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Chuck DeVore sent out yet another of his campaign emails yesterday, this time whining that “Obama and his liberal colleagues in Washington are spending us into oblivion. Meanwhile welfare rolls continue unabated while fraud and abuse run rampant.”

So I wondered if DeVore might in fact be spending himself into oblivion? The short answer – yes!

If you look at the graphic above you will see that DeVore’s campaign for the U.S. Senate is heavily in debt. He owes over $106,000! Ruh-roh!

And it turns out that DeVore’s Assembly campaign accounts are also in debt! See the figures below.

DeVore in ‘08 (active)
Cash (6/30/09) = $2,064.65
Debt (6/30/09) = $31,782.87 (of which $7,800 are loans from himself made in
2009, the rest is accrued expenses)

DeVore in ‘04 (active)
Cash (6/30/09) = $224.93
Debt (6/30/09) = $19,308.51 (of which $18,850 are loans from himself made in
2003, the rest is accrued expenses)

Todd and I would like to offer our best wishes to the Jewish community as they celebrate the High Holy Days. With the celebration of the Jewish New Year this week and the observance of the Day of Atonement next week, we are reminded of the hopeful commitment to renewal and peace exemplified by the Jewish tradition and the Jewish people throughout history.

Yom Kippur, the most solemn and important of the Jewish holy days, is a time of reflection and supplication for forgiveness. The timeless human struggle to promote justice, harmony, and peace is seen here in this process of atonement – in humbly seeking pardon for past wrongs in the hope of a new beginning. It reminds us that if we wish to co-exist globally, we must all strive for forgiveness and tolerance.

A speech was given at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday that was full of hateful anti-Semitic rhetoric

Unfortunately, the synagogue’s rabbi considered himself a bit of a political speechwriter as well, and gave an overly political and unbecoming sermon that evening condemning “those who would use alliteration to polarize our society.” As Safire put it in his book Before the Fall, “that’s all I needed; the ‘nattering nabobs of negativism’ was not a sin I had come to atone for.” Yitzhak Rabin, who was the Israeli ambassador to Washington at the time, comforted Safire after the sermon and later told the rabbi that he felt the attack was inappropriate, something for which Safire was forever grateful.

Gregory asked: “Your wife famously talked about the vast right wing conspiracy targeting you. As you look at this opposition on the right to President Obama, is it still there?”

The former president replied: “Oh, you bet. Sure it is. It's not as strong as it was, because America has changed demographically. But it's as virulent as it was. I mean, they're saying things about him. You know, it's like when they accused me of murder, and all that stuff they did. … But … it's not really good for the Republicans and the country, what's going on now. I mean, they may be hurting President Obama. They can take his numbers down. They can run his opposition up. But, fundamentally, he and his team have a positive agenda for America. Their agenda seems to be wanting him to fail."
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Bill Clinton playing the Hispanic card? or is it the Black card?

Former presidential candidate John Edwards is said to be ready to admit that he fathered a love child. But Hades may have a skating rink before his wife, Elizabeth, signs off on such a confession.

As a grand jury in North Carolina considers whether Edwards misused campaign funds to cover up the scandal, Elizabeth still can't abide his former mistress, Rielle Hunter.

Word is Elizabeth vehemently opposed the plan, now in place, for Hunter and daughter Quinn to move from New Jersey to Wilmington, N.C., where the Edwardses have a beach house.
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Elizabeth Edwards talking to a divorce lawyer. Why did it take so long?

Iran said it successfully test-fired short-range missiles during drills Sunday by the elite Revolutionary Guard, a show of force days after the U.S. and its allies condemned Tehran over a newly revealed underground nuclear facility that was being secretly constructed.

English-language Press TV reported the Fateh-110, Tondar-69 and Zelzal were test fired in a missile defense exercise, but did not give specifics on range or other details. All are short-range, surface-to-surface missiles.

