Day: January 18, 2007

Comedian Al Franken has reached out to Democratic lawmakers from Minnesota in recent days, seeking advice on a possible Senate run against Republican Sen. Norm Coleman next year.

Franken, a veteran of “Saturday Night Live” and radio show host, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he’s called all of the Democrats in the delegation.

“I didn’t call Coleman,” he deadpanned. “I want to mainly touch base and get advice and counsel on certain issues.”

Americans turned in growing numbers to the Internet for political news and information during the 2006 U.S. congressional campaign, as Web videos and blogs became more widespread, a report on Wednesday said.

Fifteen percent of those surveyed said they relied on the Web for the bulk of their political news in 2006, up from 7 percent in the 2002 congressional campaign but down 2 points from 2004, when there was also a presidential race. Presidential contests tend to draw more intense interest.

A Democrat-driven resolution on Iraq that has attracted the support of at least two Republicans threatens to expose fissures within the GOP over the unpopular war.

Republicans are deeply divided on the war in Iraq and how Congress should react to President Bush’s plan to send 21,500 more troops to join the estimated 130,000 already there.

Ten Republicans met behind closed doors late Wednesday with Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., in a bid to generate consensus on Iraq. The senators emerged from the meeting to announce that no deal had been reached.

A series of explosions and shootings rocked Baghdad on Thursday morning, killing at least 19 people and wounding dozens, police said.

Three car bombs detonated within minutes of each other near a vegetable market in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Dora in southern Baghdad. At least 10 people died and 30 were wounded, a police officer said.

Another bomb exploded in central Baghdad at rush hour, killing four people and wounding 11, two other police officers said. One said the death toll was expected to rise.

At least two huge explosions rang out across the area about an hour apart.

As the immigration debate resumes on Capitol Hill, Americans will hear everyone’s voice — except theirs.

Labor unions, big business, chambers of commerce, university think tanks, religious organizations, social-service agencies, La Raza — all support liberalized immigration policies, including amnesty. The only “debate” is over how many illegals get a pass to citizenship and how fast.

Democrats promise to pass a “comprehensive” (i.e., generous) package that will be even more wide open than the one approved by the Senate last session.

When the United States precipitously departed from Vietnam, we left a lot of good friends in the lurch, subject to the reprisals and “re-education” camps of the conquering communists.

You would think we had learned our lesson, but apparently we haven’t. Since our invasion of Iraq in 2003, only 466 Iraqis have been permitted to settle in the United States. That’s disgraceful.

Can there be no end to the vanity of having to parent one’s own genetic child? Apparently not. Doctors are now angling to cash in on the fertility / virility mania by making it possible to get a womb transplant.

How vile the concept! “Let them adopt!” Marie Antoinette might say if she were still alive to watch the repro egos abounding today. Or let them hire surrogates. Last time I checked, infertility was not a life-threatening disease.