The heat has been turned up under Rep. John Murtha. With Nancy Pelosi’s own problems to manage, how much more political capital can she expend in defending Murtha? (Or does Pelosi need Murtha more than ever?)
A bizillion reasons why Jennifer Granholm won’t be the Supreme Court pick — including tax problems and a corruption investigation. You wonder how she got to be governor. (You sort of wonder if the leaked short lists are really short lists at all since Granholm has so many strikes against her.)
In a piece entitled “The witch hunt has caught the witch,” Jack Kelly writes: “It’s been fascinating to watch perhaps soon to be former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal) dig her political grave. The first rule of holes is that when you find yourself in one, stop digging. But for her press conference Thursday, Ms. Pelosi rented a steam shovel.” Well for now Democrats are buying her story — or pretending to — so I don’t see a palace coup underway.
Her poll numbers are taking a beating.
Your tax dollars at work: “The federal government is now advertising the stimulus package to . . . federal workers. It’s part an interesting ad campaign that’s been launched in Washington. The ads include three small, identical billboards inside Union Station, a major commuter hub just a few blocks from the Capitol.”
Another excellent flip-flop: Obama pushes to complete Bush-era free trade deals.
The New York Times can’t figure out what’s wrong with Maureen Dowd using other people’s work as her own. Well, as Michael Goldfarb puts it, we’d like to know “just how much of Dowd’s drivel is her own and how much is cribbed from her friends.” Perhaps she should go back to whining about her career prospects, which seemed to be genuine although drearily irrelevant to the rest of us.
Some colorful and helpful charts on spending and taxation from Heritage.
A typically thoughtful analysis by Yuval Levin on the president’s speech at Notre Dame.
Newsweek’s goal: fewer readers! I suspect they’ll succeed.
Carolyn Maloney isn’t dropping out of the New York Senate race yet. Ironically, by chasing out Steve Israel the White House may have set up Kirsten Gillibrand for a harder race. Running against a single popular congresswoman may be tougher than having multiple challengers who would divide the anti-Gillibrand vote.
Megan McArdle isn’t buying the Maureen Dowd (“a friend told me”) excuse for plagiarism, arguing if true “she’s wasted as a columnist; she ought to have her own mentalist act.” Well the first part is patently obvious. But it sure has been a bad week for the grande dames of liberalism — first Pelosi and now Dowd. So many people misleading them!
And Dowd’s “conversation with a friend” even included the commas. Whoops!
A Fox poll suggests a recent Gallup poll was not an anomaly: more Americans now identify as pro-life than pro-choice.
The same poll shows that by a 55-37% margin Americans are opposed to transferring Guantanamo detainees to the U.S. — and that includes a majority of Democrats.
Which reminds me: New Jersey GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Lonegan is now to the left of most Democrats on Guantanamo. And Lonegan is on quite a roll; some in New Jersey are questioning why he’s touting the Ron Paul endorsement given Paul’s virulent anti-Israel record.
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Brian Moran is continuing to needle Terry McAuliffe, this time because McAuliffe of course battled against Barack Obama throughout a long and bitter primary.
