Enjoy.

• Hold on... If you do youth outreach in an election you have higher youth turnout? Who knew?! Sarahkatheryn did, and she explains in Oregon Special Kills Mass in Youth Turnout.


• BlueIndiana: (IN-Sen) Dan Coats: "Don't tell the people of Indiana..."


• What's Missing from the New Clean Energy Agenda? asks The Media Consortium.


• Show trials and executions as Iranian leaders use violence and manipulate legal system to quell opposition. (Neil Hicks)


• Inoljt had Conversations with a Disinterested Obama Supporter.


• PAbrams with The Simple Way to Pass the Jobs Bill with "Bipartisan" Support.


• Living the Past in the Present: Voter Intimidation Tactics Still Thrive in America. (Project Vote)


• Terrorist Prosecutions By the Numbers. (Daphne Eviatar - Human Rights 1st)


• Combating irresponsible rhetoric, one wingnut at a time with Main Street in David Horowitz, renowned Islamophobe, goes over the cuckoo's nest.

There's more...

At the National Tea Party Convention, former GOP Colorado Congressman Tommy Tancredo bemoaned the civic literacy of Americans in particular taking a swipe at immigrants which is ironic since immigrants have to pass an American history and civics test in order to become citizens.

TANCREDO: And then, something really odd happened, mostly because I think that we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country. People who could not even spell the word "vote," or say it in English, put a committed socialist idealogue in the White House, name is Barack Hussein Obama.

Here are some sample questions from the test that immigrants take to become citizens courtesy of MSNBC.

The correct answers are below the fold but I'll add my own tougher questions. I  think civic and historical literacy important but the notion of that it be a requirement to vote is absurd.

1) Name the 14th state admitted to the Union.

2) How many men have served as President?

3) George Washington did not let his Vice President, John Adams, sit in the Cabinet setting a precedent that would last for over a century. Name the President who first welcomed his VP into the Cabinet and name the Vice President.

4) The first comprehensive immigration reform legislation was passed and signed by which President?

5) Name the first President to be born an American citizen.

6) Delaware was the first state to ratify the Constitution but the Constitution wasn't considered binding until the ninth state had ratified. Which was the ninth state to ratify the Constitution?

7) The Seven Years' War fought between 1757 and 1763 is considered the first global war. The North American portion of that war is also known by which another name?

8) Which historic event took place on March 5, 1770?

9) What are the Federalist Papers? Who wrote them?

10) Who was the only President to also later become a Supreme Court Justice?

11) What is meant by the term "Accidental President"? Who was the first? Bonus if you can name them all.

12) Name the state that has been the birthplace of more Presidents than any other. Bonus if you can name them all.

13) Name the first President not born in Virginia or Massachusetts. Hint: he was born in North Carolina.

14) Which state did not send any representatives to the Constitutional Convention?

15) Barack Obama is the first sitting Senator to be elected President since John F. Kennedy. Name the previous Senator to be elected directly to the Presidency.

16) The case of Marbury vs Madison established which important principle?

17) Though Washington has the capital of the United States since 1800, eight other cities have served as capitals of the United States. Name them. Bonus if you can identify the one that served as the US capital for only one day. Hints: Three are in Pennsylvania, two others are state capitals today.

18) Which battle proved to be the decisive battle in the War for Independence?

19) From 1781 to 1788, the United States was governed by another constitution. That constitution went by what name?

20) Who coined the phrase "We The People"?

21) What is meant by the Connecticut Compromise? Who offered it? Hint: It was the topic of a previous post.

22) Elbrigde Gerry is unique among the Founding Fathers. Why?

23) George Washington is considered to the "Father of his Country" but which founder is considered to be the "Father of the Federal Government"? Who is considered the "Father of the Constitution"?

24) What is meant by the "separation of powers"?

25) The United States has what type of electoral system?

I'll post the answers to my quiz on Monday to give people time to submit their answers.

There's more...

How clueless can one be? Well if you're the Virginia Republican Party, the answer is very. The Virginia Republican Party has released the above video suggesting that since there's a massive snow storm on the way, there's no global warming.

