So you get home in the evening from a hard day at the office and grab your mail. There, you find an official-looking envelope from the State of Oklahoma. You open it and read it. And then you faint.

Why? It's a bill for $9,000. That's your family's share of the $14.8 billion required to fund the state's Teacher Retirement System and other state-level public sector pensions that Oklahoma politicians have for years been making more generous without providing a way to pay for that generosity.

So you, the taxpayer, get hit with huge bill. This imagined scene is anything but beyond the possible, as CapitolBeatOk.org's latest report demonstrates. And Oklahoma is far from being unique in having such a problem. As the Pew Center on the States reported recently, almost every state in the country faces unfunded pension liabilities that collectively are almost unfathomable.

The situation in Oklahoma is serious. You can check the numbers for yourself here. You can also see how your home state compares with Boomer Sooner land. Make sure you are sitting down when do that, though!  

Ed Whelan flags a report that trial lawyer John J. McConnell, who was nominated by the president to a district judgeship in Rhode Island, donated nearly $700,000 in the past 20 years to various Democrats. Whelan writes that McConnell's "poor rating" by the ABA "ought to set off alarm bells."

         Gibbs: This is not a vacation at all.

President Obama is skipping the annual Gridiron Dinner this year -- heaven forfend! -- because he is taking the family to Indonesia during the girls' spring break from school. The Indonesia stop is part of a six-day trip that will also bring Obama to Guam and Australia.

The White House initially claimed Obama was skipping the Gridiron -- for the second year in a row -- because he wanted his kids to see the country where he spent four of his formative years.

But now the administration says Indonesia is no vacation:

Q: One other thing. Indonesia has been portrayed by some, in some articles, as more of a vacation trip than a policy and diplomacy trip. How much of it is a vacation, taking the family along?

Gibbs: It's not a vacation at all. I have not seem the criticism that you're referring to.

Q: It's not criticism. Nobody is criticizing. They're simply saying that part of what he's doing is taking the family to show where he grew up for four years of his life. It's kind of an educational trip for the family.

Gibbs: As I mentioned earlier, it's the largest Muslim country in the world. The president will build off the speech he gave in Cairo. The president will attend a democracy conference in Indonesia; will highlight counterterrorism. That's the focus of the trip....

Q: It's not a family education trip, too?

Gibbs: No, no, not at all.

 
   
 
    

From the New York Times online today:

WASHINGTON — During his Senate confirmation hearings last year, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. failed to disclose that he had signed a brief urging the Supreme Court not to uphold President Bush’s claim that he could imprison an American citizen as an “enemy combatant,” the Justice Department acknowledged on Thursday.

“The brief should have been disclosed as part of the confirmation process,” said Matthew A. Miller, a Justice Department spokesman. “In preparing thousands of pages for submission, it was unfortunately and inadvertently missed. In any event, the Attorney General has publicly discussed his positions on detention policy on many occasions, including at his confirmation hearing.”

Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-highest-ranking Republican in the Senate, said that explanation “strained credulity.” “Are we expected to believe that then-nominee Holder, with only a handful of Supreme Court briefs to his name, forgot about his role in one of this country’s most publicized terrorism cases?” Mr. Kyl asked.

The piece notes that Republicans plan to fully exploit this oversight of Holder's brief in the Padilla case when he appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee later this month.

House Democrats have given up on fixing the Senate ObamaCare bill's abortion problem, the Associated Press reports:

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman said Thursday that the leadership will try to secure the necessary 216 votes to pass the bill without reworking the divisive abortion provision.

The Senate version of health care reform would loosen current rules about federal money going to pay for abortions. The House version did not, and as a result a number of pro-life Democrats supported it. Because abortion cannot be fixed through an accompanying reconciliation bill, it looks like pro-life Democrats are out of luck with three bad options. They will either kill ObamaCare with their "no" votes, go back on their word and disappoint constituents by voting "yes," or else watch it become law without their support.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs dodged once again when asked by Fox News' Major Garrett about the job offer the White House supposedly made to Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., to get him to drop his primary challenge to Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa.

Brett Baier reports:

Democrats in Congress had held forth hope that they could vote almost simultaneously on the Senate version of ObamaCare and on a companion fix-up reconciliation bill. The order matters, because it would reassure some skittish House Democrats who would otherwise oppose health care reform.

