Blue Radar

As I post each morning, here are some of the political stories thatmight not be worthy of their own posts, but are nonetheless newsworthy:

• Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) predicts that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will resign rather than face an embarrassing 'no confidence' vote in the Senate.  "I think that if and when he sees that coming, that he would prefer to avoid that kind of an historical black mark," Specter said Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation.  The no-confidence vote is expected today or tomorrow.  (In other words, we are probably in the waining hours before the end of the Gonzales era.)
• Here is the complete text of the "Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007".
• Right-wing blogs are lashing out at John McCain for his verbal outburst with fellow Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas.  Powerline, one of the most prominent conservative blogs, said about the altercation, "It renews lingering doubts about whether Senator McCain possesses the proper temperament to be president."  (That is definitely a quote worth keeping for later on!)
• The son of conservative talk-show host Laura Schlessinger is under investigation for his graphic personal MySpace site.  According to the Salt lake Tribune, "The MySpace page ..includedcartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation;photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of abound and blindfolded detainee captioned 'My Sweet Little Habib';accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series ofobscenities and racial epithets."
• Many Hong Kong residents are calling for authorities to reclassify the Bible as "indecent" because they claim the Old Testament contains violent and sexual content.
• Hans Von Spakovsky, a Republican lawyer and self-professed fighter against voter fraud, is facing allegations that he personally was involved in illegal efforts to keep minority voters from casting their ballots on election day.
• In August of 2004, the U.S. attempted to assassinate Moqtada al Sadr, the now-powerful Shiite cleric in Iraq, by louring him into a house for a planned peace negotiation.  This revelation is not going over well in Iraq.  "I believe that particular incident made Muqtada lose any confidence ortrust in the [US-led] coalition and made him really wild," said the Iraqi National Security Adviser.  (Like spraying water on a honeybee nest.  It only makes the queen mad, and its followers rise to defend her.)
• In an apparent shot at conservative advocacy groups that have pressured the Administration to appoint fringe judges, former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said that laws "shouldn't change just because the faces on the court have changed."  (In other words, follow precedent, not your personal ideology.)
• During a commencement speech at Southern New Hampshire University, Barack Obama ripped the media for sensationalizing the real world.  He told the students, "We see it in a media culture that sensationalizes thetrivial and trivializes the profound, in a 24-hour newsnetwork bonanza that never fails to keep us posted on how many daysParis Hilton will spend in jail but often fails to update us on thecontinuing genocide in Darfur or the recovery effort in New Orleans orthe poverty that plagues too many American streets."
• Fighting is raging in Lebanon, nearly one year after pro-Syrian terrorists used Lebanon as a staging ground to launch attacks against Israel.  This time the fighting is more internal.  On Sunday, 12 Lebanese soldiers were killed by the Fatah al-Islam terrorist organization.  According to the blog From Beirut to the Beltway, the terrorists "arrived via Syria after terrorist tours in Iraq."

If we left anything out, feel free to add any stories in the commentbox.

Comments

[granny]

Some little inkling in the back of my mind leads me to wonder...is Spakovsky one of Bush's recess appointments? There's something about his getting his job, I think ...