As Peter Sinclair notes that's quite the "jewel" of deductive reasoning.

Is the difference between weather and climate not understood? How can anyone be so scientifically illiterate?

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the US unemployment rate fell from 10.0 to 9.7 percent in January. That's the lowest rate since August. The report is better than expected with most economists predicting a flat to slight uptick. Forecasts had ranged from 9.8 percent to 10.3 percent.

Non-farm payroll employment fell by 20,000 in January compared with a revised 150,000 drop decline in December. The January number reflects a drop off in construction jobs and a further erosion in state and local government services. Government payrolls decreased by 8,000 in January. State and local governments reduced employment by 41,000 during the month, while the Federal government added 33,000. The increase at the Federal level reflected in part the hiring of temporary workers to conduct the 2010 census. Also providing a lift were the temporary service sector and the retail sector. The number of temporary workers increased 52,000 in January. Retail payrolls increased by 42,000 after an 18,000 decline in December.

In January, unemployment rates for most major worker groups--adult men (10.0 percent), teenagers (26.4 percent), blacks (16.5 percent), and Hispanics (12.6 percent)--showed little change. The jobless rate for adult women fell to 7.9 percent, and the rate for whites declined to 8.7 percent. The jobless rate for Asians was 8.4 percent, not seasonally adjusted.

In January, the number of persons unemployed due to job loss decreased by 378,000 to 9.3 million. Nearly all of this decline occurred among permanent job losers.

The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks and over) continued to trend up in January, reaching 6.3 million. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of long-term unemployed has risen by 5.0 million.

In January, the civilian labor force participation rate was little changed at 64.7 percent. The employment-population ratio rose from 58.2 to 58.4 percent.

The number of persons who worked part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) fell from 9.2 to 8.3 million in January. These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job.

About 2.5 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force in January, an increase of 409,000 from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey.

Among the marginally attached, there were 1.1 million discouraged workers in January, up from 734,000 a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.5 million people marginally attached to the labor force had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities.

There's more...

The officially unofficial Tea Party National Convention kicked off last night in Nasville's Gaylord Opryland Hotel and Convention Center with former five-term Colorado GOP Congressman Tommy "the Tamale" Tancredo delivering the opening salvos. Not surprisingly, Tancredo bemoaned that the country voted to ""put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House ... Barack Hussein Obama." He added that the reason Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country." I'm somewhat shocked he didn't advocate for a poll tax or property requirement.

More surprisingly, Tancredo was thankful that John McCain had lost the 2008 Presidential election. "Thank God John McCain lost the election," he said before going on to rip McCain suggesting that “we would have had a replay of Bush One and Bush Two.” Tancredo suggested that McCain would have presided over big budget deficits and lacked a tough stand against immigration.

If McCain had won “there wouldn’t have been a big fight,” he offered by way of an explanation. “There would have been no Tea Party, no 912ers, no rally for America on the National Mall, and we would not be here. The race for America is on. The president and his left-wing allies in Congress are going to look for every opportunity to destroy the Constitution before we have a chance to save it.” In short, Tancredo feels that the 2008 election has galvanized the right awakening it from a stupor. 

He deplored a "cult of multiculturalism" and suggested the American culture was superior to all others. “How many of you have ever known, read about, heard of, been acquainted with anybody who had to flee from America for a better life? When you raise the gates all over the world, people run one way, and it isn’t because the cultures are all the same. No, they’re not. Some are better. Ours is best."

He concluded by exhorting to the less than capacity audience that "this is our country, let's take it back."

If this is the appetizer, I can hardly wait for the main course. It should be an interesting weekend.

There's more on this story at ABC News while Qatar's Al Jazeera files the report below.

The spiraling drug-related violence in México has now claimed 1,015 lives in the first 34 days of 2010. It's the fastest that dubious milestone has been achieved. In 2009, the 1000th death did not occur until February 24th, the 54th day of the year. It took 113 days to top that marker in 2008, 134 days in 2007, 181 days in 2006, and 254 in 2005. At the present rate, one Mexican is being killed every 48 minutes in drug-related violence.

