November 5, 2007 – Capitol Hill Blue

Hillary’s gender gap

November 5, 2007

The bleachers told the tale of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s gender gap.

Women outnumbered men by more than 3-to-1 as she stood on a simple stage inside a farm shed and brushed aside the male rivals who have been attacking her of late.

“Now, with two months left, 60 days left until the caucus, things are going to get a little hotter,” Clinton said here Saturday.

“Harry Truman said, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,'” Clinton said. “Well, I feel real comfortable in the kitchen …”

Feminists lukewarm towards Hillary

November 5, 2007

Many American women are excited about Democrat Hillary Clinton’s ground-breaking bid for the White House, but feminists warn she can’t count on them just because she’s a woman.

They said tens of millions of women are more concerned about selecting a candidate who best addresses their top issues and are scrutinizing the former first lady in this light.

“Being a woman in and of itself is not sufficient to gain broad-based support,” Faye Wattleton, head of the Center for the Advancement of Women, said. “We’re not doing affirmative action in terms of the presidency.”

Too much of a bad thing

November 5, 2007

My freshman composition students often express contradictory attitudes about violence in our culture.

On one hand, they’re attracted to violence as the subject of essays for our course. In general, they deplore its proliferation throughout society, in video games and movies, on television and the Internet. Sometimes they connect violence in the media to higher crime rates, school shootings and the general decline of Western Civilization.

Fred’s drug-dealer quits campaign

November 5, 2007

An adviser to Republican Fred Thompson quit the presidential candidate’s campaign Monday, one day after a report about his decades-old criminal record for drug dealing.

“I have decided to resign my position as chair of ‘First Day Founders’ of ‘The Friends of Fred Thompson,'” Philip Martin said in a statement. “The focus of this campaign should be on Fred Thompson’s positions on the issues and his outstanding leadership ability, not on mistakes I made some 24 years ago. I deeply regret any embarrassment this has caused.”

The campaign issued the statement.

The biggest crime of all

November 5, 2007

People, it is said, are judged by the company they keep.

GOP Presidential wannabe Fred Thompson jets around the country on a plane owned by a drug dealer.

A top fundraiser for Democratic Presidential frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton turned out to be a criminal on the lam.

Even holier-than-thou Mormon Mitt Romney found himself saddled with a top aide who posed as a cop and then ran like hell when another supporter, Sen. Larry Craig, copped a plea for trying to get a blowjob in an airport men’s room.

Specter will vote for Makasey

November 5, 2007

The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee said Sunday he is bothered by Michael Mukasey’s refusal to say whether waterboarding is torture but will support his nomination for attorney general anyway.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., joins two key Senate Democrats in saying he will back Mukasey because the retired judge has said that if Congress passes a law banning waterboarding, “the president would have absolutely no legal authority to ignore such a law.”

McCain: The mouth that roared

November 5, 2007

John McCain has stocked his arsenal with a variety of weapons over the years, like fists when he was in school and bombs when he was at war. But his WMD is a mouth that won’t quit. He possesses wisecracks of mass destruction.

Who else would refer to the Arizona retirement community of Leisure World as “Seizure World,” as he did in his first Senate campaign? Just for fun, out loud? He couldn’t help himself. (He won anyway.)

Consider McCain’s life as a series of impolitic one-liners, each one illuminating complex threads of the past.

Unions ready to cash in on Dem win

November 5, 2007

If the Democrats hold both houses of the U.S. Congress and take the White House in the 2008 elections, America’s struggling unions plan to trade their political support for a raft of labor-friendly bills.

“It’s early to say but if the Democrats were to take the presidency,” as well as Congress, said Bill Samuel, legislation director of the AFL-CIO labor federation, “this could be an opportunity for historic change.”

Analysts say Big Labor will push for legislation to make forming unions easier, restrict free-trade pacts, raise corporate taxes and reform the creaking health-care system.

Americans want change in direction

November 5, 2007

Sixty percent of all Americans strongly want the country to change direction after nearly seven years of President George W. Bush’s rule, according to a new opinion poll released late Sunday.

The survey by The Washington Post and ABC News indicated that only 24 percent of those surveyed think the nation is on the right track, and three-quarters said they want the next president to chart a different political course.

A new direction is wanted not only by Democrats, but also by three-quarters of Independents and even half of Republicans, according to the poll.

Fred’s drug-dealer buddy

November 5, 2007

Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson has been campaigning around the country using a private jet that was provided to him by a businessman and close adviser, who has a criminal record for drug dealing, The Washington Post reported on its website Saturday.

The newspaper said the businessman, Philip Martin, has also been helping Thompson raise money for his White House bid.