Unfortunately, David Drucker writes, the Senate Parliamentarian is having none of it:

The Senate Parliamentarian has ruled that President Barack Obama must sign Congress’ original health care reform bill before the Senate can act on a companion reconciliation package, senior GOP sources said Thursday.

The Senate Parliamentarian’s Office was responding to questions posed by the Republican leadership. The answers were provided verbally, sources said.

House Democratic leaders have been searching for a way to ensure that any move they make to approve the Senate-passed $871 billion health care reform bill is followed by Senate action on a reconciliation package of adjustments to the original bill. One idea is to have the House and Senate act on reconciliation prior to House action on the Senate’s original health care bill.

In other words, there's one less option available now, and it's not possible to provide gurarantees for the House Democrats -- including most recently Rep. Mike Capuano, D-Mass. -- who want guarantees that offensive provisions will be removed from the Senate bill through the fix-up bill.

Disgraced former Rep. Eric Mass, D-NY, has a campaign fund worth more than $644,000, according to OpenSecrets.org's superb Capital Eye blog.

That's what's left from among "millions of dollars" contributed by "hundreds of people and political action committees" to elect the upstate New Yorker to his first term in 2008. Because he ran in a traditionally conservative district, Massa was highly favored across the left side of the political spectrum.

Acording to Capital Eye, "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, meanwhile, both contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Massa through their leadership PACs. So has Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who's been hamstrung with ethical issues of his own."

The list of Massa's top donors compiled by Capital Eye includes just about every big-name liberal and union special interest group in American politics, including:

 

Corning Inc.

$45,650

$35,650

$10,000

International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers

$34,500

$0

$34,500

AmeriPAC: The Fund for a Greater America (Steny Hoyer)

$30,000

$0

$30,000

Service Employees International Union

$26,000

$1,000

$25,000

American Federation of Teachers

$25,000

$0

$25,000

American Fedn of State/County/Muni Employees

$25,000

$0

$25,000

PAC to the Future (Nancy Pelosi)

$25,000

$0

$25,000

United Auto Workers

$25,000

$0

$25,000

Teamsters Union

$24,375

$0

$24,375

Harris Corp.

$24,250

$9,250

$15,000

Plumbers/Pipefitters Union

$24,000

$0

$24,000

Sheet Metal Workers Union

$23,500

$0

$23,500

American Postal Workers Union

$22,500

$0

$22,500

Communications Workers of America

$21,000

$0

$21,000

National Leadership PAC (Charles Rangel)

$21,000

$0

$21,000

Machinists/Aerospace Workers Union

$20,000

$0

$20,000

United Food & Commercial Workers Union

$20,000

$0

$20,000

United Steelworkers

$17,500

$0

$17,500

University of Rochester

$17,250

$17,250

$0

Massa is being encouraged to either return all of the money still in his re-election campaign's bank account or to donate it to charities. He could also use it to pay his legal bills, which may yet prove to be substantial.

The Washington Post reports on one of the, uh...incentives that the White House is offering Congressmen who support the Democrats' health care reform legislation:

Among the rewards Obama is ready to offer, White House officials said, are election-year visits to competitive congressional districts, where a presidential appearance can bring  in hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign funds.

In fact, the more competitive the district or state, the less popular Obama is likely to be.

But what's truly hilarious about this is the context in which it is being reported. The headline on the Post's piece is, "In St. Louis area, Obama pounds drum for health care initiative." While in Missouri, Obama did a fundraiser for Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. Oddly, though, McCaskill is not up for re-election. But the candidate for Missouri's other Senate seat, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, is running and could use some money. (It's not just that McCaskill doesn't need it yet -- it is also an unwritten rule that out-of-cycle senators don't big-foot their own party colleagues by raising money from the total pool of what's available.)

When Obama was in Missouri, she didn't go anywhere near the Kiss-of-Death-in-Chief. She was in Washington on "official business."

Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-Mass., told The Examiner Thursday that he wanted to ensure he got ample media coverage of an important point he was trying to make when he loudly scolded reporters during a speech on the House floor Wednesday.