Though the drug-related violence is often depicted as an internecine affair over control of a $10 billion dollar market in the United States, the number of innocent civilians caught in the crossfire is increasing rapidly and in horrific fashion. Last weekend, masked gunmen stormed a party in a working class neighborhood of cinderblock homes and killed 16 teenagers who had gathered to watch a boxing match on television. Some of the victims were shot as they tried to flee and their bodies were found near neighboring homes. The victims' ages ranged from 15 to 20.

Authorities now believe that the attack was carried out by mistake after arresting a suspect who served as the lookout during the attack. The main Juárez-based drug cartel had targeted the party because it had received reports that members of a rival trafficking group were in attendance. The orders were to kill everyone in attendance.

The violence continued on Monday when in another attack also in Ciudad Juárez, armed men burst into a bar around dawn and killed four men and a woman. Elsewhere, gunmen killed 10 people and wounded 15 in a bar in Torreón, a city in the northern state of Coahuila. The death toll continues to rise even as México has scored some victories over the drug cartels with the death of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, the so-called Boss of Bosses, who was killed in a shoot-out along with six bodyguards that also claimed the life of a Mexican marine in mid-December and with the mid-January capture of Teodoro "El Teo" García Simental who gained notoriety for dissolving the bodies of his enemies in lye.

But vacuums at the top of drug cartels leave openings for ever-ambitious and evermore ruthless lieutenants to fill. The surge in violence we seeing is part of the climbing (killing) your way to the top in a drug cartel. El más macho gana. Still this should not be read that México is winning the war of drugs, that war cannot be won given human nature, the size of the market and the depths of poverty that exist on both sides of the Río Grande.

There's more...

On day one of their new 41-59 majority, Republican Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama placed a blanket hold on pending executive nominations on the Senate calendar in an effort to win concessions from the Obama administration. By placing a hold, a single senator can stop the Senate from taking up consideration of a particular nomination. Holds can be overcome, but it takes 60 votes to do so.

According to the Federal Times, Senator Shelby is upset over the handling of an Air Force refueling tanker contract worth up to $35 billion which was originally awarded to a consortia led by Northrop Grumman and EADS (Airbus) last year, but later voided after a bid protest was filed by Boeing. Northrop Grumman has an assembly plant in Mobile, Alabama.

In a written statement, Senator Shelby complained Air Force efforts to build new tankers have been stalled for nearly 10 years and "we still do not have a transparent and fair acquisition process to move forward." The senior Senator from Alabama who was first elected in 1986 as a Democrat (he switched parties in 1994)  also wants the Obama Administration to release funds so the FBI can build a Terrorist Explosive Devices Analytical Center in Alabama, the statement said.

While individual holds are not unusual, Congressional scholar Gary Jacobson, a Professor of Political Science at the University of California at San Diego, said he knew of no previous use of a blanket hold.

This isn't government, this is hostage-taking.

There's more...

Remember during the primaries when the Clinton campaign tried to make then-Senator Obama look bad for having written a paper explaining why he wanted to be President when he was five?

Well if you thought that was bad, Glenn "Slaves were just immigrants" Beck says the President's Kenyan first name is "proof" that he is un-American. Because apparently our identity is rooted in our diapers. A little too Freudian for me, but hey, you can't argue with a guy who gets good ratings, right?

"He chose to use his name for a reason, to identify, not with America - you don't take the name Barack to identify with America." Why did Obama choose to use his name? Rachel Maddow takes a wild guess on Facebook: "Uh, because his parents gave it to him?"

To be fair, Beck may be referring to the fact that the President used to go by the name "Barry" and stopped because... why, well else would he stop? Because he hates America. You know, I used to go by the shortened version of my first name too, "Nate," but then I stopped. Why? Because I hate America. No, not really. Because I hated that name with a burning passion, but then my grandfather who loved it died and my friends grew too old for the "Nate the Great" kids' books. I was finally free to go long-form. Does that make me un-American, too?

