Jim Talent

Well, here we are, two years later...this time in a presidential election year.   Despite a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that overturned the costly 2006 photo ID law because it would effectively disenfranchise as many as 240,000 registered voters while doing nothing to prevent non-existent voter fraud, the House and Senate Republican leadership suddenly seem positioned to again push through another regressive measure to make it harder for registered, law abiding Missourians to vote.

The last time, GOP Senate Pro Tem Mike Gibbons allowed a rarely-used procedural move in the middle of the night to shut off debate about the highly-controversial photo ID measure so it would pass and “punish” democrats.   Story Continued »

Today's Washington Post writes up the revelation that the Bush White House was using a "non-partisan" drug policy office to help GOP candidates, including Missouri's Jim Talent, in the run-up to the 2006 election.  

White House officials arranged for top officials at the Office of National Drug Control Policy to help as many as 18 vulnerable Republican congressmen by making appearances and sometimes announcing new federal grants in the lawmakers' districts in the months leading up to the November 2006 elections, a Democratic lawmaker said yesterday. ...

But in the three months immediately leading up to the 2006 election, Walters or his deputies held events almost exclusively with GOP officials, many of whom were embroiled in tough reelection campaigns.

­Two were held with then- Sen. James M. Talent of Missouri, who was defeated last November. At one of those stops, Walters announced that four Missouri counties had been designated part of a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, which brings $500,000 in federal funding to help local law enforcement efforts, Waxman said. It was one of several grant announcements made while drug policy officials were appearing with GOP candidates. 

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The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crimes Act seems to be moving toward easy passage in congress. The Star ran a great story about it yesterday, as did Blue Girl and so did Pub Defender.
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For years, the Missouri (and national) GOP has been crying voter fraud and the press simply repeat their talking points in their stories. By doing so, the press has been used like a dishcloth in order to help build the case for regressive election changes that would make it harder for voters – especially poor, disabled, minority, and elderly voters – to vote. (Most of these folks aren’t Republican voters, so Republicans would prefer they not vote.)

For those of you who haven’t figured it out yet, here’s a refresher how the national GOP election reform spin strategy cycle works:

Republicans continually cry, “voter fraud is rampant!” --> Media outlets continually repeat and print this quote --> Public continually hears and reads “voter fraud is rampant!" from the press and GOP --> Perception of voter fraud is perpetuated, undermining voter confidence --> Republicans call for regressive election reforms, such as photo ID legislation, to address people’s lack of confidence in elections due to “rampant voter fraud”

Take, for example, Rosenbaum’s article today in the Columbia Daily Tribune on this year’s GOP attempt to pass another unconstitutional photo ID bill:  Story Continued »

It looks like Missouri may be about to become a key front in the U.S. Attorney purge story. From a story by Richard Serrano in today's Los Angeles Times:

In an interview Thursday, Cummins expressed disgust that the Bush administration may have fired him and the others for political reasons. "You have to firewall politics out of the Department of Justice. Because once it gets in, people question every decision you make. Now I keep asking myself: 'What about the Blunt deal?' "

Former Eastern District of Arkansas U.S. Attorney Bud Cummins is the prosecutor who probed the Blunt administration's fee office operation last year. Fired Up! Missouri has previously reported on the peculiar timing and circumstances of the Justice Department's notification of Cummins' firing --notification made while he was in the midst of a high-profile investigation of our Republican governor.

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The Hotline On-Call has an interesting find. Jim Talent has joined the Romney campaign. While this is no surprise after seeing the two of them so close at the RNC meetings, it does beg a strange question. What does Jim Talent's roommate think of this?

Talent has been living with Romney's Presidentail rival Sam Brownback.  Is Jim living with Sam but moonlighting with Mitt, or is Jim the mole feeding information to his buddy Sam?

All I know is that this is a pretty strange threesome.

So, after much back and forth, the Missouri Senate finally confirmed Jim Talent donor Judy Haggard of Kennett to the Board of Curators of the University of Missouri on Wednesday. A majority of senators and Ms. Haggard herself seem 100% comfortable with her appointment to a Democratic slot on the board. Ms. Haggard is explicit in her affirmation of partisanship:

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All week, Matt Blunt and Judith Haggard have been talking up Haggard's allegiance to the Democratic Party.  Haggard is Matt Blunt's choice to represent the 8th congressional district on the University of Missouri Board of Curator--- as a Democrat.  State Senate Democrats, lead by Chuck Graham, have questioned her political pedigree.