Gen. Hossein Salami, head of the Revolutionary Guard Air Force, told reporters Iran tested a multiple missile launcher for the first time. Press TV showed pictures of at least two missiles being fired simultaneously and said they were from Sunday's drill in a desert in central Iran. In the clip, men could be heard shouting "Allahu Akbar" as the missiles were launched.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Steve Poizner repeated his campaign's call Saturday for rival Meg Whitman to drop out of the race after The Bee reported this week that it could not find evidence that Whitman registered to vote until 2002.

State Insurance Commissioner Poizner told The Bee in an interview at the California Republican Party convention in Indian Wells that Whitman's voting record made her "unelectable." On Thursday, the day the Bee story was published, Poizner communications director Jarrod Agen first called on Whitman to "step aside."

We got three minutes with B.Brain afterwards — oh, and not a minute longer — and prodded him for his thoughts about California's guv race. Said he hasn't really been following too closely. Rove said Meg Whitman's lack of experience won't necessarily be a disadvantage in that she is an outside-the-system candidate, and said Steve Poizner has a lot of grassroots support. Said Carly Fiorina has a chance against incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer who is a "hyperpartisan." Indeed, takes one to know one.

Certainly not every citizen has a perfect record of voting in national, state and local elections. Nor do some people who have sought election to office. Schwarzenegger did not vote in the 1996 and 2000 presidential primary or general elections. Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and a prospective Republican candidate for Senate in California next year, skipped the presidential primaries in 2000 and 2004 and the primary and general elections in 2006.

Failure to vote from time to time is understandable and has rarely been seen as disqualifying for those seeking public office. But Whitman's record appears to go beyond occasional absences. Setting aside the question of whether she was registered before 2002, her slender record is striking for its apparent disinterest in the political process.

Given the state of the state, the California governor's race will be among the most important in the country next year.
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Should Meg Whitman proceed in the GOP primary?

With the junior Senator from California, elected at the tail-end of a recession, having watched unemployment climb by 33% in the Golden State during her tenure in the United States Senate*, we in California need a representative in Washington who knows how to create jobs. Unemployment out here is now at a post-World Wart II high.

Mrs. Boxer seems indifferent to the employment situation in the Golden State; just this week she voted to table an amendment which could have created or saved (to borrow an expression from the President she supports) as many as 80,000 jobs.

To bring California back, we would do well to send someone to Washington who is not a creature of government. With a background in business, Carly Fiorina knows what it takes to get companies to move to (or stay in) the Golden State, creating jobs, fostering innovation and expanding opportunity.

It was the beginning of what has been an enduring three-way friendship and political relationship.

Angeles has been a political consultant and adviser to both Stricklands and, since December 1998, has been employed by the California Assembly as chief of staff to Tony and then to Audra after she was elected to succeed her husband in 2004.

“Our kids call Joel ‘Uncle Joel,’ ” Tony Strickland said in an interview last year. “Joel is Audra’s political mentor. He is our common friend.”

Angeles was found not guilty Friday of misdemeanor charges involving three demonstrators outside a June 2008 political fundraiser for Tony Strickland.

A Ventura County jury today acquitted the chief of staff of a state assemblywoman on charges of assaulting protesters outside of a political fundraiser last year in Thousand Oaks.

Jose "Joel" Angeles, the top aide to Assemblywoman Audra Strickland (R-Thousand Oaks), was found not guilty of misdemeanor criminal charges stemming from a scuffle in which a 69-year-old Episcopal priest complained that he was body-slammed by Angeles, causing injuries that required shoulder surgery.

Angeles testified during the trial that it was he who was roughed up during the scuffle, and that he had not hit or shoved anyone.

The incident occurred when mostly Democratic protesters gathered outside of a fundraiser at the Hyatt Westlake Plaza Hotel for Strickland's Republican husband, state Sen. Tony Strickland.

Tom Campbell was billed as the featured speaker at Friday night's dinner at the GOP convention in Indian Wells. But Campbell, introduced by party chair Ron Nehring as "the nicest guy in California politics" — paging Leo Durocher — was left to cool his heels as three other speakers (including Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger) preceded him.

The odd part was who the party had speak before him. Bill Mundell, chairman of ZBB Energy, gave a quirky, rambling speech calling for "an economic revolution" centered around selling off public assets, including the DMV. Mundell rambled on for 30 minutes, leaving the audience checking their Blackberrys and giving each other looks of despair and disbelief.

Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner is wasting no time pouncing on a Sacramento Bee article reporting that fellow GOP gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman apparently never registered to vote until 2002. And didn't bother to vote after that. As Republicans gather at their statewide convention in Indian Wells this weekend, Poizner sent out a press release saying Whitman feared "the California press corps, which is the only thing she avoids more than debates and voting."

Is a little Whitman piling on happening? As Poizner tries to ride "not voting-gate" — Governor Schwarzenegger is dismissing the former eBay CEO's promise to delay implementing AB 32 regulations if she becomes governor.

State legislative aide Joel Angeles was found not guilty of all charges today in his misdemeanor battery trial in Ventura County Superior Court.

The jury issued its decision one day after beginning its deliberations.

Angeles, 45, chief of staff for Assemblywoman Audra Strickland, R-Moorpark, was accused of roughing up three Democratic demonstrators outside a June 2008 Republican fundraiser for Strickland’s husband, state Sen. Tony Strickland, R-Moorpark, at the Hyatt Westlake Plaza hotel in Thousand Oaks.

“I am so grateful,” Angeles said today after the verdict was announced. Fifteen months elapsed between the incident and the trial. “That was the longest 15 months of my life,” he said.

The Sacramento resident testified Wednesday that Democratic demonstrators, including one of the alleged victims, battered him, not the other way around.

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) received a handwritten note Thursday from Joint Committee on Taxation Chief of Staff Tom Barthold confirming the penalty for failing to pay the up to $1,900 fee for not buying health insurance.

Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in jail or a $25,000 penalty, Barthold wrote on JCT letterhead. He signed it "Sincerely, Thomas A. Barthold."

The note was a follow-up to Ensign's questioning at the markup.

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden demanded that European nations withdraw their troops from Afghanistan in a new audio tape aired on Friday, saying they were sacrificing men and money in an unjust U.S.-led war.

"We are not demanding anything unjust. It is just for you to end injustice and withdraw your soldiers (from Afghanistan)," he said in the tape, released on the Internet with a background picture of bin Laden and with German and English subtitles.

"One of the greatest injustices is to kill people unjustly, and this is exactly what your governments and soldiers are committing under the cover of the NATO alliance in Afghanistan," bin Laden said in the recording, entitled "A message to the people of Europe."

"An intelligent person does not waste his children and wealth for the sake of a gang in Washington," he said in the four-minute recording produced by al Qaeda's media arm As-Sahab.

Americans are more likely to say they would oppose (50%) rather than favor (41%) a possible decision by President Barack Obama to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

As the UN nuclear watchdog agency confirmed relevations coming out of the G-20 today that Iran has admitted that it has a second, covert pilot fuel enrichment plant under construction in the country, Iran experts said the news is a potential game changer going into international talks with Iran next week.

"The mantra of the Obama team for months has been that the fissile material for [an Iranian] bomb was more likely to come from a covert faciilty" than an overt enrichment facility such as that at Natanz, the Washington Instiute for Near East Policy's Patrick Clawson told POLITICO.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has warned President Barack Obama against pressing Tehran about new revelations that Iran has been constructing a secret uranium-enrichment plant. "If I were Obama's adviser, I would definitely advise him to refrain making this statement because it is definitely a mistake," Ahmadinejad told TIME in New York on Friday. "It would definitively be a mistake." His comment came as President Obama, speaking at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, made a dramatic announcement that Iran has been constructing a second uranium-enrichment facility whose existence had been kept secret in violation of the non-proliferation agreements to which Tehran is a signatory.

President Obama and the leaders of Britain and France accused Iran on Friday of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying the country has hidden the covert operation from international weapons inspectors for years.
Appearing before reporters in Pittsburgh, Mr. Obama said that the Iranian nuclear program “represents a direct challenge to the basic foundation of the nonproliferation regime.” President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said that Iran had a deadline of two months to comply with international demands or face increased sanctions.

“The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the entire international community,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said. “The international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand.”

