I do have to applaud President Bush's recent strategy to try to swing things back in his favor again, it is actually quite brilliant. The first thing he needed to do is win back his hard-core right wing-nuts that he alienated with his choice of a woman for the Supreme Court. Now he'll have them fighting overtime for Alito (who is about as out of the mainstream as Bush could find).

Next he needs to divert the public's attention away from his corrupt and incompetent administration, and starting a fight in the Senate is the perfect way to divert attention. With Miers, all the Democrats had to do was shut up and let the entire GOP self-destruct. Unfortunately, Democrats now are being drawn into a fight (that we'll probably end up losing anyway) that will ultimately make us look bad if we start talking about filibusters.

What Democrats should do is avoid the idea of a filibuster altogether. They should come together and make the case as a party that Alito is ultra-conservative, someone who thinks the government should be able to legislate morality, and who would be reckless to all of the progress we've made as a society in the past 70 years. Then in the end, every one of them should vote no, making it clear to the public that Democratic party wants nothing to do with extreme judges. A 55-45 vote in the end could send the best signal to the country. He's going to be confirmed anyway, need we look childish and hurt our party in the process?

Our party should not be diverting any attention from the disaster that is the Republican Party in the United States.

Please join with me in praising President Bush for nominating Sam Alito to the US Supreme Court. I must say that as a white man, it is refreshing to win back the seat hogged by a woman for more than 20 years! Let's face it, only white men are qualified to understand the constitution and interpret it. Move over Sandra D! We need more testicles on the bench! Silly women, we can't trust them to be ideologues. I'm now calling for Ruth Bader Ginsburg to step down! Go back home to your husband, leave the court to the gender that knows justice. Thank you President Bush, you've made yet another amazing appointment. Thanks also for telling your wife Laura to shove it when she asks you consider a woman. The nerve!

The people have spoken, think about it. Harriet Miers is both a woman AND unqualified. Coincidence? No.

Keep your ovaries off our judiciary!

The following is an open letter I've written to Sen. Coleman regarding Ms. Miers.

Senator Norman B. Coleman Jr.
2550 University Ave W, Suite 100N
St. Paul, MN 55114

10/29/2005

Dear Senator Coleman:

You really dodged a bullet this week when President Bush pulled the Harriet Miers' nomination for Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. I would have hated to see you vote against someone nominated by such a close friend of yours. You brilliantly set yourself up to vote against her if she was involved in creating tax shelters (which we all know she did). You said in that AP interview, "You had this period in which her firm issued a significant number of opinions, I believe which generated millions in fees, in which there should have been a red flag raised in the tax practice." A few days later, when Miers dropped out, you said that "she has served the President well in her role as White House Counsel and has had a long, distinguished career in public service. She has truly been a trailblazer, rising to the highest positions throughout the legal profession." (Mr. Coleman, you do realize that because of you -- and others on the far right -- she actually didn't rise to the highest position in the legal profession, right?)

Why don't you call for an investigation now about the tax practices at her former firm? Why don't you call for her to step down from her role in the White House if it turns out she did help rich people create these immoral tax shelters? Just because she isn't a nominee for the SCOTUS anymore doesn't mean that her tax shelter schemes were OK, right? Obviously this is a huge issue for you, or you wouldn't have brought it up as a deal-breaker for your confirmation vote. I look forward to seeing you take action on this serious matter.

Keep up the good work as the most consistent person in both Minnesota and the U.S. Senate!

Best regards,

Toby Ahlers
Minnesota Constituent
dflblog.com

I saw a great idea which might save the DFL from yet another defeat.
It is a proposal for a "unity campaign" with the IP and the DFL. Read about it here.

I was reading some of Kennedy v. Machine and I was wondering why they still use the daytonvkennedy.com domain for some of the stuff on their site (like if you click the logo at the top). I do realize that it was the name of the old site, but after seeing that I was curious so I did a 'whois' search for some potential new names once the DFL "machine" picks our candidate. I would say that Gary Miller over there thinks Amy Klobuchar will be the DFL candidate since he bought up the KennedyvKlobuchar.com domain name. Looks like they have no faith that it could be Kennedy v. Wetterling or v. Ciresi or v. Bell (OK, I kinda laughed to myself at the last one, although Ford Bell is a great guy).