Kennedy bellowed angrily during a debate on a resolution calling for troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan by year's end. He argued passionately in favor of bringing the troops home, but he also took a little detour in his speech, slamming the press for what he called a "despicable" lack of coverage of the men and women who have been killed in the war.

"If anyone wants to know where cynicism is, cynicism is that there are one, two people in this press gallery," Kennedy shouted, pointing up to the press viewing area directly above the Speaker's chair.

I was one of the two people Kennedy pointed at, along with Deb Price from the Detroit News. Truth be told, neither of us were sitting there in order to follow the debate on the resolution. It was a foregone conclusion it would fail, which it did, by a vote of 356-65. We both went into the viewing gallery because we heard Kennedy start to raise his voice on the television sets tuned to C-SPAN inside the nearby press office.

I invited Kennedy to follow up on his accusation Thursday afternoon and he assured me he meant nothing personal, despite his finger jabs at Deb and I from the House floor.

"The point is, my constituents are desperate," Kennedy told the Examiner. "They've continued to have record job losses, home foreclosures, health care crisis and all we talk about is Eric Massa. And in addition we are about to double down on this huge expenditure on military policy and troop expansion and it costs us a fortune."

Kennedy, 42, is retiring this year. The unemployment rate in Rhode Island is 12.7 percent and reporters are, in fact, obsessing over Eric Massa today.

"It's such a big disconnect that everybody hates Washington and feels everything is so cynical down here and that we are not doing our work because there is no coverage of it," he explained. "That's what I was driving at. And unfortunately, nothing like that ever gets covered unless you ratchet it up a little bit."

The speech became fodder for the evening news and is a popular hit on YouTube, so his strategy seems to have worked.

 

As part of a legal settlement, ACORN has agreed to get out of the state of Ohio -- for good:

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now will permanently surrender its Ohio business license by June 1 as part of a legal settlement with the conservative Buckeye Institute for Public Policy Solutions, both sides said yesterday.

ACORN was active in Ohio in the 2006 and 2008 elections, working to register thousands of low-income people to vote and get them to the polls. The group's efforts were marred by irregularities, including one case in which ACORN workers allegedly induced a Cleveland man to register to vote 72 times, offering cigarettes as an incentive.

The Buckeye Institute's 1851 Center for Constitutional Law teamed with two Warren County residents to sue ACORN in Warren County Common Pleas Court just before the 2008 election. The residents alleged that their rights were abridged by thousands of fraudulent voter registrations, each representing "a potential illegal vote that has the capacity to dilute (legitimate) votes."

The case was moved to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio.

Yesterday's settlement is mostly confidential, said Maurice A. Thompson, the conservative group's attorney.

"They will surrender their business license by June 1 and cease to operate in Ohio and cease to support or enable other groups to do what they do," Thompson said.

It's possible that ACORN is so beleagured it simply doesn't have the money to fight back. Still, though the article doesn't mention it, this was a RICO lawsuit and the charges against the group were detailed and damning. For more on the Buckeye Institute's lawsuit, see here.

 

To-may-toe, To-mah-toe

"I may be guilty of extortion, but I never took a bribe."

--Former Detroit city council member and wife of Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., Monica Conyers on the injustice of being sentenced to three years in prison.

Don't ask, don't tell

"That story about him in the shower with Congressman Massa sure sounds like the Rahm I know."

--Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich claims White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel assaulted scandal-ridden Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., in the shower over his health care vote. 

Can we throw lawmakers over our shoulder?

No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises."

--From a bill recently introduced into the New York state legislature to ban the use of salt in restaurants.

But spotted owl is tasty

"Someone should not be able to walk into a restaurant and order a plate of an endangered species."

--U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr., on charges that a California sushi chef was illegally serving whale in hi

Something the Dems overlooked?               (Gawker photo illustration)

Big drama in Wrentham! Uh, 10 years ago. But still -- Gawker raises an interesting issue about a decade-old harassment case and wonders whether the Democrats lost their chance to horribly exploit it and keep the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's Senate seat in the family.

But why did Democrats and members of the national press fail to even bring up the fact that Scott Brown had once been accused of sexual harassment and defamation in the myriad stories about him prior to Massachusetts' special election in January? Google it. The entire incident is conspicuously absent.