Our Constitutional and racial obligations to use only nicknames aside, though, I'm actually inclined to agree with Beck. While I casually chuck aside "Nate," there is a reason I took the name Nathan... yes, I remember the conversation my parents and I had about why I wanted that name very well... you know, the one we had when I was THREE DAYS OLD.

According to Glenn Beck, people whose parents gave them white European names can use them, but people whose parents gave them black African names must be held to a different standard lest they hate America like the "radicals" they are. Why am I not surprised?

For some reason the Cook Political Report still thinks the Connecticut Senate race only "leans Democratic" -- meaning that the race is now competitive, though the Democrats have an edge -- but if you look at the polling from the race, it's hard to see how the GOP has much, if any, of a chance at present. Here are the latest numbers on the race from Rasmussen:

[Democrat Richard] Blumenthal, the state’s longtime attorney general who stepped into the race when the embattled Dodd bowed out, leads former GOP Congressman Rob Simmons by 19 points, 54% to 35%. Four percent (4%) like another candidate, and seven percent (7%) are undecided.

Matched against Linda McMahon, the ex-CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment, Blumenthal holds a 20-point advantage, 56% to 36%. Just three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate in that contest, and four percent (4%) are undecided.

When you add these latest numbers to the four other surveys on the race, Blumenthal leads Simmons by more than a 25-point margin, 57.0 percent to 31.6 percent. Looking at the Blumenthal-McMahon matchup, the Democrat leads by an even larger 58.8 percent to 31.0 percent margin. How this race could be considered competitive at present, with only a slight Democratic advantage, is beyond me.

Olympic gold medalist Al Joyner and former college and professional football player Sean James respond to the Focus on the Family anti-choice ad running this Sunday during the Super Bowl: 

This web video won't run this weekend -- but it looks to be a pitch perfect retort to the conservative one that will.

The cost of the American Empire is not just measured in financial terms and in opportunity cost, our Empire exacts a punishing human toll.

Psychiatrists estimate that one in three US soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan may develop Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The film, The War Within, addresses the US army's Human Resources dilemma and features the stories of those who have had to come to terms with the physical and psychological wounds suffered from fighting a war that is increasingly unpopular here at home and around the world.

Here are a few facts and figures:

The military suicide rate for 2009 was the highest level among soldiers since the Pentagon began tracking it three decades ago. Suicides among active US soldiers in 2009 rose for the fifth year in a row.

In 2009, more US soldiers killed themselves than were killed in either Iraq or Afghanistan. At least 334 members of the military services have committed suicide in 2009, compared with 297 killed in Afghanistan and 144 who died in Iraq.

In 2008, the Army suicide rate surpassed that for civilians for the first time since the Vietnam War and it is continuing to rise. Roughly 20.2 of every 100,000 soldiers killed themselves. The civilian rate for 2006, the most recent figure available, was 19.2 when adjusted to match the demographics.

In 2009, the Army had 211 of the 334 suicides, while the Navy had 47, the Air Force had 34 and the Marine Corps (active duty only) had 42.

A Pentagon study revealed that 10% of the returning soldiers met the military's criteria for PTSD.

The New England Journal of Medicine studied four combat units and found that 17% of Iraq war veterans and 11% of Afghanistan war veterans suffered from PTSD. In addition, 25% of returning soldiers were drinking excessively.

A study by the RAND Corporation revealed that 20% of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer from PTSD or severe depression; sadly, only about 50% of these veterans will get the treatment they need.

An older study by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) discovered that only 20% of Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans who test positive for combat related stress disorders are actually referred by the Pentagon for mental health treatment.

On average, 18 US Veterans commit suicide each day. Veterans account for one in five suicides in the United States even though veterans account for only 8 percent of the US population.

There's more...

New Castle County Executive Chris Coons will be the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Delaware, he announced yesterday.

“People here in Delaware are hurting, and Congress has failed to deliver the change we voted for in 2008. I’m running to bring new energy and a new approach to Washington," Coons said in a news release.

