he just strictly limited funding of it. Vetoing bipartisan legislation that even ardent pro-life conservative Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN) supported, Bush arbitrarily limited funding to research of just 21 stem cell lines cultivated before Aug. 9, 2001. The limits make scientists’ work more difficult and less effective, and — since the thousands of embryos not implanted in women are eventually destroyed — don’t even save the embryos Bush considers to be “human life.”
Despite Perino’s attempt to blame the media for “misconstruing” Bush’s policy, even his own scientists agree that his research limits are profoundly harmful:
– Dr. Elias Zerhouni, Bush’s former Director of the National Institute of Health: “American science will be better served [base ']Äî and the nation will be better served [base ']Äî if we let our scientists have access to more cell lines that they can study with the different methods that have emerged since 2001.”
– Story Landis, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: “We are missing out on possible breakthroughs,” she told Congress, adding that the ability to work on newly derived stem cell colonies — currently precluded from federal funding — “would be incredibly important.”
Perhaps if Bush got his ideas from scientists rather than science-fiction novels, American stem cell research would be on the path to curing diseases.
Today, President-elect Barack Obama is scheduled to meet with President Bush at the White House. The New York Times notes that the visit will be both “historic” and “perhaps awkward,” since Obama consistently criticized Bush on the campaign trail. A new Gallup analysis also finds that the meeting will be “a remarkable contrast between one of the least popular two-term presidents in modern times at the close of his administration, and one of the most popular candidates to win the presidency“:
Reflecting on his final days as Fox News’ Washington managing editor, Brit Hume tells the Miami Herald’s Glenn Garvin that when people look back at the Bush era, they “will be a lot kinder to this president than the current scribes are being.” “It’s really turned out to be a very consequential presidency,” said Hume, adding that Bush has put America on an “amazing” foreign policy path:
Even the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which is widely regarded as terrible White House bungling, is a much more complex story than that which eventually will be told. And while people are understandably focused on the length and the casualty count of the war, at some point they’ll consider the policy path on which this president has placed us. It’s a very different one, and an amazing one. We’re pushing for democracy everywhere, not just playing ball with friendly dictators as we did in the Cold War.
One thing that Hume is right about is the fact that historians currently view Bush’s presidency as “a combination of many negative factors.” According to CNN, historians currently say that “incompetent” will most likely be the word used to describe Bush.
Reflecting on his final days as Fox News’ Washington managing editor, Brit Hume tells the Miami Herald’s Glenn Garvin that when people look back at the Bush era, they “will be a lot kinder to this president than the current scribes are being.” “It’s really turned out to be a very consequential presidency,” said Hume, adding that 