Today the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, a leading voice on Latinos and conservatism, announced a 42-city bus tour of California that will span 32 counties and more than 2,500 miles. The tour, which starts on September 27 and runs through October 6, will encourage Latinos to vote their values and support California Senate Candidate Carly Fiorina.

"For too long, Latinos have supported candidates who spurn their core values," said Alfonso Aguilar, executive director of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles. "Candidates like Barbara Boxer, an outspoken advocate for abortion who opposes the protection of traditional marriage, and who hampers job creation and a stronger economy with big government policies."

The tour will feature rallies in Los Angeles and San Diego, and will coincide with a series of three ads airing on Spanish-language radio starting Monday. The ad campaign is the second phase of a $1 million independent expenditure galvanizing Latinos

Boxer, once considered one of the safest Democrats this cycle, is locked in her toughest re-election bid yet. Fiorina's entrance into the race, combined with the tough atmosphere for Democrats, has put this race on the map for the GOP while the Democrats hope it will be part of the firewall that prevents Republicans from winning a Senate majority.

Fiorina, however, still starts at a disadvantage. She is trailing Boxer 47% to 41% in a new Field poll out Friday, and Republicans always face an uphill fight in California, a state where Democrats have a 13-point registration edge. Since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) won re-election in '06, GOP registration has dropped 5%. "If she does win," a Republican strategist said, "It'll turn conventional wisdom on its ear."

But, as Republicans tell you, there is a path for Fiorina, albeit a narrow one. And with that, here is how Fiorina can upset Boxer in November.
+++++
Read it all

This is Fred Davis, hi-def political provocateur. You have probably never heard his name. Your senator probably has. A pioneering imagemaker in modern politics, Davis injects Hollywood glamour, and a dose of the bizarre, into the staid, paint-by-numbers formula of campaign advertisements. His ads are unforgettable. His candidates win races. So many politicians seek his services that he has to turn away business.
++++++
Read it all

The owner of an Oxnard metal-casting company and his son, an executive with the firm, have been charged with knowingly employing illegal immigrants, authorities said Friday.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials Thursday arrested Wayne Haddox, 67, owner of Masters in Metal, and Dennis Haddox, 37, the company’s vice president, authorities said.

The charges grew from a 2007 investigation when ICE investigators allegedly found 16 employees at the company had false permanent resident alien cards, also known as green cards. The company told investigators the workers had been fired.

Later, officials said, they received information that two of the employees had remained on the payroll and Wayne Haddox told them to go find “good” Social Security numbers.

The charges carry a maximum of six months in federal prison.
+++++++
While the millions of illegal aliens remain free.

Wonderful!

A Justice Department prosecutor, defying his superiors by testifying at a U.S. Civil Rights Commission hearing Friday into the department’s handling of a voter-intimidation case against a fringe African American militant group, blasted “senior political appointees” at Justice for “gutting” the case.

In his opening testimony, prosecutor Christopher Coates also suggested he was working against a dominant Justice Department culture which discouraged enforcement of civil rights laws in a “race-neutral” way that would protect whites as well as blacks.
++++++
Read it all

So far this week, we have examined Senator Barbara Boxer’s purchasing of endorsements, the five-figure expenses tied to her jaunts to do “official business” at beach resorts, her 143 bounced checks for more than $40,000 in three years, and massive payments to her family from campaign funds. (Notice that you don’t need to be a conservative Republican to find any of these issues troubling.)

Today, we examine the possibility that Boxer is… not really in touch with what is going on around her.

There was a revealing moment last month when Barbara Boxer, meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, offered a vivid, compelling anecdote… that simply didn’t happen.
++++++
Read it all

Democrats abandoned plans to vote before Election Day on extending Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class while eliminating them for better-off Americans, spooked by protests from vulnerable incumbents and bleak prospects for passage.

With time running out to plan for 2011, the delay raises uncertainty for small businesses and individual taxpayers over their future liabilities. It also sets up a titanic battle over taxes after the election.
+++++++
But, it continues tax uncertainty which will NOT help the economy.

