May 7, 2008 8:22

UPDATE: Nuns strike back.

Surely, our majority-Catholic Supreme Court should have known better than to get on the wrong side of the Sisters. As we wrote earlier, the first victims of the new ruling on Voter ID were elderly nuns in Indiana. This just in, in my emailbox: The nuns of Missouri rap the Supreme Court's knuckles with a great big ruler:

May 7, 2008 5:32

The F in FEC: Farcical? Fantasy? Phony?

For years now, the Federal Election Commission has been, more or less, a joke, dominated by political pressures as much as clear thinking. As a result of political infighting, it does not even have enough commissioners to act on anything right now. In fact, the only action of note that anyone at the FEC has taken in the last several months was a letter written by chairman David Mason back in February raising questions about whether or not the McCain campaign would be able to legally back out of public financing in the primary. (McCain originally sought public matching funds for the primary, which come with spending limits, but then changed his mind, claiming that he had never made use of the federal money.)

In his letter, Mason did not say that McCain had broken any rules. He just raised concerns, and said that the full commission would have to consider McCain’s request to back out of the program, once there was a full commission to consider the request.

So how was Mason rewarded? He basically got fired by the White House yesterday, or as they say would say in Washington speak, “his reappointment confirmation request was withdrawn.”

Here is how Fred Wertheimer, a campaign finance reformer and historical McCain ally, responded to the news here:

The only apparent reason for President Bush to drop Commissioner David Mason at this stage, an FEC candidate he had twice proposed for the Commission, is to prevent him from casting an adverse vote against Senator McCain on important enforcement questions pending at the Commission. The questions deal with Senator McCain’s request to withdraw from the presidential primary public financing system and the consequences of a loan the McCain campaign took out and the collateral provided for the loan.

Rick Hasen, a respected election law professor at Loyola, agrees. The Campaign Legal Center also objects to the removal of Mason.

May 7, 2008 5:12

Mark your calendar

This just in from the House Judiciary Committee:

Conyers Issues Subpoena to Addington

Washington, DC- Today, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers issued a subpoena to David Addington, Chief of Staff to the Vice President, compelling him to testify before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on June 26 at 10 a.m. Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John C. Yoo, who has agreed to testify voluntarily, will testify on that day as well.

A committee staffer tells me no date is set yet for former Attorney General John Ashcroft to testify, though he has agreed to. And in answer to what some of our commenters wanted to know after my earlier post on this subject, the staff member tells me that Conyers intends to ask Yoo, Addington and Ashcroft only about the Administration's policy toward interrogation of terrorism suspects--and whether they constitute torture. However, the staffer left open the possibility that other members would expand the questioning into areas like the Bush Administration's domestic surveillance program.

May 7, 2008 4:33

The Clintons Must Be Crazy

A -- sigh -- diavlog:

And, yes, there is more McCain-and-the-press talk. Please, feel to pile on!

May 7, 2008 12:59

More From This Morning's Conference Call

I -- and a Friend of Swampland -- have taken the liberty of trying to recreate the IM conversation between Obama advisor David Axelrod and Clinton advisor Howard Wolfson Michael mentions below:

KewlSweater (9:26:06 PM): yt?

AxStache (9:26:55 PM): y

KewlSweater (9:27:01 PM): we got the white ppl! suck on it!

AxStache (9:27:12 PM): sorry am 2 busy sucking on our 14 PT WIN! PWND!!!!!

KewlSweater (9:27:40 PM): :(

KewlSweater (9:27:45 PM): u don't have to be so mean about it.

KewlSweater (9:28:01 PM): dude rlly, this like, totally blows….

AxStache (9:28:04 PM): i know bro. srsly, i feel for you…

KewlSweater (9:28:07 PM): it’s really curious how much this blows…

AxStache (9:28:14 PM): i know man, but it doesn’t blow as much as Penn!

KewlSweater (9:28:16 PM): LOLOLOL

AxStache (9:28:17 PM): LOL!!!!!

KewlSweater (9:28:19 PM): SRSLY!!! LOLOLOL J ;-)

AxStache (9:28:21 PM): ROFL ROFL….i think i laughed so hard i made my mustache crooked!

KewlSweater (9:28:22 PM): LOLOLOL

AxStache (9:28:23 PM): heehee

KewlSweater (9:28:25 PM): i miss you

AxStache (9:28:29 PM): i miss you too

Phil4Hill (9:28:30 PM): hey guys what’s up?

