links for 2009-05-29

A top Senate Republican is taking aim at recent statements from conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich suggesting Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a "racist."

"I think it's terrible," Sen. John Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told NPR's "All Things Considered" Thursday. "This is not the kind of tone any of us want to set when it comes to performing our constitutional responsibilities of advise and consent.”

vidence appears to be mounting that the Obama administration has systematically targeted for closing Chrysler dealers who contributed to Repubicans. What started earlier this week as mainly a rumbling on the Right side of the Blogosphere has gathered some steam today with revelations that among the dealers being shut down are a GOP congressman and closing of competitors to a dealership chain partly owned by former Clinton White House chief of staff Mack McLarty.

The basic issue raised here is this: How do we account for the fact millions of dollars were contributed to GOP candidates by Chrysler who are being closed by the government, but only one has been found so far that is being closed that contributed to the Obama campaign in 2008?

The Alaska Democrat who almost toppled Rep. Don Young last year is gearing up for another statewide race — against Gov. Sarah Palin, if she chooses to run for re-election.

"My sights are now on the governor's race," Ethan Berkowitz, a former leader of the Democratic minority in the state House, said in a phone interview on Wednesday.

In 2008, Republican Young defeated Berkowitz by a 5 percentage-point margin — a difference of 16,379 votes — after easily topping his 2006 Democratic opponent by nearly 17 points and nearly 40,000 votes, and winning a landslide victory as recently as 2004 by nearly 50 points and 150,000 votes.

The state budget may be severely overdrawn, but the California political A.T.M. seems to be working just fine.

President Obama arrived at a back-to-back fund-raising dinner and concert on Wednesday night and raised $4 million for the Democratic National Committee. He basked in the glow of his Hollywood supporters and thanked them for making his candidacy possible.

“If it weren’t for you,” Mr. Obama told a celebrity-filled crowd gathered at The Beverly Hilton, “we would not be in the White House.”

Mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures rose to records in the first quarter and home-loan rates jumped to the highest since March as the government’s effort to fix the housing slump lost momentum.

The U.S. delinquency rate jumped to a seasonally adjusted 9.12 percent from 7.88 percent, the biggest-ever increase, and the share of loans entering foreclosure rose to 1.37 percent, the Mortgage Bankers Association said today. Both figures are the highest in records going back to 1972. Fixed rates rose to 4.91 percent, Freddie Mac said, and an increase in bond yields earlier this week shows rates may continue rising.

Avery Doninger was disqualified from running for school government at Lewis S. Mills High School in Burlington after she posted something on her blog, referring to the superintendent and other officials as "douche bags" because they canceled a battle of the bands she had helped to organize.

The case went to court and in March 2008, Sotomayor was on a panel that heard Doninger’s mother’s appeal alleging her daughter’s free speech and other rights were violated. Her mother wanted to prevent the school from barring her daughter from running.

Sotomayor joined two other judges from the 2nd Circuit in ruling that the student’s off-campus blog remarks created a “foreseeable risk of substantial disruption” at the student’s high school and that the teenager was not entitled to a preliminary injunction reversing a disciplinary action against her, Education Week reports.

Just got the idea to collect all poker pros in Twitter. Twitter does not have the requirement and manner to collect real information about the person, sometimes it can be hard to distinguish the real poker pro from the fan who loves him/her so much that puts the picture and tweets "on behalf". Some calls such fans squatter, but I would rather consider them as too zealous fan 🙂

I would need some help from readers, so if you know some poker pros which are not on the list, please let me know either in comments or privately.

This week Harrah's Entertainment, World Series of Poker trademark owner, announced that it will be seeking to refinance $1 billion of its outstanding debt. The new senior secured debt will be made via a private offering and will be exempt from Securities and Exchange Commission regulation and state securities laws. Harrah's is issuing the new debt from two subsidiaries of Harrah's Operating Company. The new debt will mature in 2017 and proceeds will be used to retire some of Harrah's existing debt.

In nearly 11 years as a federal appeals court judge, President Obama’s choice for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, has never directly ruled on whether the Constitution protects a woman’s right to an abortion. But when she has written opinions that touched tangentially on abortion disputes, she has reached outcomes in some cases that were favorable to abortion opponents.
Now, some abortion rights advocates are quietly expressing unease that Judge Sotomayor may not be a reliable vote to uphold Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 abortion rights decision. In a letter, Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, urged supporters to press senators to demand that Judge Sotomayor reveal her views on privacy rights before any confirmation vote.