“Voting is a precious right that all voters should exercise,” the former eBay CEO said in a written statement. “I have repeatedly said that my voting record is inexcusable. I failed to register and vote on numerous occasions throughout my life. That is simply wrong and I have taken responsibility for my mistake.”

The campaign of Whitman’s top Republican rival, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, was quick to pounce with an personal email shipped to my desk yesterday afternoon.

“In the history of America, no one has been elected governor or a state with Meg Whitman’s 25-year history of no-show voting,” said Poizner communications director Jarrod Agen. “She is unelectable and has tried to cover her lack of honesty with millions of dollars.”

I think this is the real news; Whitman has – for the first time in this race – offered a reply to an opponent in the race.

Former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is thinking about running for the GOP nomination against California Senator Barbara Boxer next year. Earlier this week, she put up a campaign website that got what could charitably be described as unenthusiastic reviews. "A little weird," wrote Holly Bailey of Newsweek. CNN added that even her fellow Republicans are "snickering about her bare-bones site." And Christopher Orr at the New Republic ventured that the site was possibly "the sorriest in recent political history."

I'll agree that the website left a lot to be desired. But after a conversation I had with Fiorina last week, I'm willing to cut her some slack for not having managed the smoothest campaign launch. Fiorina has had a lot on her plate lately. Last week, she was on a panel of cancer survivors that I moderated at Fortune's Most Powerful Women Summit in North San Diego.

Two wealthy California businesswomen took steps toward running for office this week. Neither is a newcomer to politics, exactly, but Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina have never run for public office before.

Ms. Whitman, the billionaire former chief executive of eBay, formally announced her campaign Tuesday to replace outgoing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The same day, Ms. Fiorina, a former Hewlett Packard CEO, launched her Senate campaign Web site as she aims to knock off Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, though Ms. Fiorina still hasn't officially announced her candidacy.

Both former CEOs are facing competitive primaries that both are currently favored to win. Ms. Whitman will have to beat out state Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former Rep. Tom Campbell; Ms. Fiorina will likely face Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. Awaiting Ms. Whitman in the general election will be either Attorney General (and former Gov.) Jerry Brown or San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

New details about Meg Whitman's failure to vote in elections for most of her adult life have given ammo to critics who say her past performance — or lack thereof — should disqualify her from seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination.

A Bee investigation published today found that Whitman, who formally announced her bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination this week, regularly missed voting in elections for most of her adult life. Bee reporter Andrew McIntosh also found no record of the 53-year-old former eBay executive registering to vote before 2002.

The story set off the latest round of attacks fired between the Whitman campaign and one of her chief rivals, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner.

Poizner's camp issued a statement in response to the story this morning, attacking the Whitman campaign for "refusing to answer simple questions and deliberately lying to cover up the facts" and calling for the candidate to "step aside" and drop out of the race.

Almost 9 million Californians cast ballots in the 2003 special election that swept movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger into the Governor's Office.

Meg Whitman wasn't among them.

The billionaire businesswoman now running for governor herself in 2010 didn't vote in that special election, even after Business Week listed her among a group of top executives with "worse than spotty voting records" in a 2000 magazine story, public records show.

There’s a lot of interest in the California midterm elections because of two well-known business ladies, Meg Whitman (former-CEO of eBay) and Carly Fiorina (former-CEO of Hewlett-Packard). Of course, California’s economy and fiscal position are in a death march. All kinds of capitalists and entrepreneurs are running away from the state’s high taxes and over-regulations. (Among other palaces, they’re headed to Texas.) But Whitman and Fiorina — because they are women and former big-business honchos — lend some glamour and renewed interest to California Republicans.

The government of Iran has told the International Atomic Energy Agency that it is building a previously undisclosed uranium enrichment plant for making fuel, the nuclear watchdog agency said Friday.
President Obama will call attention to the existence of the underground facility in an early-morning statement to reporters here before the opening of the G-20 economic summit, and will say that Western intelligence agencies have been tracking the facility for years. U.S. officials said Obama decided to disclose the program's existence after learning that Iran had become aware that it was no longer a secret.