Maybe I'll make a prediction about the U.S. Senate race with some domain squatting... and buy CitizenKennedy.com where he will find himself come January, 2007. Maybe in the meantime I'll buy up a domain like ScreechvKlobuchar.com :)

I really don't know what the DFL U.S. Senate race will look like if Mike Ciresi steps in. While I personally am Amy Klobuchar's #1 fan, I do think there needs to be a discussion about the DFL candidate selection. We are currently looking at a very healthy DFL endorsement and nomination process, and one man is looking to mess it all up. Mike Ciersi has proven that he doesn't care about party unity or the endorsement process.

If I were to predict right now what would happen if nothing big changes and Ciresi doesn't run, I'd say that things will stay fairly calm until the endorsement process next spring. Then things will heat up for a while (and that's healthy), but in the end Amy will get the endorsement and Patty Wetterling and Ford Bell will bow out gracefully as promised (who knows, maybe Patty will end up as Lt. Gov on the endorsed gubernatorial ticket). This will leave Amy with enough time to run a full campaign against Mark Kennedy, and I believe that head-to-head, Amy could easily beat Kennedy next year.

That is the ideal situation, at least in my opinion. But if Mike Ciresi decides to give it another go (and it is looking like he might), it could spell disaster for the DFL and put Mark Kennedy next to Norm Coleman in the Senate. First, Mike Ciresi doesn't play nice with other DFLers, we know this because he and Dayton completely ignored the endorsement process in 2000 and the ensuing bloody fight among DFLers until the primary election. If he does this again then we could see him fighting the DFL endorsed candidate until September 2006!

There really is something to say for party unity, it should clear up infighting well before the general election. I would be fine with Ciresi jumping in if he pledges to abide by a DFL endorsement like the other candidates have. He has six months to sell himself to the party, and if he can't do it by then, he should take the high road and step down. If he doesn't want to play by the party's rules, then I suggest finding another party.

Can I also say how nice it would be for a state like Minnesota to have a woman elected to an office higher than Lt. Governor or the U.S. Congress? I'm looking to the MN GOP too, but for some reason the only qualified candidates in their party seem to be men...

I was shocked today to see that Minnesota Democrats Exposed had been so careless as to make a blog posting with Michael Brodkorb's name, e-mail and mobile phone number (see image below and this post in question). I didn't understand at first; it took me about 15 minutes to figure out what had actually happened. This is a theory, but I think it holds a lot of weight. I want to thank Eva Young and her wonderful blog for making the allegation that Michael Brodkorb is MDE first.

I believe that Michael Brodkorb may very well be MDE for the following reasons:

1. There is a really good reason why that name and phone number are on that post: it was an e-mail post. Blogger, which I use, has a wonderful feature that lets you make a post via an e-mail to a super-secret e-mail address and it instantly shows up on the blog. Occam's Razor would tell us that the answer is simple: Mr. Brodkorb carelessly made a post from his personal Hotmail account and forgot to remove the standard signature from it (at 12:32 EDT). He saw the mistake 45 minutes later and removed it and resaved it. I happened to catch this because I read MDE's blog via RSS in Safari, which updates every 15 minutes or so, downloads new stories and if the story is changed or deleted, I still have the older version on my computer. Another clue that it is an email post: www.timpawlenty.com is not hyperlinked -- something harder to write by hand in HTML in e-mail than to click the automated button in Blogger -- and MDE is pretty good with hyperlinks.


2. An alternate theory is that Mr. Brodkorb isn't MDE -- the administrator of the blog -- but is friends with him and has access to that super-secret posting e-mail address I mentioned before. However, I had never seen Mr. Brodkorb's name before today, and the first few links in a Google search for his name is the accusation by Ms. Young that Mr. Brodkorb is MDE (that's one hell of a coincidence!).


3. If I (and others) am correct, then I find it hilarious that MDE would be so vain as to highlight his own quotations in a news story he posted on his blog (it is the red text halfway down). I should note that this could likely be a press release that Mr. Brodkorb himself wrote.