“Before I was elected in 2004, the county government was mired in scandal. I restored integrity and confidence in county government. I cut wasteful spending, helped businesses to create jobs, and made our communities safer. I want to take my strong track record of getting real results to the U.S. Senate because the people of Delaware deserve leadership that represents their values.”

Coons faces an uphill battle against former Governor Mike Castle, who decided late last year to leave his House seat and run for Senate instead. CQ Politics reported that Coons will campaign as an outsider:

But Democratic officials said they like the contrast between the 46-year-old Coons, who was re-elected in 2008 in Delaware's most populous county, and the 70-year-old Castle, who has been a Delaware officeholder for most of the past 40 years. "This will be a race about who is positioned to lead Delaware into the future, and given his accomplishments, Chris Coons is well-positioned as an outsider to make that argument," Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement.

Vice President Joe Biden told NBC that Coons "is going to surprise the devil out of them." In the same interview, Biden said his son, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, decided not to run for Senate over Thanksgiving. If that is true, it's atrocious that Beau Biden waited two full months to announce his decision. Coons could have used more time to raise money and start building a campaign organization.

Although the big energy and climate news earlier this week was the Pentagon’s decision to classify global warming as a “destabilizing force,” the big story of the past month has been Lisa Murkowski’s Dirty Air Act. You’ve probably heard about this toxic resolution already, but it hasn’t gone away and the need for action is as acute now as at any time over the past month.

The EPA, in response to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, has proposed new rules to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Failure to do so, the Court said in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, would constitute a violation of the Clean Air Act, the nation’s flagship pollution control law. Unfortunately, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) is trying to block the EPA from following that order.

S.J. Res 26, known as the “Dirty Air Act,” is short and to the point: “Congress disapproves the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to the endangerment finding and the cause or contribute findings for greenhouse gases under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act… and such rule shall have no force or effect”.

Though the Dirty Air Act has little chance of passing the Senate and no chance of passing the House, it is the opening salvo in this year’s looming energy battle. The rhetoric and grassroots response to this resolution will set the tone for the rest of the year, so it’s important that you contact your Senators today and ask them to oppose this resolution and instead support a new, comprehensive clean energy policy. Coal-fired power plants kill 24,000 American and cause 550,000 asthma attacks each year. Simultaneously opposing clean energy legislation and refusing to let the EPA do its job would not only gut the Clean Air Act, it would also prevent the creation of 2 million new jobs. I’d much rather have 2 million jobs than half a million wheezing kids.

Please, contact your senators today. A partial list of environmental groups, faith groups, and other organizations opposing this bill is below the jump, as well as information on which Democrats are co-sponsors and which Republicans aren't.

There's more...

With former GOP Congressman Tom Cambell switching from the race for Governor to the race for the Senate seat in California, he clearly poses more of a challenge for Carly Fiorina, the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard and sometimes registered voter, than he does for State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, who is the darling of the Tea Party set. Well, she's not leaving anything to chance apparently. In an Internet-only ad that could only be described as insane, Carly Fiorina has yet again demonstrated that she's ready to set new lows for the California GOP. And here, I thought that Chuch DeVore was the lunatic of the bunch or should I say flock.

But these are desperate times for Carly the billionairness and destroyer of corporate valuations. According to a Public Policy Institute of California (pdf.) poll conducted in mid January, Tom Campbell is leading both Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore in the race to win the Republican nomination for the right to challenge Senator Barbara Boxer in the fall.

Campbell polls 27 percent among likely voters compared to 16 percent for Fiorina and 8 percent for DeVore. But there's still 48 percent who haven't focused or made up their minds. The margin of error for primary voters is 5 points.

There's more...

Markos Moulitsas of the Daily Kos has commissioned a poll that seeks to gauge the political views and socio-religious beliefs of the GOP base. Some of the results are quite simply stunning. Thirty-nine percent of Republicans want Barack Obama impeached, 36 percent do not believe that President Obama was born in the United States, 63 percent believe that he is a socialist, 21 percent believe that ACORN stole the 2008 Presidential election, 31 percent believe that Barack Obama is a racist who hates white people, 23 percent want their state to secede from the Union, 31 percent want all contraceptives banned, only 8 percent believe openly gay men and women should be allowed to teach in public schools, 77 percent believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible.

