Is there an echo in Pennsylvania? You better you bet.
Republicans and especially hard-core conservatives are foaming at the mouth over the defection of Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter, decrying him as another Benedict Arnold. One of the most fevered cries is that Specter put politics ahead of principle. Whether you believe that or not (if the principle Specter is upholding is to win then I guess he’s being principled…) it has brought the battle for the soul of the GOP to the forefront. And the front page of the New …

Two things have caught my attention in the last week that point out the deep and unmistakable hypocrisy of some Catholics who eagerly wade into American politics. First up: Notre Dame’s decision to give President Barack Obama an honorary degree.
The decision has rocked the Catholic and conservative political chattering classes because Obama supports abortion rights and the Church does not. Mary Ann Glendon has gotten a lot of play in the past 48 hours after posting a letter to Notre Dame explaining why she — a former US Ambassador to …

All of a sudden there is a debate over torture. A debate about whether or not torture might be okay to use in some cases. What’s stunning is not the arguments for and against but that there’s now an accepting underlying narrative. Conservative and liberal commentators who violently disagree about whether the U.S. should torture tacitly agree on one thing: Torture works.
Bullshit.
The relatively short list of those who argue that it has (Dick Cheney, Michael Hayden, Michael Mukasey) all offer either no proof (Cheney) or debunked claims (Hayden and Mukasey). And …

 
It’s a recurring theme of Get Real but only because Republicans keep doing things that prove the point. The Pity Party seems absolutely bent on self-destruction by following all the old rules for the old game that they can’t stop playing.
 
Take John Boehner, leader of the House Republican minority. Sunday George Stephanopoulos had him on to talk about the Republican alternatives to Barack Obama’s proposals including on global warming:
…the idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time we exhale, we …

It’s really hard to see the political logic in Governor David Paterson’s unveiling of a same-sex marriage bill for New York on Thursday. But maybe that’s the beauty of it. Honestly, Paterson has no where to go but up.
Paterson’s poll numbers are in the toilet. His handling of the Kennedy-Gillibrand-Clinton thing was a fiasco. He had his lunch handed to him on the budget. He can’t get a handful of gangster Senators from his own party to grow up and back a plan to rescue the MTA (and their own …

It nearly cost John McCain the Republican nomination and it keeps the otherwise feckless Lou Dobbs employed. So what’s Barack Obama doing digging up immigration reform? It’s not as crazy as it first seems.
Sure Obama already has a pretty full plate — the economy, the banking system, health care, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc — and  immigration is hardly an easy lift. In fact immigration is a bit like gun control and to a lesser degree abortion rights. These are all issues that galvanize opponents far more effectively than they do …

The daily dribble of news upstate in the 20th district recount “drama” brings two interesting posts. Nate Silver at 538 does one of his masterful number-crunching jobs to predict that Democrat Scott Murphy will eventually prevail by about 540 votes over Republican Jim Tedisco. What’s really interesting there though is Nate’s take on the Republican’s jaw-dropping challenge of Kirsten Gillibrand’s absentee ballot. He thinks it will make it harder for Tedisco to mount a rematch if Murphy wins. Maybe but Nate may be getting ahead of himself on this one.
You’ll …

So it’s those city folks, huh? They’re the ones trying to steal this election from a good Republican. That’s the claim Republicans supporting Congressional candidate Jim Tedisco are making as the results of the first special election since Barack Obama became President enter their second week of counting.
As Jimmy Vielkind at Politicker and Leigh Hornbeck at Capitol Confidential report in their excellent posts about the verrrry slow hand counting of absentee ballots in Columbia County, Republicans are objecting to nearly every ballot sent to addresses in New York City arguing …

 
Saturday the normally guns-ablaze Wall Street Journal editorial page called for patience in dealing with the pirate hostage situation off the coast of Somalia. Turns out they were right. To a point.
 
By sundown Sunday cargo ship captain Richard Phillips had been held for four days by four pirates on a small boat adrift in the Indian Ocean about 20 miles off Somalia. With each passing day calls for a military solution increased, first in the blogosphere and then in some of the mainstream media. And a military solution is what …

Face it. The most natural American gut reaction to the news about Somali pirates holding an American ship captain hostage is, blow them the f*ck up! And that’s pretty much what the always-level-headed editors at the New York Post advocated on Saturday.
We would urge Washington to bring the melodrama to an immediate end — irrespective of the consequences to the hostage. Failing to do so would paint the Navy — and America — as impotent, making US-flagged vessels even more tempting targets for Somali cutthroats.
In other words, Nuke ‘em!!!!! Oddly, …