The entire incident involves Jennifer Firth, a member of the Wrentham board of selectmen elected in 1999, who went to work on Brown's state House campaign the year before, in 1998. Her lawsuit claimed he harassed her and told people they had been "intimate" and other refinements -- read all about it here.

Brown denied the allegations. Firth's lawyer withdrew from the case, and then Firth withdrew her own lawsuit, three days after filing it. Gawker notes that Firth had some other contretemps in Wrentham -- including an ethics complaint stemming from claims she was harassed by a cop in 2005.

Still, Gawker wonders why, even given the fact that Firth's case no longer exists and may have been flawed, the matter was not thoroughly aired and exploited during what was a particularly heated (and not terribly high-minded) special election race. Notes the website:

Clearly, if the situation were reversed and it had it been a Democrat in a high-profile special election who had a harassment and defamation suit in his past, the story would have been a talking point on Fox News for weeks.

 

 

 

The House just voted 402-1 to refer to the ethics committee a demand put forward by GOP leaders that the panel query Democratic leaders about their handling of allegations that former Rep. Eric Massa-D-N.Y.. sexually harassed a male staffer.

The vote does not compel the ethics committee to follow through with the Republican resolution, which would have required the panel to open an official investigation into "which House leaders and their respective staffs had knowledge prior to March 3, 2010 of the aformentioned allegations concerning Mr. Massa and what actions" were taken.

It merely directs the panel to consider the resolution, and given the political climate, there is a good chance they will.

The 10-member, bipartisan panel dropped it's probe into Massa's conduct when he resigned, because they have no jurisdiction over former members.

Democrats dodged a direct vote on ordering the ethics panel to open up an official probe, but they also refused to simply reject the resolution by putting it aside. One Democratic leadership aide pointed out that by referring the resolution to the committee, it eliminates the chance of Republicans returning to the floor again and again and demanding an investigation. Fifteen members voted "present," including the members of the ethics panel who never take a side on votes regarding their committee. 

Today the Detroit Free Press reports that Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick has been subpoenaed by a grand jury and that one of her staffers apparently has been as well. This was announced yesterday by the Speaker’s office, but Kilpatrick and the staffer reportedly notified the Speaker’s office of this by a letter dated March 1. The Freep story provides no explanation of the delay.

Kilpatrick’s son, Kwame Kilpatrick, was ousted as mayor of Detroit and sentenced to jail on charges relating to his affair with a top staffer. Her district, most of which is part of the city of Detroit, is overwhelmingly Democratic; it voted 85%-14% for Barack Obama in November 2008. But she won her Democratic primary in August 2008 with only 35% of the vote; two other candidates had 32% and 22%. So she looks like a likely loser in the primary next August. The only question is whether she can hold onto her seat long enough to cast a yes vote on the Senate health care bill.

This comes on top of the recent news about the family of Congressman John Conyers, Jr., who represents a Detroit-based district next door to Kilpatrick's. Conyers's wife, former Detroit Councilwoman Monica Conyers, was sentenced yesterday to 37 months in prison on federal bribery charges. John Conyers, the second longest serving member of the House, was first elected in 1964 and is Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

The Hill provides an advance report on today's meeting between President Obama and members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus:

A group of Hispanic lawmakers on Thursday will tell President Barack Obama that they may not vote for healthcare reform unless changes are made to the bill’s immigration provisions.

The scheduled meeting comes as Democratic leaders and the White House are struggling to craft a final bill that will attract 216 votes in the lower chamber.

This is a late and unwelcome complication in Speaker Pelosi's quest for 216 "yes" votes. (Our whip count is here.) Note that among the "yes" votes from November who were already wavering is Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Tex.

