Katie Connolly
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Apr 14, 2009 05:44 PM
The air appears tense in upstate New York, where absentee ballots from the recent special election to fill Kirsten Gillibrand's seat are being counted. The DNC just sent out a blast email alerting us to this nugget from The Times Union, an Albany paper:
"When Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s absentee ballot came up in the queue,
the poll watchers for Jim Tedisco objected to it, saying the senator
was in the county on election day and should have voted in person."
According to the latest count on MSNBC, Democrat Scott Murphy is still up by around 47 votes.
Katie Connolly
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Apr 14, 2009 02:22 PM
After a three judge panel ruled against Norm Coleman in his contest with Al Franken for a Minnesota Senate Seat last night, Coleman's lawyers announced that they will appeal. This appeal will likely push a resolution of the disputed election results off for another couple of months, as Governor Pawlenty, who must certify the results, has said he can't do so until the appeals process is complete. Franken seemed pretty chuffed after the ruling was announced, urging Coleman to let him get to work, because Minnesota "like every other state" deserves to have two Senators.
Franken probably has good reason to be grinning. Law professor Rick Hasen, over at Election Law Blog, thinks that Coleman's chances of a successful appeal are slim, saying that the judges were careful, reasonable and measured in their ruling. But Coleman may have an ace up his sleeve: Ben Ginsburg is on his legal team. Ginsburg shot to political fame in 2000 when he represented Bush in the Florida recount. Don't be fooled by the meek portrayal of Ginsburg on HBO's 2008 docudrama Recount: He's a pull-no-punches guy (his name is still muttered like a curse word by Democrats), and is one of the country's foremost election law specialists. He's likely to have a few tricks up his sleeve. On a conference call with reporters today, Ginsburg firmly reiterated the Coleman camp's intention to pursue every legal avenue to fight last night's ruling. Ginsburg said he believes the judges "misunderstood" some of the issues and the Coleman appeal will be filed within the ten day window. It looks like the appeal will focus on 4,000 or so disputed absentee ballots that have not been counted. Whatever the focus, the fun and games are set continue, at least for now.
Holly Bailey
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Apr 14, 2009 01:01 PM
Maybe it was major after all. Although President Obama did not announce any new policy today in his speech at Georgetown, he did go back and explain, in great detail at times, the origins of the financial crisis and how the administration has been trying to respond. And Obama implied that he's going to tackle two major issues that have felled his predecessors at the White House: entitlement reform and re-jiggering the tax code. Although he didn't offer many details, that's big news.
But first, when we say “go back,” Obama did literally explain, in several paragraphs, what caused the current recession, which he says was prompted by a “perfect storm of irresponsibility and poor decision-making stretched from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street.” “Our most urgent task has been to clear away the wreckage, repair the immediate damage to the economy and do everything we can to prevent a larger collapse,” Obama said. “Since all the problems we face are all working off each other to feed a vicious economic downtown, we’ve had no choice but to attack all fronts of our economic crisis at once.”
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Holly Bailey
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Apr 14, 2009 10:50 AM
President Obama isn’t scheduled to speak for another half hour, but the White House has already released excerpts of his speech today. As predicted, there isn’t new policy—just an update on what the White House has been doing and the small signs of progress that Obama has been seeing on the economic front. But several times, the president notes the “pitfalls that may lie ahead.” Here’s one key excerpt:
This is all welcome and encouraging news, but it does not mean that hard times are over. 2009 will continue to be a difficult year for America’s economy. The severity of this recession will cause more job loss, more foreclosures, and more pain before it ends. The market will continue to rise and fall. Credit is still not flowing nearly as easily as it should. The process for restructuring AIG and the auto companies will involve difficult and sometimes unpopular choices. All of this means that there is much more work to be done. And all of this means that you can continue to expect an unrelenting, unyielding, day-by-day effort from this administration to fight for economic recovery on all fronts.
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Holly Bailey
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Apr 14, 2009 10:00 AM
Another day, another economic event. President Obama will speak later this morning at Georgetown University here in Washington, where he’ll deliver what the White House has described as a “major” economic speech. What’s so major about it? It’s unclear. Obama, according to aides, won’t announce any new policy. The speech will largely be an update on where the nation stands as Obama nears his 100-day mark in office. Perhaps the most important thing to look for will be tone. Although Obama is a gifted orator, the president has struggled to find the appropriate balance between talking hopefully about the economy without suggesting the nation’s tough times are over. On Friday, Obama told reporters that he saw “glimmers of hope” in the country’s economic recovery, noting a few promising statistics in housing numbers. While Obama quickly added the economy continues to be under “severe stress,” it was the president’s upbeat tone that got the most attention, prompting White House aides to worry that Obama could be somehow viewed as out of touch considering the dismal numbers on job loss and retail sales that continue to trickle out. What Obama will do today is talk about what he and his aides have been doing the last three months and attempt to show that their policies are actually accomplishing something. Why? White House aides know that Obama needs to maintain his credibility with the public if he wants to push forward on his agenda. So far, there have been no cracks in Obama’s high approval ratings since taking office, and it appears no one is blaming him for the bad economy. In fact, a Gallup poll out yesterday shows that 71 percent of those polled trust Obama to fix the economy—a higher number than anybody else mentioned in the poll. The White House wants to keep it that way. The test for Obama is how long the public's patience will last.
Newsweek
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Apr 14, 2009 08:48 AM
Our favorites this morning from around the web:
Abe's secret even he didn't know
Knowing that the pillow on which Abe Lincoln died still contains usable
DNA and blood samples, a Philadelphia cardiologists wants to use them
to test a popular theory: whether Lincoln was concurrently suffering
from a rare genetic type of cancer. Ethical questions abound. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
The dog-conomy
The new puppy Bo Obama just inherited a lifetime of royalty, but others
of his breed could be facing a surge in popularity, which turns the
wheels of inhumane puppy mills scrambling to meet the demand. (Chicago Tribune)
Playing defense on energy
The Department of Defense, which is the largest consumer of U.S.
energy, wants to invest more in renewables. But not just to save money.
Moreso to save lives. (Washington Post)
Spitzer's comeback?
Eliot Spitzer has had a lot of time on his hands since resigning as
governor of NY last year. Now, the rumor mill's a-turning that the
poll-turned-pundit is eyeing his old job, what he thinks was a
successful run as the state's attorney general. (NY Post)
Pas de pirates
Piracy is a new struggle to Washington and the U.S. Navy, but France
has been fighting against Somali sea bandits for years, with surprising
success. (NPR)
GOP withering away
Low and falling GOP voter registration in California is slowly turning
a state that is hardly competitive even less so, putting current
Republican office holders in congress in danger of re-election. (LA Times)