Now comes word that as recently as November 3rd, Judith Haggard contributed $1,000 to the campaign of Democrat Republican Jim Talent (see attachment).

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For the past few months there has been increasing speculation about Blunt's 2008 plans. Conventional wisdom around has always been that Blunt would run for re-election, and most likely, as he continued to plummet in the polls, he would get a primary from either Steelman or Kinder. However, Republicans in the capitol have recently been saying that Blunt is putting all of his eggs in the Mitt Romney basket and considering abandoning ship in Missouri for the national spotlight.

Now, we have a new development that has caught a lot of steam in the capitol corridors and made the above rumors an even more likely outcome. As reported yesterday two-time statewide loser Jim Talent wants to run for Governor in 2008. This little statement could have easily gone without notice since he has never seen an election he didn't want to run in. Then, today, it gets out that Talent conspicuously attended dinner last night with Blunt's buddy Mitt Romney.

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Well here comes Bob Boldt’s traditional post-election wet blanket - so head
for the hills. Just as my last ’04 post-presidential election
postmortem (concerning what a complete fraud John Kerry was) cost me a
couple of friendships, so too these parting shots will probably
alienate me from the few friends I have left among the progressive
Democratic community.

As some of you may know, I have spent most of the month of October
working on behalf of the Claire McCaskill’s US Senate campaign.
Congratulations to Claire - she worked hard and deserved her win. I  Story Continued »

On this the eve of the mid-term elections, we see the Republicans pulling out all the stops in their efforts to stem the tide on the ground swell of Democratic support for change in the direction America is heading. While the President is in Florida talking on the issue where he polls least negatively in crowds of die-hard Republican supporters--the war on Iraq--and the Republican junior Senator from Missouri stumps on the same in St. Louis county, Democrats are out talking to folks about life saving cures, livable wages and finding ways to pay for the Medicaid cuts imposed on Missourians by Republican Governor Blunt.

It is also not coincidental that the prices at the pumps are today at their lowest in nearly a year. The Republicans with no domestic agenda beyond turning back the clock on progress, a failed foreign policy (Korea, Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, etc.), and a disastrous energy policy that has lead to all-time highs in consumption and fuel costs, are hoping to buy the American electorate with lower gas prices for the few weeks leading up to tomorrow's election. I assert that the American voters can and do see through this thinly veiled attempt to sway a disastrous campaign season fraught with scandal in the Republican party. And, the polls bear out the same.

In the most recent polls, Claire McCaskill is leading her Republican opponent by a few points, in what has been up until now a neck-and-neck race. It is now for us to bring home this election, and ensure that each and every voter gets to the polls, is not denied their right to vote and that Claire McCaskill is elected as our next US Senator.

This will take the tireless efforts of us all. We must make certain that all of our friends, neighbors and relatives not only vote, but go to the polls fully informed about the importance of this election. We must ensure that they know that voting for the Republican in this race is a vote for a man that supports the failed Bush agenda. We must ensure that they know that voting for Claire McCaskill is a vote for a senator on our side!

[read more from this author]

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In my recent poll, there are of the 37 voters at the time of this writing, 26 voting mostly or completely Democratic, 7 voting mostly or completely Republican, and 1 voting evenly split. What is most worrisome, though, are the 3 voters that are either undecided or will not be voting on Tuesday....<continue reading>

The four leading military newspapers; The Army Times, Navy Times, Marine Corps Times, and the Air Force Times are all brave enough to do what Jim Talent is too cowardly to do: call for Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld to be fired.

Check out this story from Editor and Publisher on the editorial due in the four major military publications on Monday.

There's an interesting post at the Political Fix this afternoon about Stem Cell Research opponents praying for Matt Blunt on the steps of the capitol in hopes of his rethinking his support for the Amendment 2 ballot measure.

Terri Redfearn, who has campaigned against Amendment 2 in Dade County, waved a sign urging Blunt to side with his anti-abortion constituents. She framed her message for Blunt in religious terms.

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Here is the video from tonight's segment from The News Hour with Jim Lehrer on the Missouri Senate race.

And here is the audio.

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