Comparisons between the Obama White House and the failed presidency of Jimmy Carter are increasingly being made—and by Democrats.

Walter Mondale, Mr. Carter's vice president, told The New Yorker this week that anxious and angry voters in the late 1970s "just turned against us—same as with Obama." As the polls turned against his administration, Mr. Mondale recalled that Mr. Carter "began to lose confidence in his ability to move the public." Democrats on Capitol Hill are now saying this is happening to Mr. Obama.
+++++
Read it all

Republicans don't need a Contract or a Pledge. Their base is energized. The Democratic base is not. The folks who are going to vote arguably know Republicans stand for the stuff in the pledge because Republicans have been talking about this stuff since the beginning of the cycle. Arguably, it gives Democrats more of a defined target, something that they can redirect attention to. Arguably, had the Republicans been able to produce a more substantive governing document, they would have made it harder for Democrats to demagogue.

Alas, "The Pledge" is pretty easy to make fun of. And that's just among conservatives. (Erick Erickson calls it "just meaningless stuff the Democrats can easily undo and that ultimately the Senate GOP will even turn its nose up at.")
++++++
Is this something better than nothing?

Doubtful…..

3. A Plan to Repeal and Replace Obamacare

First – just repeal it, and if you can’t repeal it… de-fund it. Period. Stop babbling about “replacing.” I don’t want the federal government to “replace” Obamacare. I want the federal government to get out of the health care business and to take the minimal steps necessary to free up competition.

Second – STOP WITH THE MANDATES. STOP IT. STOP IT. MANDATING THAT INSURERS COVER PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS IS JUST AS BAD AS THE INDIVIDUAL MANDATE ON ITS FACE – BUT WORSE, YOU IDIOTS, IT WILL LEAD TO AN INDIVIDUAL MANDATE BECAUSE YOU CANNOT COVER THE ALREADY SICK WITHOUT MANDATING THAT THE HEALTHY PARTICIPATE. JUST STOP IT. And mandating a prohibition of caps on lifetime benefits is just as silly.
++++++
Agreed.

The GOP would have been better to do nothing because this Pledge is worse than nothing. It isn't meaningful reform.

Read all of the piece

From 2001 to 2006 – with precisely one Boxer Senate campaign during that period – Boxer paid her son more than $320,000, according to a report by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. During the 2008 election cycle, Boxer’s PAC gave $141,000 to the firm Douglas Boxer & Associates. So far this cycle, Boxer’s PAC has paid another $108,000.

It adds up to nearly $570,000 over 10 years. Hey, she’s a loving mother.

“It is an area that’s ripe for abuse, for someone who wants to turn campaign funds into personal use,” said Craig Holman, a lobbyist for the nonprofit group Public Citizen told the Washington Post in 2008. Although most lawmakers do not abuse the practice, he said, “those campaign funds always come from special interests, and those special interests are always looking for something in return.”
++++++
And, what do the special interests get for their money?

Hummmmmmmm

As the President of Common Cause, a non-profit citizens’ lobbying group, Representative Chellie Pingree criticized lawmakers who traveled on corporate jets.

But Rep. Pingree is engaging in the same activity she derided four years ago.

An investigation by MaineWatchdog found that Pingree has been traveling on a private plane owned by the firm of her significant other, Donald Sussman, Founder and Chairman of Paloma Partners, a billion dollar hedge fund.

When AOL reported in late July that Pingree’s office was reimbursed for more travel expenses than any other house member in 2009, MaineWatchdog asked whether any of those reimbursements were related to travel on private planes. A spokesman for Pingree said: “To my knowledge, the Congresswoman does not fly on privately chartered jets.”
++
Read it

The investigation, however, produced a video of Representative Pingree and Sussman disembarking at Portland International Jetport after a flight from Bridgeport, Conn., on September 17, 2010.