links for 2009-07-27

Too many conservative senators like Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) are to blame for the GOP's downfall, one of their retiring Republican colleagues complained Monday.

"We got too many Jim DeMints and Tom Coburns," Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) told the Columbus Dispatch. "It's the southerners."

Voinovich, a native Clevelander who retires after the 2010 election, continued after the southern elements of the GOP.

"They get on TV and go 'errrr, errrrr,'" he said. "People hear them and say, 'These people, they're southerners. The party's being taken over by southerners. What they hell they got to do with Ohio?'"
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Voinovich is a weenie and should have been retired after one term in office.

Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

(AP) – Despite their denials, influential Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd were told from the start they were getting VIP mortgage discounts from one of the nation's largest lenders, the official who handled their loans has told Congress in secret testimony.

Both senators have said that at the time the mortgages were being written they didn't know they were getting unique deals from Countrywide

Face-lifts, tummy tucks and hair transplants could be hit with a new tax to help finance the trillion-dollar healthcare overhaul plan, CONGRESS DAILY reports.

The Senate Finance Committee has discussed imposing a 10% excise tax on cosmetic surgery deemed unnecessary for medical purposes.

DAILY's Peter Cohn reveals: The idea was broached in a meeting with OMB Director Orszag in mid-July, after which Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus told reporters he had heard some "interesting," "creative," and "kind of fun" ideas.

A straw poll of same sex marraige leaders gathered in San Bernardino Saturday just came in: The majority want to return to the ballot in 2010 to try to overturn Proposition 8. Final count of the nonbinding measure: 93 people voted to go in 2010, 49 in 2012 and 20 undecided.

The next step: Leaders will return to their organizations and then a final decision will be made in a couple of weeks. If they're going to go for it in 2010, they'd better hurry. Ballot language is due to the Attorney General by Sept. 25.

Oh, yeah. And they still need a leader. And a leadership structure. And a decision-making process.

Bill Simon, the GOP's 2002 pick for governor, has endorsed Meg Whitman in her Republican primary bid.

Simon, who was a key player on former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign before endorsing Republican nominee Arizona Sen. John McCain, has snagged the titles of campaign co-chairman and senior policy adviser.

s bipartisan negotiations continue on a health care reform bill this week, an exchange yesterday between Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week is worth highlighting:

Conrad: "Look, there are not the votes for Democrats to do this just on our side of the aisle."

Stephanoplous: "So it's just not possible to have a Democrat-only bill?"

Conrad: "No, it is not possible and perhaps not desirable either. We are probably going to get a better product if we go through the tough business of debate, consideration, analysis of what we're proposing."

The woman whose report of a possible house break-in led to the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. said she never mentioned race during her 911 call and is “personally devastated’’ by media accounts that suggest she placed the call because the men she observed on the porch were black, according to a lawyer acting as her spokeswoman.

Discouraged by stubborn poll numbers and pessimistic political consultants, major financial backers of same-sex marriage are cautioning gay rights groups to delay a campaign to overturn California’s ban on such unions until at least 2012.
Earlier this year, many supporters of same-sex marriage seemed eager to mount a 2010 campaign to overturn Proposition 8, which was passed by California voters in November and defined marriage as “between a man and a woman.”

But the timing of another campaign has since been questioned by several of the movement’s big donors, including David Bohnett, a millionaire philanthropist and technology entrepreneur who gave more than $1 million to the unsuccessful campaign to defeat Proposition 8.

The strike ballots may come back "yes," but history says "no."

With a Friday deadline looming, members of California's largest state employee union have been voting on whether to give their leaders permission to call a strike.

And another union that represents California's correctional officers may soon send strike-authorization ballots to its members.

No state employee union has ever called a general strike, and it's unclear what would happen if one did. Government officials say that a walkout by Service Employees International Union Local 1000, which has mailed strike-authorization ballots to 95,000 state employees, would violate labor agreements and that the state would punish anyone who strikes.

The feds are spending tens of millions of stimulus dollars to repair and build toilets across the nation, in an outflow of taxpayer funds that critics have branded "potty pork."

From humble sylvan outhouses to "historic" restrooms, cash from the $787 billion stimulus is going to spruce up or completely replace aging toilets, government releases show.

In New Mexico alone, the feds are spending $2.8 million for toilets in national forests.

The bathroom bonanza runs across myriad federal agencies, from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Veterans Affairs Administration and the Army.

"You could definitely say this is potty pork," said Leslie Paige of Citizens Against Government Waste. "This puts a whole different swirl on money going down the drain."

Many proposals cite the need to improve accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

As we asked earlier this week, if questions over President Obama's citizenship were valid, wouldn't they have come out during the presidential campaign?

David Weigel talked with Trevor Potter and other lawyers for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign who said that they did look into the Obama citizenship rumors and found them without merit.

Said Potter: "To the extent that we could, we looked into the substantive side of these allegations. We never saw any evidence that then-Senator Obama had been born outside of the United States. We saw rumors, but nothing that could be sourced to evidence. There were no statements and no documents that suggested he was born somewhere else. On the other side, there was proof that he was born in Hawaii. There was a certificate issued by the state's Department of Health, and the responsible official in the state saying that he had personally seen the original certificate. There was a birth announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, which would

While protesters rallied in his support, the owner of a Concord Mills kiosk that sells conservative merchandise said he met with the mall's manager Sunday to see what arrangements can be made for him to remain after his lease expires Friday.

Nothing was agreed to, except that the two would meet again Monday, said Loren Spivack, owner of Free Market Warrior.

Spivack has contended that he's being kicked out of the mall for political reasons. He's traced his exile to a letter to the editor in the Charlotte Observer criticizing his business, saying it promotes “ideas such as racism, sexism and even slavery.”