Judicial Watch has unearthed some explosive new ACORN documents that, according to a press release, show the Obama Justice Department quashed an FBI investigation of ACORN. It started when the Republican Registrars of Voters of Stamford and Bridgeport, Connecticut -- Lucy Corelli and Joseph Borges -- filed a complaint with the FBI during the 2008 election season:

According to Corelli, on August 1, 2008, her office received 1,200 ACORN voter registration cards from the Secretary of State’s office.  Over 300 of these cards were rejected because of “duplicates, underage, illegible and invalid addresses,” which “put a tremendous strain on our office staff and caused endless work hours at taxpayers’ expense.”  Corelli claimed the total cost of the extra work caused by ACORN corruption was $20,000.  Likewise, Borges contended that: “The organization ACORN during the summer of 2008 conducted a registration drive which has produced over 100 rejections due to incomplete forms and individuals who are not citizens…”  Among the examples cited by Borges was a seven-year old child who was registered to vote by ACORN through the use of a forged signature and a fake birth certificate claiming she was 27-years old.

The FBI and Department of Justice opened an investigation into the the charges. But according to documents Judical Watch obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, the Obama Justice Department "while noting that ACORN had engaged in 'questionable hiring and training practices,' closed down the investigation in March 2009, claiming ACORN broke no laws." Of course, as Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton made a point of telling me on the phone, it is illegal to knowingly submit false voter registrations so the Justice Department's claim that ACORN didn't violate any laws is highly dubious.

But we're just getting warmed up. Judicial Watch has much more:

By contrast, the documents also include records related to a federal investigation of ACORN corruption in St. Louis, Missouri, involving 1,492 allegedly fraudulent voter registration cards submitted by Project Vote, a liberal non-profit organization affiliated with ACORN on voter registration drives, during the 2006 election season.  Assistant United States Attorney Hal Goldsmith initiated the investigation with “concurrence” from the Department of Justice and the participation of the FBI.  According to a Justice Department memo, Goldsmith “advised he would prosecute any individual responsible for submitting fraudulent voter registration cards.”  Goldsmith identified the statute for prosecution: Title 42, USC 1973 (gg), which provides for criminal penalties for fraudulent voter registrations.  In April 2008, eight former ACORN employees from the St. Louis office pled guilty to voter registration fraud. 

The documents also encompass a fairly wide swath of information:

The ACORN documents uncovered by Judicial Watch include internal FBI memoranda, signed affidavits, subpoenas, fraudulent voter registration cards, and publications describing ACORN’s policies and practices.  The documents also include details regarding numerous allegations of corruption extending beyond voter registration fraud, to include attempts by ACORN employees to coerce workers to participate in campaign activities on behalf of Democratic candidates.

Between all of these documents -- which Judical Watch is making public -- we have a shot at piecing together a comprehensive, systemic look at ACORN corruption. If it looks as bad as it appears and can be substantiated by documentation, the fact that ACORN has not been seriously investigated by the feds will be a damning indictment of the White House.

Republican Registrars of Voters in Stamford and Bridgeport, Connecticut, respectively, during the 2008 election season.

Back in December, U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon in New York issued a temporary injunction preventing Congress from cutting off funding to ACORN. She has now ruled that injunction will be permanent. So no matter how grossly illegal the activities an organization is engaged in, they apparently have a constitutional right to your money if an unelected federal judge says so. Matthew Vadum runs down the consequences of the ruling:

If Gershon's absurd ruling remains undisturbed it will mean every parasitic leftist group in the country will have due process rights in the appropriations process. At worst, Congress will not be able to cut off any group for any reason. At best, Congress will have to jump through hoops in order to de-fund any group. The rights of tax eaters will become paramount to the rights of taxpayers.

The ruling should be music to the ears of Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), a huge fan of ACORN who has given thousands of dollars over the years to the ACORN network. The thoroughly corrupt Nadler urged ACORN's lawyer to sue the government, arguing that a ban on funding constituted a "bill of attainder." Within weeks, ACORN took his advice.

The ruling also appears to mean that ACORN and other leftist activist groups are eligible for up to $3.99 billion in federal funding included in President Obama's $3.83 trillion fiscal 2011 budget blueprint.

The $3.99 billion comes from a congressional slush fund known as the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, which is part of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) $48.5 billion fiscal 2011 budget. CDBG grants, which are awarded to states and localities, flow indirectly to ACORN and similar groups that compete at the state and local level for grants.

Get ready for more federal ACORN dollars to start flowing -- just in time for the 2012 elections.

