Yesterday morning, President Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers to replace Sandra Day O'Connor as an associate justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. [1] In doing so, the President has selected a relative unknown to serve on this country's highest court. When he campaigned for his office in 2000 and 2004, George W. Bush promised to appoint judges in the mold of sitting justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. [2] Following John Roberts' nomination, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales reassured journalist Brit Hume that Roberts was indeed a nominee in the mold of those two justices. Today, it is rumored that Karl Rove, the President's chief political adviser, is making the rounds with conservatives to assure them that this nominee, Harriet Miers, is in that same mold as well.

If Rove is in fact making the rounds, there is good reason. While he is no longer representative of the conservative wing of the Republican Party, Pat Buchanan, former Republican presidential candidate in 1992 and 1996, has stated simply that Miers' qualifications to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court are "non-existent." [3] There is little doubt, especially among those in the Republican Party who have followed this nomination intently and with hopeful optimism, that there were many more qualified candidates for this nomination. Many conservatives felt that Janice Rogers Brown would have made a great nominee, but would have been extremely difficult to confirm. Others believed that Michael Luttig would have been the preferred nominee. In fact, some felt that the talk about Miers and Karen Williams was simply a head-fake before the President would nominate another white male -- Luttig -- to O'Connor's seat. Clearly the President is listening to the critics who have stated authoritatively that O'Connor's seat must be filled by a woman. He may have also been listening to those same critics who said the seat must remain a swing vote. That is, at least, the fear of many conservative activists.

Continued below the fold.

From the diaries--Chris

From the Associated Press:

There are some conflicting and misleading quotes in this article, such as the suggestion that the trustee decided when to sell the shares, even though it is also written that Frist asked for the trustee to sell all the shares on June 13, just before the stock peaked, and a month before it dropped significantly. The article also states that blind trusts are intended to prevent a conflict of interest, though that doesn't pass the smell test when the stockholder has the ability to instruct the trustee when to sell all the shares, and especially when the stockholder happens to be a member of the family that runs the corporation.

This could be very damaging to Frist's already-decreased chances of winning the Republican nomination for President in 2008. Regardless, even though Frist is retiring from the U.S. Senate and will not seek re-election in 2006, Democrats will be able to use stories like this, and especially this, as an example of the kind of wheeling and dealing that takes place at the highest echelons of power when Republicans with significant conflicts of interest, such as a U.S. Senate Majority Leader who is a member of a family that owns one of the nation's largest hospital chains, are in charge of government.

How much influence was Frist able to exert as Majority Leader, or simply as a senator, on legislation that would advance the cause of health care and hospital corporations, with HCA specifically in mind? Very few Americans know about Frist's connections to HCA and his strongly pro-industry voting record on issues of health care in the U.S. Senate. When they are made aware through campaign advertisements during the 2006 cycle, the results could be dramatic. Republicans could very well lose control of Congress, both houses in fact, as a result of this potential scandal alone.

The job of Democrats, now, is to keep kicking this story. This should be front page news, and it should be on the evening news broadcasts of all the major networks. Investigations should be called for, and high-ranking Democrats should call for Frist's resignation. This kind of behavior requires one of two things: an extremely good and well-documented explanation, or a prompt resignation. There ought to be no place for profiteering in American government.

It's been a busy day. I've updated my 2006 gubernatorial projections, this being my second release. There have been some significant changes, but, like my U.S. Senate projections, there is too much custom CSS formatting for me to post the projections here.

So, instead, please visit the following link, and then comment in this thread on the projections: http://www.timsaler.com/?p=187

The short version is this: Democrats will make a +5 net gain in 2006, acquiring a majority of the nation's governorships by a 27 to 23 margin.

Hey folks, I posted my new updated 2006 U.S. Senate projections over at TimSaler.com.

Unfortunately, there's too much custom CSS formatting on it for me to replicate it here. As a result, I'm just going to post a link to the projections themselves, and then invite everyone to comment on them here in this thread. Sound alright? I hope so.

Here's the link: Updated 2006 U.S. Senate Projections

The short version is this: Republicans maintain control of the U.S. Senate with a 54-45-1 majority.

Check out the link for the specifics, and please comment!

Here's this week's 2008 presidential rankings, hot off the presses. Frequent readers will notice that I have switched back to the format which uses the top five Republicans and top five Democrats. Last week I posted only the top ten Republicans, and the feedback was not nearly as positive as it is when I do the top five Democrats and Republicans respectively. So, we're back to the old format until further notice.