It is curious that of the nearly two score of blog stories on the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll, not one looked at the sample, though to be fair to Ezra Klein, he at least did have the thought that "maybe just maybe the sample might off" cross his mind. A poll is only as good as its sample and this poll oversamples older (37.09 percent of the sample is over the age of 60), southern (42.24 percent of the sample hails from the old Confederacy plus Kentucky) men (56.16 percent of the sample are men). It is a great poll if we wanted to get insight into the views old southern men who vote Republican. While that's certainly the stereotype, the face of the GOP is broader than that.

Last May, the Gallup Organization did find that the Republican base was heavily white, conservative and religious based on a poll of 26,314 national adults, aged 18 and older, a sample size more than ten times larger than the Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll.

More than 6 in 10 Republicans today are white conservatives, while most of the rest are whites with other ideological leanings; only 11% of Republicans are Hispanics, or are blacks or members of other races. By contrast, only 12% of Democrats are white conservatives, while about half are white moderates or liberals and a third are nonwhite.

The results show clearly that the Republican Party today is first and foremost a political entity dominated by white Americans. Eighty-nine percent of rank-and-file Republicans are non-Hispanic whites, leaving just 5% who are Hispanic (of any race), 2% who are black, and 4% of other races.

Further, by well over a 2-to-1 ratio, whites who identify as Republicans claim a conservative, rather than a moderate or liberal, ideology (or have no opinion when asked about their ideology).

The ethnic mix the Daily Kos/Research 2000 did get right. Their sample is divided between 89.21 percent white and 10.78 percent non-white. This is certainly a problem for the GOP. While the rest of the country is increasingly multi-racial, the GOP remains overwhelmingly white. Just under four percent of Republicans are African-Americans. A little more five percent of the GOP is Hispanic but about half of those are Cuban-Americans. And only two percent are Asian.

But the poll oversamples men by about four percentage points. While the GOP does face an overall gender gap, the composition within its own party is fairly even split. It is independents that account for the gender gap when election time rolls around. As Gallup noted in May 2009:

Women's affinity for the Democratic Party looks even stronger when independents' partisan leanings are taken into account. By this measure of party identification, Democrats currently enjoy a 22-point advantage over Republicans, with 57% of women identifying as Democrats or saying they are independent but leaning Democratic, compared with 35% who identify with or lean to the Republican Party.

But where the poll is really off the mark is in its age breakdown and its regional distribution. The Institute of Southern Studies correctly I think points to the distortion that this bias creates:

The poll has one big flaw: 42% of those polled came from Southern states -- way out of proportion with their share of Republican voters nationally.

This over-sampling of Southern Republicans (846 total) skews the national results, but it also means the data is especially rich in giving us a picture of the views held by GOP voters in the South.

And the picture is unmistakable: On almost every issue, Southern Republicans are far to the right of their national GOP brethren. In fact, GOP Southerners appear to be the driving base for some of the most extreme views circulating in the Republican Party today.

To measure this, normally we'd compare the Southern results to the national average and see what the difference is. But since the poll disproportionately surveyed Southerners to start with, instead I looked at how the Southern answers compared to the next most conservative region.

For example, here are four questions the poll asked Republicans about President Obama, with the Southern poll numbers compared to the next-highest region (in each of these cases, the Midwest):

QUESTION: Should Barack Obama be impeached, or not?
South: 42% yes
Next-highest region: 38% yes
Southern difference: +4%

QUESTION: Do you believe Barack Obama was born in the United States, or not?
South: 43% no
Next-highest region: 33% no
Southern difference: +10%

QUESTION: Do you think Barack Obama is a socialist?
South: 67% yes
Next-highest region: 61% yes
Southern difference: +6%

QUESTION: Do you believe Barack Obama wants the terrorists to win?
South: 28% yes
Next-highest region: 22% yes
Southern difference: +6%

Here are the demographics used in the sample versus a more accurate picture of the composition of the GOP as compiled from various sources.

