Indicted longterm LA Congressman William Jefferson has been defeated. The winner of the House seat for the district which includes New Orleans is Republican lawyer Anh Cao.

Cao emigrated from Vietnam when he was 8, after the fall of Saigon. This is his first elected office and he will be the first Vietnamese-American in Congress.

Turnout in Saturday's election, which was postponed due to Hurricane Gustav, was not high. While Jefferson's corruption charges are thought to have increased turnout in the white community and largely contributed to his defeat, and turnout among blacks was lower than usual, this is also interesting: [More...]

Ross Douthat is right that the Republican Party did not, strictly speaking, get wiped out because of their anti-choice stance. That is just a constant albatross around GOP necks with women voters. And of course the reactionary image the Republicans have earned is a part of the overall image problem that it has. But that does not explain the 2008 election - 8 years of the George W. Bush Presidency explains it. But when Douthat decided to discuss privacy/choice jurisprudence (Roe and Casey, he seems to have no awareness of Carhart), he began the familiar nonsense:

Jon Favreau, the chief speechwriter for President-elect Barack Obama, engaged in behavior that embarrassed himself, embarrassed the President-elect, and embarrasses Democrats. What I end up asking my self is this - forget that the behavior was exposed to the public - in the privacy of his own mind, what was funny about it? What was he thinking? What was in his mind that he thought that was funny?

When we spent months railing about the acceptance of the sexism and misogyny against women (Keith Olbermann's casual sexism and misogyny and the Left blogs acceptance of it comes to mind as well as the behavior of the boyz of the blogs generally) - this is what we mean. I wonder if anyone was shocked by Mr. Favreau's behavior. They should not have been.

Speaking for me only. See also Shakespeare's Sister blog.

President-Elect Barack Obama will name another cabinet nominee tomorrow: Retired General Eric Shinseki to head the Department of Veterans' Affairs.

Shinseki was a vocal critic of the Neocons in the Bush Administration and is Obama's first Asian-American cabinet nominee.

Juan Cole calls the appointment "ironic."

"If Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and [former undersecretary for defense Douglas J.] Feith had listened to Shinseki, there wouldn't be as many wounded veterans to take care of," Cole said. "I think this is a way of saying, 'Here was a career officer who had valuable insights who was shunted aside by arrogant civilians, and we're not going to make the same kind of mistakes.' "

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A judge in Montana has ruled doctor-assisted end of life choices are legal.

In her ruling, Judge McCarter wrote that “the Montana constitutional rights of individual privacy and human dignity” give a mentally competent person who is terminally ill the right to “die with dignity.”

The ruling said that those patients had the right to obtain self-administered medications to hasten death if they found their suffering to be unbearable, and that physicians could prescribe such medication without fear of prosecution.

It's hard to fathom anyone would challenge such a basic human right, but the state is expected to appeal.

The Washington Post has a four-page article today on the detainees at American prisons in Iraq. While conditions may have improved from the days of Abu Ghraib abuses, the likelihood of receiving due process apparently has not.

Here's one example: Talib Mohammed Farkhan, who was held for 15 months before being told the reasons for his detention. He learned them at his first hearing. Here's what happened:

[He]shuffled into Hearing Room 3 to hear his U.S. captors explain the allegations against him for the first time.

Farkhan, a Shiite Muslim, appeared to follow along as the American officers said he had been detained for membership in the Mahdi Army, the anti-American Shiite militia. But he looked totally baffled when they also accused him of working with al-Qaeda in Iraq, the extremist Sunni Muslim group that kills Americans and Shiites.

"I don't understand how that could be possible," said a visibly flustered Farkhan, a welder from the southern city of Iskandariyah, who denied all the accusations. "They are Sunni. I am Shia."

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The chief judge of New York's highest court, Judith Kaye, is retiring at the end of the month. The commission charged with nominating candidates to replace her deserves the criticism it has received from Gov. David Paterson, who makes the final selection from the nominees, and Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

The seven candidates offered by the Commission on Judicial Nomination include no women and only one minority.

Did the Commission really believe that white males make the best chief judges -- to the exclusion of all females?

"I've really got to wonder how this group would feel comfortable sending a list forward and not one of them represents half of the human race," Paterson said.

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A prosecutor's lie to a Nevada jury may have influenced its decision to impose the death penalty on Ricky Sechrest.

The prosecutor "misled the jurors to believe that if they did not impose the death penalty, Sechrest could be released on parole and would kill again," the court said, adding that the trial judge "did nothing to stop the prosecutor from making these erroneous assertions."

Apparently the defense attorney, whose representation was judged inadequate in other respects, also did nothing to correct the lie. The court of appeals vacated the death sentence, giving Nevada the choice of accepting a lesser sentence or bringing a new death penalty proceeding. If it chooses the latter, let's hope it plays by the rules this time.

This week's radio address/podcast from the President-Elect:

Ball State saw its dream of an undefeated season ended last night when the Turner Gill-coached Univ. of Buffalo Bulls beat David Letterman's alma mater 42-24. So much for the battle of unbeatens between Ball State and Boise State.

As you may know, today is a big day in college football. BC meets Virginia Tech in Tampa for the ACC Championship at 1:00 pm. With a win over Missouri in the Big 12 Championship game in Kansas City tonight, Oklahoma will advance to the BCS championship game. In other games, a USC win over UCLA (playing at the Rose Bowl) this afternoon puts them in the Rose Bowl against Penn State, and Pitt meets UConn (both teams are headed to minor bowls.) The United States Military Academy, located in beautiful West Point, NY (Army) meets the United States Naval Academy, located in beautiful Annapolis, Maryland (Navy) in Philadelphia, PA at noon today.

The SEC Championship game is today at 4. The #1 ranked Crimson Tide of Alabama face the #4 ranked Fighting Florida Gators. Injuries are an issue for the Gators, especially with star all purpose player Percy Harvin a game time decision. It should be a great game.

Go Gators!! This is an Open Thread.

Call it a rescue plan, call it a loan, call it a bailout: can we call it a done deal?

Democratic leaders in Congress and the White House will meet again on Saturday to negotiate a rescue plan to help U.S. automakers, a congressional source told Reuters on Friday.

Nancy Pelosi abandoned her objection to using an existing $25 billion advanced technology fund to help pay for the bailout rescue plan loan. She conditioned her compromise on "a guarantee that those funds will be replenished in a matter of weeks” to avoid delaying the development of more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Congress needs to provide oversight and assure accountability, but do we really need a car czar? Can we at least get rid of the drug czar to preserve a proper balance of czardoms? [more ...]

The evidence against Joshua Kezer was weak. No physical evidence connected him to the murder of Angela Lawless.

Key prosecution evidence included the trial testimony of Mark Abbott, who claimed he saw Kezer near the Interstate 55 off-ramp where Lawless' body was found. However, in an interview with Scott City police 10 days after Lawless' death, Abbott had identified a different man as being near the crime scene.

Kezer's defense lawyer wasn't told about Abbott's change of story. The other witnesses against Kezer had everything to gain by implicating him.
Update: Be sure to read Jeralyn's comment. [more ...]