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?'"
++++++
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.”

For the second time this month, congressional budget analysts have dealt a blow to the Democrat's health reform efforts, this time by saying a plan touted by the White House as crucial to paying for the bill would actually save almost no money over 10 years.

A key House chairman and moderate House Democrats on Tuesday agreed to a White House-backed proposal that would give an outside panel the power to make cuts to government-financed health care programs. White House budget director Peter Orszag declared the plan "probably the most important piece that can be added" to the House's health care reform legislation.

But on Saturday, the Congressional Budget Office said the proposal to give an independent panel the power to keep Medicare spending in check would only save about $2 billion over 10 years- a drop in the bucket compared to the bill's $1 trillion price tag.

IN a speech delivered earlier this year, during Black History Month, Attorney General Eric Holder drew headlines by criticizing the tenor of public discourse on race. “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot,” Mr. Holder said, “in things racial we have always been and I believe continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.” The nation’s leading law enforcement officer — who happens also to be an African-American man — was widely criticized for making this provocative comment.

David Axelrod, one of President Obama’s most trusted political advisers, said Sunday that he does not spend time thinking about what Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin might do next.

“I can tell you with absolutely honesty,” Axelrod said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, “that when I sit around with my political friends . . . there’s very little or no discussion of Sarah Palin.”

“And I really have no idea what Gov. Palin is going to do,” the Obama aide told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King. “She’s entering private life now. We wish her well and it’s up to her to decide what role she’s going to play in the future. She’s got plenty of advice, I’m sure. She doesn’t need mine.”

President Obama has become quite the golf fanatic since he began his presidency.

The commander in chief is out on the links again today, playing a round at Andrews Air Force Base. This is the 10th time in as many weeks that Obama has found time to squeeze in some golf (all weekends, except for one Monday.)

In fact, the White House press corps has come up with a nickname to refer to the President's golfing habits: "The First Duffer," as they refer to him in pool reports when he's hitting the links.

Today, Obama is playing with White House aides Ben Finkenbinder and Marvin Nicholson, as well as David Katz, the official photographer for his 2008 campaign.

In the past, Obama has played with U.S Trade Representative Ronk Kirk, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, and personal aide Reggie Love, among others.

After watching their stimulus package fail to stimulate and an increasing number of Americans wondering whether President Barack Obama has the first clue on economics, Vice President Joe Biden steps back into the fray to rescue his partner. In a New York Times op-ed, Biden argues that voters have misunderstood Porkulus. It wasn’t intended to deliver a big “jolt” to the economy, Biden says — apparently forgetting what he himself said last month: