Today's surprise retirement of Indiana Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh has given Republicans new hope of taking back the Senate in 2010.

It would be a long shot: Republicans would need to win just about every competitive race there is, plus pull off what now seems like a stunner in a state like Washington or Wisconsin.

But it's happened before. Just look at 1994, when the GOP went 11 for 11 in targeted contests.

Here is our latest handicapping of the ten most vulnerable Senate seats of 2010:

North Dakota
Delaware
Indiana
Arkansas
Nevada
Colorado
Pennsylvania
California
New York
Ohio
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Will the GOP be able to capture the Senate majority?

With Bayh's retirement, it may be possible.

So, is California's brittle Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer about to become the next Harry Reid? Which is to say, embattled at home.

As Reid worked the wallets of San Francisco on Presidents' Day to raise money for his endangered seat in Nevada, some stunning new Rasmussen Reports poll out today makes a compelling point:

For the second straight month the three-term senator is unable to break the 50% mark against any potential Republican opponents, the historical measuring mark of vulnerability for an incumbent nine months before an election.

Ken Starr, the constitutional lawyer who conducted the independent counsel investigation that led to the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, has been selected as the new president of Baylor University in Waco, Texas and will assume the post in June, Starr and the school said Monday.

Since 2004, Starr has served as dean of Pepperdine Law School in Malibu, Calif. He first accepted that job back in 1996 but later backed away after critics said his work at the school, which is funded largely by conservative donors, could have conflicted with his work as a special prosecutor.
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Pepperdine Law School's loss

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, in an exclusive appearance on ABC News’ “This Week,” offered a sharp critique of the Obama administration’s handling of national security and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, saying any achievements over the past year largely stemmed from policies implemented under President George W. Bush.
“If [the administration is] going to take credit for [Iraq’s success], fair enough … but it ought to come with a healthy dose of ‘Thank you, George Bush’ up front and a recognition that some of their early recommendations with respect to prosecuting that war were just dead wrong,” Cheney told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl.

Vice President Joe Biden and former Vice President Dick Cheney hurtled barbs across the airwaves Sunday morning in a split-screen debate over terrorism, charging each other with being dangerously “misinformed” or just “dead wrong.”

The rare dueling sit-downs — Biden on NBC and CBS, Cheney on ABC — broke little new ground but amounted to a point-by-point defense of each vice president’s view of the war on terrorism and a recitation of how the other side has screwed it up.

The United Nations climate panel faces a new challenge with scientists casting doubt on its claim that global temperatures are rising inexorably because of human pollution.

In its last assessment the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the evidence that the world was warming was “unequivocal”.

It warned that greenhouse gases had already heated the world by 0.7C and that there could be 5C-6C more warming by 2100, with devastating impacts on humanity and wildlife. However, new research, including work by British scientists, is casting doubt on such claims. Some even suggest the world may not be warming much at all.

“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.
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Let the science speak and not political agendas

The academic at the centre of the ‘Climategate’ affair, whose raw data is crucial to the theory of climate change, has admitted that he has trouble ‘keeping track’ of the information.

Colleagues say that the reason Professor Phil Jones has refused Freedom of Information requests is that he may have actually lost the relevant papers.

Professor Jones told the BBC yesterday there was truth in the observations of colleagues that he lacked organisational skills, that his office was swamped with piles of paper and that his record keeping is ‘not as good as it should be’.

The data is crucial to the famous ‘hockey stick graph’ used by climate change advocates to support the theory.

Professor Jones also conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
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Fancy that

Sun columnist Jon Ralston is reporting that the Tea Party has qualified as a third party in Nevada and will have a candidate in the Senate race to battle for the seat held by Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The party has filed a Certificate of Existence but needs to get 1 percent of the electorate to vote for its candidate in November to permanently qualify, according to the report.

Ralston reported that Jon Ashjian will be the Tea Party’s U.S. Senate candidate on the November ballot. Ashjian still must declare his candidacy.

There are six other third-party candidates going through the verification process to appear on the ballot as U.S. Senate candidates — one Reform Party hopeful and five as independents, Ralston reported.

Reid’s Republican challengers currently include former state Sen. Sue Lowden, former UNLV basketball star Danny Tarkanian and former state Assemblywoman Sharron Angle.
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Will this help Harry Reid win re-election?

Clinton acknowledged that U.S. President Barack Obama’s approach to Iran had not borne fruit, blaming Iran for refusing to engage and suggesting that a fourth U.N. Security Council sanctions resolution was the only option.

“I would like to figure out a way to handle it in as peaceful an approach possible, and I certainly welcome any meaningful engagement, but … we don’t want to be engaging while they are building their bomb,” Clinton said at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum conference.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, who served as defense secretary under President George H.W. Bush, expressed support for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which President Barack Obama has asked Congress to work on this year.

Cheney told ABC’s “This Week” that 20 years ago when he was secretary of defense, the military was a strong advocate of the policy that bans gays from openly serving in the military, but that “things have changed significantly since then” and he anticipates that ultimately “the policy will be changed.”

“I think society has moved on,” Cheney said the policy shift is partly “a generational question.”
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Society has moved on – just as I suspect with gay marriage but only in some states.

LOL! The folks at the Democratic Party of Orange County (DPOC) are absolutely losing it because Carly Fiorina, a GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate, is coming to the O.C. on Monday, to visit with the members of the OC GOP Central Committee.

In the email below, which they sent to their members, the temporary Exec. Director of the DPOC, Henry Vandermeir, rips into Fiorina, for screwing up Hewlett Packard.

Gee Henry, considering that members of your Democratic Party have destroyed California’s economy, buried us in the highest taxes in the nation, and stuck us with ten percent unemployment. I don’t think you want to go there Henry!
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The Democrats of Ventura County protested here too when Carly spoke to the GOP women. Why are they helping Carly beat Boxer?

LOL indeed.

So much for using “carpetbagger” as a campaign slur.

Increased political polarization coupled with a highly mobile society, big media markets and sprawling districts are diluting the importance of residency for California congressional candidates.

Reps. Tom McClintock and John Garamendi, neither of whom lived inside their districts when they ran, survived their opponents’ “carpetbagger” political grenades.

This year, three GOP congressional candidates, Richard Pombo and Jeff Denham in the 19th District and David Harmer in the 11th, are running as strong primary candidates in districts in which they do not live.

“People don’t really care about residency,” said Bruce Cain, director of UC Berkeley’s Washington, D.C., Center. “There is so much mobility in California and the media markets are so mixed — especially in Los Angeles and the Bay Area — that for someone with strong name identification, it’s transferable. We also live in a more polarized society…
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Mobile Society indeed

When we spoke on Tuesday, he acknowledged speaking with Campbell about exiting the race for governor and entering the race for senator, making the point that Campbell had called him. He did not discuss, however, his conversations with Jim Cunneen.

Cunneen is a chair of the Campbell campaign. He was Campbell’s staff director in Congress and, with Campbell’s help (and that of Wilson and White), became a state assemblyman.

He is also a partner in White’s firm, California Strategies. Cunneen was intimately involved in shaping Campbell’s thinking on his candidacy.
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Meg Whitman has tried to clear the field but the truth has leaked out. Will she continue her plege to help Campbell financially at her political risk or screw Tom Campbell over? By the looks of today's fundraising numbers from Campbell it may be the latter.

Wondering which members voted "aye" and "no" and who stayed on the sidelines d yesterday's rejection failed confirmation vote on Republican Sen. Abel Maldonado's lieutenant governor nomination?
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Note: Chuck DeVore is the only Republican not voting Aye. In fact, DeVore did NOT vote at all.

Brandman University professor Mike Moodian tells Capitol Alert that he's invited Republican candidates Tom Campbell, Chuck DeVore and Carly Fiorina to square off on the campus of the university's sister school, Chapman University. Campbell and DeVore are on board and Fiorina's camp is expected to respond by early next week, he said.

Like the GOP gubernatorial debate Brandman hosted last fall, which Campbell participated in as a then guv-hopeful, this debate will integrate some questions submitted via Twitter. Also like last time, Bee columnist Dan Walters will join Moodian as a co-moderator.

"We think particularly with the Twitter angle, it's an effective way to engage the citizenry," Moodian said. "This would be a good opportunity for the candidates to come to Orange County and debate the issues … roughly five or six weeks before the vote-by-mail ballots are sent out."