In short, the Daily Kos poll has a bias that oversamples Southerners who are more extreme in their views (the poll also drastically undersamples the generally more moderate Republicans in the Northeast by over eight percentage points) and thus paints the GOP as more extreme than they really are. The Daily Kos poll is an inaccurate reflection of the national GOP but likely an accurate picture of the views of its Southern base which nonetheless does account for over one third of its electoral strength nationally. And that Southern base plagues the national GOP to a degree that cannot be overstated.

Enjoy.

• - Now that the MA dust has settled, says BENAWU, Candidate filing rolls on - KY,WV & IN.


• - Jre with What Tim Tebow Won't Say.


• - Karzai Now Suspicious of US Motives in Afghanistan, Another $9 Billion Pissed Away.  (ralphlopez)


• - In attacks on Human Rights First's report "In Pursuit of Justice," writes Gabor Rona, Andy McCarthy's Analysis Doesn't Add Up.


• - Small Banks, Big Impact.  (The Opportunity Agenda)


• - The Media Consortium's Weekly Audit: Don’t Let Citizens United Wreck Our Economy.

Josh Marshall flags a key quote from an ABC News report underscoring the value of the Obama administration's approach towards the Christmas day bombing.

“One of the principal reasons why his family came back is because they had complete trust in the US system of justice and believed that Umar Farouq would be treated fairly and appropriately," the senior official said. "And that they would be as well.” 

The FBI and Abdulmuttalab's family approached the subject and “gained his cooperation. He has been cooperating for days," the official said. 

NBC News reports further that the intelligence being provided by Umar Abdulmutallab post-Miranda -- a procedural step, I might add, that the Bush administration afforded four times in two days by the Bush administration to the Shoe bomber -- is "good intelligence", and further that more intelligence is coming. That is to say, when America acts in accordance with its values, and interested parties understand that (in this case, both Abdulmutallab and his family), real dividends can ensue. 

Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana dodged a bullet recently when Representative Mike Pence decided against challenging him, but today former U.S. Senator Dan Coats, who retired in 1998, will announce plans to run for this seat. Chris Cillizza handicaps the race:

While Coats give Republicans a very credible challenger to Bayh, the Democratic Senator is no slouch. Bayh's obvious strength is his financial prowess as he ended 2009 with $13 million in the bank and his sterling electoral record that includes two terms as governor and two terms in the Senate.

Bayh's biggest potential weakness is the fact that he hasn't run a truly competitive race in decades and may not have the fire in the belly to do so now given that he weighed retirement earlier in this cycle.

Coats will also have to answer a few basic questions. He does not currently live in the state (GOP sources say he and his wife had long planned to move back), is a federally registered lobbyist and, for someone who left office expressing a disdain for fundraising, will have to do lots of it to get competitive with Bayh.

Cillizza doesn't mention a few other problems for Coats, like how he minimized the threat from Al-Qaeda. When President Bill Clinton ordered air strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan in 1998, Coats said, "The president has been consumed with matters regarding his personal life. It raises questions about whether or not he had the time to devote to this issue, or give the kind of judgment that needed to be given to this issue to call for military action."

Jonathan Singer also noted on his Twitter feed that Coats was in charge of getting the unqualified Harriet Miers confirmed for the U.S. Supreme Court. That effort didn't go well, and President George W. Bush ended up withdrawing Miers' nomination (which is how we got Samuel Alito).

There's more...

The Economist has an interesting post with an intriguing slideshow presentation on the evolving relationships in the US Senate. The graph, created by Andrew Odewahn, an information-design expert, maps the voting relationships in the US Senate since 1991 and finds an increasingly polarized US Senate.