KewlSweater (9:28:35 PM): um….hey

May 7, 2008 11:50

More Views From HillaryLand

The Hill-O-Plane last night from Indiana had an odd feel to it. Just as we took off, leaving BlackBerry range, Obama was quickly closing the statewide margin in Lake County. The press corps was not convinced that Clinton had won the state, giving the whole flight a sort of deck-of-the-Titanic feel. Campaign staff never faltered in their conviction that they had won the state, but we could not be sure.

The highlight of the whole band-played-on experience came when Terry McAuliffe, the campaign chairman, came back to talk to the press with a glass of red wine in his hand. "We won Indiana," he declared. "We shocked the world!" A few minutes later, a campaign staffer's BlackBerry picked up news from the ground. Clinton had won after all. The cruise continues.

I have a story up here on the state of the Clinton race, based on my reporting with the campaign earlier this week. It's called, Clinton's Hard Road Gets Harder.

Also, tag teaming with Ana, here are some more highlights from the just completed Clinton conference call:

1. The $11-plus-million Hillary Clinton has loaned the campaign is slightly greater than the amount she made herself from book sales and senate salary, communications honcho Howard Wolfson admitted, suggesting that she is dipping into Bill Clinton's earnings. But Wolfson said this fact is not significant. "I dispute the notion that there is a difference between her share of their joint assets and her money. . . . Her money is her share of their joint assets. . . . She is drawing upon their jointly owned assets. . . . She has made about 11 million from her senate salary and her book sales. . . . I don't rule out that she will loan the campaign additional resources"

2. The campaign believes that the gas tax debate had a major impact on closing the gap among white working class. "We believe that we wouldn't have made the movement we did in North Carolina without her having been willing to take on this issue," said Clinton strategist Geoff Garin.

3. The campaign said there have been no discussions with the Obama campaign about a joint ticket. Wolfson admitted a brief IM exchange with Obama strategist David Axelrod yesterday. "We exchanged pleasantries." Wouldn't it be interesting to know what those look like.

4. Campaign admits that past Clinton camp references to 2025 delegates as target goal for clinching the nomination is no longer operative. "It is not the operative number," said Wolfson. The Clinton campaign now wants Florida and Michigan to be fully seated, making 2209 the number of delegates needed to cinch the nomination.

5. Asked if Hillary needs to destroy the village to save the village, a Vietnam reference applied to the Democratic Party, and unnamed speaker, who I believe was Garin said, "I just reject that analogy out of hand. This is somebody who has spent her whole life in the village." I thought that was funny.

6. Campaign rejects idea that Clinton would have trouble raising money in the general. Also predicts that both candidates can win over their opponent's Democratic supporters after the primary.

7. Asked if the campaign has had any discussions about not going forward with the campaign, Wolfson said, "No. No discussions."

May 7, 2008 11:00

Hillary Clinton's Base?

Just now, on this morning's HRC conference call, Geoff Garin had this spin regarding the campaign's North Carolina 14 point loss: "We lost the white electorate in Virginia, started even in North Carolina among the white electorate just two weeks ago, and ended [with] a very significant win of 24 points among those voters." He called this shift -- you know, the white people deciding to vote for the white person -- "progress."

Right. Now, if only there was a way to make white votes count for more than the black ones...

May 7, 2008 10:50

Tie-Breaker, Huh?

A little after 1AM last night, the networks that weren't CBS called Indiana for Hillary. It was a dramatic evening for those interested in putting states in one column or another, but the real news (or lack of it) was just how close it was. As Chuck Todd started to remind viewers when yesterday became today, "We're doing all this for one delegate."

And that one delegate could have gone either way -- the larger math problem would still be almost impossible for Clinton to solve, even using the imaginary numbers out of Michigan and Florida.

May 7, 2008 10:32

The Crisis We Won't Predict

I managed to wean my focus away from the presidential campaign just long enough yesterday to read an outstanding op-ed by Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post about how the next great international crisis and war could well ignite over.....Abkhazia.

"Ab-wha'?" you ask.

And that's Applebaum's point exactly. We're so consumed with our domestic election -- and, to the extent we're focusing overseas at all, with Iraq -- that we're paying scant attention to important, and potentially dangerous, developments around the world.

I once wrote about Abkhazia's independence movement, when I was based in Moscow, and yet everything in Applebaum's column was news to me. And I doubt Obama, McCain or Clinton has thought much about -- or been briefed on -- Abkhazia. Let's hope we all get away with it.