1. U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton (New York)
   
2. U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold (Wisconsin)
   
3. Gen. Wesley Clark (ret.) (Arkansas)
   
4. Fmr. U.S. Sen. John Edwards (North Carolina)
   
5. Gov. Mark Warner (Virginia)

Remember, these are just one man's opinions! Please comment and tell me who you think should be on this list (or e-mail me), and I will be sure to take your thoughts into account for next week's list.

In presidential elections from 1980 to the present, the pro-life candidate has been victorious over 71 percent of the time. Pro-life presidential candidates have averaged a surprisingly low 48.5 percent of the popular vote in those elections, but also averaged a resounding 332 electoral votes. It's simply a matter of common political sense now that pro-life candidates have an advantage in national elections, capitalizing on what has been understood as a wide silent majority of Americans who subscribe to traditional family values, including an opposition to the practice of abortion. The pro-life vote has been considered so strong that Democrats, while considered to be the pro-choice party, have begun heavily recruiting pro-life candidates to run for office, such as Pennsylvania state treasurer Bob Casey, Jr., whose father was shut out of the 1992 national convention for his anti-abortion beliefs.

SurveyUSA has released a new 50-state poll for September 12, 2005, available here, that may begin to turn around these perceptions. According to the poll, both a simple and weighted majority of Americans consider themselves pro-choice on the issue of abortion. While there have been criticisms in the past of SurveyUSA's methodology, these numbers still provide very interesting and valuable material to study and from which to work, especially heading into the 2006 elections with President Bush having made, by then, at least two nominations to the U.S. Supreme Court, potentially endangering the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973 most often credited with the national legalization of abortion.

I have created a visual representation of these poll numbers, available below, which demonstrates which states have a majority pro-choice or pro-life population. I've also counted up the states based on their presidential electoral votes, and the results are shocking. Using this poll information alone, pro-choice America today represents a greater electoral and popular majority than Franklin Roosevelt had when he won re-election to a fourth term in 1944.

Republicans argue all the time that Democrats don't have any ideas or proposals of their own, that they simply allow Republicans to come up with all the new plans, then oppose them. As a general rule, this sort of accusation is best reserved for comic strips and other places where specific factual accuracy is at a minimum, but a broad, sweeping condemnation is acceptable. The facts are somewhat to the contrary: Democrats do have ideas and proposals of their own, but it's awful hard for them to do anything about it with a Republican Congress.

One particular issue, however, where the Republicans might be on to something is Social Security reform. Many Democrats have taken the line of argument that there is nothing wrong with Social Security, that it is solvent until 2042, and therefore no reason exists to make a change. While it is true that the Social Security Trust Fund will not go bankrupt until 2042 or thereabouts, it is expected that outgoing funds will surpass incoming funds around 2016. So, give or take, we have about ten years to try to -- at the very least -- burnish the Social Security Trust Fund so that it will not go bankrupt in 2042, but perhaps several decades later. This is indeed kicking the can down the street some, but it gives legislators and the American people as a whole more time to consider and prepare for the options and their necessary consequences.

On November 4, 2004, fresh off the heels of the President's re-election, which I did not support, though I admired his willingness to take on this controversial issue, I completed a bill that I thought could be a good start, perhaps for the sole purpose of proving that there are indeed Democrats out there with a plan and a proposal for how to reform Social Security. Now that the Republicans in Congress, based on the statements made by U.S. Rep. Tom Reynolds (R-N.Y.), seem to have given up on reforming the system during the 109th Congress, I felt that now was a good time to publish my proposal publicly, as a contrast between what was suggested and not accomplished and what could have been but was never tried.

Read the bill below the fold.

From the Associated Press,

President Bush on Friday ruled out raising taxes to pay for Gulf Coast reconstruction, saying other government spending must be cut. "You bet it will cost money, but I'm confident we can handle it," he said.

"It's going to cost whatever it's going to cost, and we're going to be wise about the money we spend," Bush said a day after laying out an expensive plan for rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast without spelling out how he would pay for it.
...
Also Friday, White House officials said taxpayers at home will pay the bill for the massive reconstruction program and that this will mean a deeper budget deficit.

Bush said it's important that government quickly fix the region's infrastructure to give people hope. Asked who would pay for the work and how it would impact the nation's rising debt, Bush said he was confident the United States could pay for reconstruction "and our other priorities."

He said that means "cutting unnecessary spending" and maintaining economic growth, "which means we should not raise taxes."

The President certainly has the prerogative to go about funding the programs that he proposes to Congress in whatever way he sees fit, and Congress of course has the constitutional authority to choose to fund the programs -- if even accepted -- in a different way. What is striking here is the carelessness with which President Bush proposed all sorts of very expensive federal programs for the reconstruction effort in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. To propose such massive programs and then immediately and flippantly eliminate a main potential source of paying for that program seems foolish.

More below the fold.