Back in 1991-93, there were a surprising number of senators who constituted linked nodes between the main clouds of Republicans and Democrats. Howell Heflin, Richard Shelby, Bob Packwood, William Cohen, Mark Hatfield and Arlen Specter all had significant links across party lines, and it was still possible for Jesse Helms to be off in his own far-right world. Nowadays, it's impossible to get far to the right of mainstream Republicans, because half of the Republicans are already there. By the 104th Congress, following the "Republican revolution" of 1994, the middle space was almost entirely unoccupied, and through the next three congresses only Jim Jeffords, Lincoln Chafee and Arlen Specter dared brave the chasm between the parties. In George Bush's first term, following September 11th, bipartisanship again became an option, and cross-party links proliferated. But by the current Congress, things had gone back to the bad old days of the mid-90s: every single connection between the main clouds of the two parties now runs through Ben Nelson, Olympia Snowe or Susan Collins.

If this were a Facebook community, for the vast majority of either party, the legend next to any member of the other party would read: "You have 0 friends in common." What Barack Obama was attempting to do by visiting the Republican issues retreat was to smack himself down in the middle of that divide. The social divide is, of course, most striking because it appears not to correspond to any reasonable ideological divide; as Mr Obama told the Republican senators, the health-care reform that passed the Senate on party lines is an extremely moderate bill, the most conservative and private-sector-friendly version of universal health insurance imaginable. But that doesn't really matter; the clash in the Senate isn't about policy. It's a war between two cliques. It's not clear whether aggressive friendliness can overcome the drive towards social self-segregation. But the Democrats no longer have 60 votes in the Senate, and if the country is going to get anything done in the next three years, the only way forward is to try and make some friends.

A few other observations about the voting relationships in the Senate:

• The Democrats tend toward to be more fractious. They are often divided into at least two camps, sometimes three.

• Until his retirement in 1997, Alabama Senator Howard Heflin was the Democrat most closely aligned with the GOP. Senator Zell Miller of Georgia in the 107th and 108th Congress voted more with his Republican colleagues than with his party. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska is now the Democrat with the closest ties to the GOP.

• While the GOP has generally held together better as a group, it too has seen some fissures developing in the 111th Congress. Not surprisingly Senator Olympia Snowe and Senator Susan Collins, both of Maine, are the ones most likely to vote with the Democrats.

• The Republican Senators who have tended to vote more with the Democrats have largely tended to represent states in New England (William Cohen, Jim Jeffords, Lincoln Chaffee) plus Pennsylvania (Arlen Specter) and Oregon (Bob Packwood, Mark Hatfield, Gordon Smith). Apart from Senator Specter who is now a member of the Democratic caucus, none of the others are in the Senate. In short the pool for bipartisanship initiatives is effectively limited to the two Senators from Maine and perhaps the incoming Scott Brown.

Bumped. - Nathan

With a general election due in the United Kingdom by early June, opinion polls show a tightening race. Over the past month, the Conservative party's lead over Labour has been cut almost in half to just eight points. The latest ITN poll gives David Cameron's Tories 39 percent of the vote to 31 percent for Gordon Brown and the Labour party. The Liberal Democrats, led by Nick Clegg, trail with 19 percent. The balance is split among various regional parties.

Based on these projections, the Tories would fall short of a majority by 24 seats resulting in a hung Parliament raising the prospect of a coalition government. Britain hasn't had a coalition government since 1945.

With the prospect of a hung Parliament looming, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has taken to wooing the Liberal Democrats, the perennial third party, with the prospect of electoral reform. On Tuesday, PM Brown vowed that he would overcome a daunting timetable to force through a law in the next two months requiring a referendum to be held on changes to the voting system for the Commons after the general election. Such a referendum would require passage by both houses of Parliament. If passed, the referendum would be held by October 2011.

Britain currently uses a single member district first-past-the post (FPTP) electoral system. The referendum would be restricted to whether to stick with the first past the post system or to move to the Alternative Vote (AV) system which has been used in Australia to elect the lower house since 1918. Under AV, voters rank candidates on the ballot paper in order of preference so that the winning candidate has the legitimacy of more than 50% of the vote.

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