The debate, tentatively titled "America in the 21st Century,"
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Carly should accept.

In an extraordinary legal power play, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger insisted that Sen. Abel Maldonado, R-Santa Maria, will be sworn in as lieutenant governor even after the Assembly failed to confirm him in a long, drawn-out vote Thursday.

Schwarzenegger's legal team said that Maldonado was effectively confirmed because the Legislature failed to put up a majority — 41 of 80 votes — to reject him.

The Assembly voted 37-35 to confirm Maldonado, with 28 yes votes coming from Republicans, eight from Democrats and one from the lone independent — four votes shy of the 41 needed for confirmation.

The administration said it plans to swear him in on Feb. 23, despite legal questions surrounding the confirmation vote and what would appear to be a certain legal showdown.
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Up to the California Supreme Court more than likely.

Emily Robison and Martie Maguire from the Dixie Chicks will be releasing new music this spring under the name Court Yard Hounds. Check out the video above to hear Martie and Emily talk about the new project and the creative forces behind it.
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But, the vocals??

There is a move afoot among California Republican Party leaders to pressure Meg Whitman, the frontrunner for the party's nomination for governor, into a debate against rival Steve Poizner at the state GOP convention next month. The state party's board members, who are scheduled to discuss the issue in a conference call Friday afternoon, are weighing whether to require all candidates for governor and Senate to participate in a debate at the convention — and if they refuse, to deny them the ability to address the convention delegates in any other forum.
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Meg Whitman should debate Steve Poizner – PERIOD

Californians are disgusted with the petty antics of the governor and the Legislature, polls tell us, and want them to balance the deficit-ridden state budget and otherwise do the public's business.

However, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic leaders of the state Assembly are locked in a political, semantic and ultimately legal duel over something that should have taken about five minutes – confirming Republican Sen. Abel Maldonado to serve 10 months in the completely meaningless office of lieutenant governor.

Yet we shouldn’t overlook that he definitely was not a fiscal conservative when he was state finance director, nor in his comments since then about the state budget. In his biography on his campaign Web site, he boasts, “During Tom’s tenure as State Finance Director, California’s budget was balanced with no tax increases, no new borrowing, and no accounting gimmicks.” True enough. But that was at the height of the housing boom mania, when the state’s coffers were overflowing with tax money.

But just like when Gov. Gray Davis enjoyed a similar excess tax take during the dot-com boom half a decade earlier, the money was not saved, but was used for new spending. Tax revenues soared from $82.2 billion in fiscal 2004-05 to $93.5 billion in fiscal 2005-06, the only year in which Campbell had full involvement in the budget process (before he left the post). That’s an increase of $11.3 billion in just one year. Who couldn’t balance a budget with that kind of revenue?

But by combining selective facts with an over-the-top tone, the ad paints Campbell as a profligate tax-and-spender. Anyone who's watched his career in the state Legislature and Congress knows that's ridiculous. Ask card-carrying Democrats whether Campbell is a fellow traveler. Their eyes will light up like the demon sheep's.

The ad's focus on ideological rigidity says more about Fiorina than it does about Campbell. Despite being fundamentally conservative, Campbell has reached across the aisle. The message of the demon sheep is that Fiorina will not — and that, by the way, she's likely to play fast and loose with facts.

It's not what we expected of a Silicon Valley executive making the shift to public life.
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The ad was a big mistake

The gubernatorial campaign of Meg Whitman paid $20,000 for advertising on the conservative blog, Red County, that another advertiser only paid $300 for the same ad space. NBC Bay Area writer Jackson West:

Twenty thousand dollars will buy you a lot of advertising online. A lot. Especially on a site with a limited readership — like Chip Hanlon's right-wing blog Red County.

But that's how much the former eBay CEO Meg Whitman's gubernatorial campaign paid to Green Faucet, the investment firm owned by blogger Hanlon and parent company of Red County.

Hanlon told Calbuzz that the money was for advertising, however other advertisers seem to be much better at negotiating than Whitman's campaign — another advertiser is only paying $300 a month.

Chip Hanlon, the blog's proprietor, recently fired a blogger from his site that was found to receive payments from Whitman's campaign rival, Steve Poizner. Jackson West wondered if this means Hanlon will fire himself?
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Disgraceful