Wednesday Open Thread

by: David Dayen

Wed Dec 03, 2008 at 19:00:00 PM PST

• A federal judge today appeared to signal that he will mandate the early release of California inmates in order to control the unconstitutional prison health care disaster.  This is happening because of a total failure of leadership from the top down over 30 years on prison policy, so they have no right whatsoever to object, but early release is not the final answer, only a temporary stopgap.  If sentencing is unchanged, if the root causes are not addressed, we'll be returning to this issue again and again.  It's also unclear if terminally ill prisoners would be the ones released, which would make no sense since they would merely become a burden on the strapped regular health care system.

• Lawyers in Santa Monica for Roman Polanski are seeking a dismissal of his notorious underage sex charge which has caused him to be in exile in Paris for over 30 years.  They're basing their motion on revelations of prosecutorial misconduct in the HBO movie "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired."

• I'm a fan of Citizens for Repsonsibility and Ethics in Washington, but lumping in a $145 charge from Rep. Loretta Sanchez for culturally appropriate Vietnamese attire during meetings in her Vietnamese-heavy district with Sarah Palin's $150,000 clothing charge during the fall election is borderline insane.

• In other campaign finance news, MapLight.org, a Berkeley based watchdog group, is suing the state for electronic voting records for the legislators.  That would be very, very helpful for us bloggers.  Combining those with MapLight's campaign finance tools would be even more powerful. Here's their release.

• Village idiot Jim Boren thinks Darrell Steinberg represents politics as usual because some of his committee appointments have gone to the same Senators who held them under Don Perata.  Uh, Jim?  There are 19 committees and 24 Democratic State Senators.  Everyone who doesn't have a chairmanship is in the leadership.  Do the math.

• Here's one local election where the winner prevailed by one - 1 - vote.

Gary Miller needs to reimburse taxpayers $1.28m

by: ron

Fri Mar 14, 2008 at 00:17:13 AM PDT

Today, I called on Rep. Gary Miller (pg2) to reimburse the taxpayers $1.28 million for an earmark that he placed in the 2005 Highway bill.

I am sick and tired of letting career politicians who care more about their personal business than the peoples' business run our country.  

Shorter John Doolittle

by: David Dayen

Wed Sep 26, 2007 at 13:12:13 PM PDT

The list by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington names 18 Republicans and four Democrats.

Doolittle, whose connections to lobbyist Jack Abramoff are the subject on a Justice Department investigation, said the listing was an underhanded attempt to attack him from a liberal Democrat organization funded by billionaire activist George Soros.

"I just really think it's unfair and wrong for an underhanded and vile organization like CREW, who disagrees with me because I'm a conservative Republican, to attack me on that," he said. "Because of the atmosphere right now, it's a very impactful thing."

Doolittle has said he has done nothing wrong and wants the Justice Department investigation to come to a conclusion to clear his name. With a new congressional election coming in November 2008, Doolittle is already facing a Democrat challenger who ran a surprisingly strong campaign against him in 2006.

There's the obligatory Soros reference, the dismissal of any criticism as partisan, but also the admission that CREW's list, which includes 4 Democrats along with 18 Republicans, is "impactful."  That's because he can't argue with any of the findings so he attacks the source.

By the way, Auburn Journal, it's a DEMOCRATIC challenger.  And his name is Charlie Brown.  You can donate to him through the Calitics ActBlue page and then come down to one of our Q3 Quarterly events tonight.