Democrats are trying desperately to get out from under their ethical cloud. In fact they're so desperate that that they are actually considering a ban on earmarks -- but only a ban on earmarks for for-profit companies. (Which wouldn't have stopped the Cornhusker Kickback, the Gator-Aid, or the Lousiana Purchase -- the three most recent, pernicious and expensive examples of earmarking, used to pass the Senate's health care reform bill.)

But it seems even that half-measure is too much for some Democrats who really, really like their pork:

Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), the chairman of the Senate’s Appropriations Committee, slammed House Appropriations Chairman David Obey’s (D-Wis.) moratorium on earmarks to for-profit companies mere hours after Obey announced it on Wednesday.

Inouye’s decision puts House Democratic leaders in an awkward position and could create a protracted fight over the fiscal 2011 spending bills. ...

Just hours later, Inouye argued “it does not make sense” to exclude for-profit companies from congressional earmarks.

“I don’t believe this policy or ceding authority to the executive branch on any spending decision is in the best interests of the Congress or the American people,” Inouye said in a statement. “I am not sure why we should treat for-profit earmarks any differently than nonprofit earmarks.”

Though focus here is on Democratic infighting, it should also be noted that the GOP's ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, Thad Cochran of Mississippi, is also against the earmark ban. I imagine this doesn't sit well with certain members of his own caucus, particularly Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who have long pushed for an end to earmarking.

Fred and Jeri Thompson took their radio show to the WLS Chicago airwaves this morning during drive-time. Among their guests: Disgraced Democratic former Gov. Rod Blagojevich. The impeached state executive made many claims that will ring hollow, but he also had some interesting political analysis, particularly of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who was among his early backers for governor in 2002 and who succeeded him in his Skokie-area House seat in 2003. 

Sen. Thompson asked about whether Blago believed the story told by former Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., that Emanuel had accosted him naked in the shower about voting against President Obama's budget.

THOMPSON: Does that sound like the Rahm Emanuel you know?

BLAGOJEVICH: The idea that Rahm Emanuel would be in the House gym...lobbying another Congressman, whether he had clothes on or not, is the reason why I wanted him to be the guy to cut the deal [regarding the appointment of a U.S. Senator.]...That story about him in the shower with Congressman Massa sure sounds like the Rahm I know.

Blagojevich claimed that because Emanuel is tougher than other Illinois politicians, like Dick Durbin, he wanted Emanuel to cut the deal for who would take the U.S. Senate seat formerly held by President Obama. (Federal prosecutors would say otherwise -- Blagojevich is actually accused of trying to sell the seat.)

He also dismissed the idea, floated some time ago in the Washington Post but disbelieved by most Chicagoans, that Emanuel might return to Chicago to run for mayor. “I hear that, but I can't imagine,” said the former governor. “I feel like Mayor Daley, like his father, is going to be mayor until God calls him home.”

Thompson also asked whether Blagojevich thought there was anything to the idea that Emanuel may be positioning himself to replace banker and state Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias as the Democratic nominee for Senate. Giannoulias is proving to be an embarrassment to the White House, and his family bank could fail any day, sending his campaign into a tailspin.

“That's more realistic, frankly, in my mind, than the Daley option – him taking over the Senate nomination,” Blagojevich said.

Thompson also asked him about Gov. Pat Quinn, D, his former lieutenant who replaced him, who trails in the polls already against Republican Bill Brady.

“Well, he's a disaster,” said Blago, who also claimed that part of the reason he was run out of office was that he had prevented a tax increase. “I mean no disrespect, but I've said that Pat Quinn is essentially the substance of a eunuch in the form of a man. He's been emasculated by the Democratic political power structure, and he broke a promise he and I both made to the people not to raise taxes in less than six weeks.”

Hear the whole interview here:

Last night, Republican John Tholl won a special election to the New Hampshire House of Representatives, "after running a campaign based on lower taxes, less spending and smaller government," according to the Republican State Leadership Committee.

But Tholl's election marks another milestone. While everybody has been focused on the potential of a GOP takeover at the national level, Republicans have been winning lots of state elections under the radar:

Since November of 2008, Republicans have won 50 state legislative special elections across the country. Republicans have now gained 13 seats that were previously held by Democrats in the same time period. ... The organization also delivered new Republican majorities in the Montana, Oklahoma and Tennessee state senates, as well as an unprecedented majority in the Tennessee House of Representatives.