4. From what I've pieced together (and this is more circumstantial supporting evidence) Mr. Brodkorb has close ties to the Republican party of Minnesota (as a former spokesperson) and several prominent GOP officeholders (including Dick Day, Norm Coleman and Rudy Boschwitz). On top of that, he used to head opposition research for the MN GOP (one would think those skills would come in handy exposing DFLers). Mr. Brodkorb seems to now be of the employ of some pro-Randy Kelly political group called "The Campaign for St. Paul's Future." As far as I can tell this is one of those (so-called) 527 groups, an organization that would not technically be excluded from MDE's disclaimer. MDE isn't "created, endorsed, sponsored, or authorized by any political party, candidate, or candidate's committee." (That was from MDE's disclaimer made on every page). All of this put together would give MDE access to insider GOP information -- which he often seems to have -- if MDE was, say, a former spokesman and opposition researcher for the MN GOP.


5. MDE -- as Mr. Brodkorb so forcefully put it -- "[has] made it abundantly clear that the true identity of Minnesota Democrats Exposed will never be revealed or confirmed." I doubt that even if I am right that MDE would come out and acknowledge it, and I certainly hope he doesn't quit because of it. He did give his standard non-denial to this new allegation here.

I should note that I sent this evidence to Ms. Young earlier today and she posted on it. I am just following up because I had some more thoughts on it. Without her hard work, I doubt I would have pursued this at all.

To be honest, "exposing" politicians or bloggers isn't really my thing. I've done my share of opposition research, I know what to look for and where to look, but I get no real pleasure out of it. Today I made an exception, just because it is a "taste of your own medicine thing." I hold no personal animosity towards Minnesota Democrats Exposed, but I must say that I often disagree with what he shows as evidence of some sort of rotting core at the center of the DFL. He has used some computer savvy to "expose" things like Betty McCollum living next door to her chief of staff (and the logical leap that since they are both unmarried and have compatible genitalia then they must be in some sort of forbidden love situation). Well, finding public records isn't computer savvy, but finding things like document author information in the properties for DFL documents does take some savvy.

I kinda feel bad doing this after MDE was so nice as to give my new blog an entry and a rightful place on the list of 'wrong blogs' links.

UPDATE: I invite anyone to comment that find fault with my theory or can offer more evidence.

Am I imagining that Barack Obama is sitting in the front row, right behind home plate, at the World Series in Chicago? I know he is a White Sox fan, but those are some really nice seats. They haven't said anything about it yet in the coverage.

I know it is way too soon to talk about a general election more than a year away, but I have some thoughts on the matter. The reason why I think Kelly Doran can and might win in the end (even against Tim Pawlenty) is because the man is all positives and no negatives. Doran has as much of his own money that he cares to spend, while some laugh at the idea of billboards, it could be an excellent way to at least get his name on people's minds. Money is definitely a plus for Doran. His story is also pretty good too, from being the child of a single mother to a wealthy business developer, he's a self-made man, another plus. What some might call a minus is his lack of political experience could definitely be a plus, especially in a 2006 election. He'll also be one hell of a politician, but I guess you'll all have to wait to see that.

Like it or not, Pawlenty has high negatives and lack-luster support, especially from his GOP base right now. Mike Hatch has or will soon have even higher negatives, and I'm willing to bet he'll lose the DFL endorsement again for the umpteenth time. The DFL has been putting up lousy gubernatorial candidates for long enough, and I agree with Doran that he should either side-step the endorsement process or ignore it and go on through to the primary.

I think that Doran should be doing everything he can to try to channel into the Ventura sentiment among Minnesota voters, and I think that's what he's trying to do right now. He needs to become the moderate outsider with the means to take on Pawlenty. I don't see any other way for the DFL to take back the governor's mansion. I could be dead wrong though, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

While I'm sure she is a fine woman with a stellar legal mind, I think that there should be some serious questions raised about Bush's nominee for the SCOTUS. Bush said that she is the most qualified candidate, otherwise he would not have nominated her. That seems to be a little bit silly since he clearly is close friends with her, and really, what are the odds? I think a more acceptable thing to say would be that she clearly meets the qualifications and that he trusts her as a person and her judicial philosophy. I doubt that anyone, even Mr. Bush, thinks that she is the most qualified person for the job.

Maybe they make a great pair, Bush and Miers. He said she is the most qualified person for the Supreme Court and she said, according to David Frum, that Bush is "the most brilliant man she knows." I personally think it's great to have a woman on the court with such a great sense of humor :)