Arizona is stealing money from innocent people, then challenging them to prove their entitlement to its return. And this, the state's Attorney General says, is a "model of due process." It's more a model of thievery.

Arizona has been seizing wire transfers into the state, as well as some wire transfers into Mexico. So far, the state has taken about $17 million. It claims to grab only cash transfers that it deems "suspicious" -- those it believes facilitate the smuggling of immigrants into the country -- but it seems to regard any large transfer from or to someone with an Hispanic name as evidence of illegality. If your money is taken and you want it back, you have to satisfy the state that you acquired it legitimately. So much for the presumption of innocence.

Bush and Lieberman, h/t Stoller:

You know, the Democrat Party made a clear statement about the nature of their party when it came to how they dealt with Senator Joe Lieberman. He's a three-term Democrat from Connecticut who supports completing the mission in Iraq. He took a strong, principled stand, and he was purged from the Democrat Party.

. . . There's only one position in the Democratic Party that everybody seems to agree on. If you want to be a Democrat these days, you can be for almost anything, but victory in Iraq is not an option.

President George Joe McCarthy Bush and Senator Joe McCarthy Lieberman:

If we just pick up as Ned Lamont wants us to do and get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England and it will strengthen them and they will strike us again."

And don't forget Dick "Iraq is going remarkably well" Cheney:

[W]hen [the terrorists] see the Democratic Party reject one of its own . . . it would seem to say a lot about the state the party is in today."

You see Bush, Cheney and Lieberman have a plan:

Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do.

Why did GOP candidate Tan Nguyen, running for Congress in Orange County, California against Rep. Loretta Sanchez, pony up money for a list of Democratic voters? One possibility: to discourage foreign-born Democrats from voting by advising them in a letter that it's illegal for immigrants to vote. That bit of advice is a lie, of course -- immigrants who are citizens have the same voting rights as Americans who are citizens by birth -- but Nguyen refuses to take responsibility for the letter. He blames his office manager while disavowing any knowledge of the use to which the mailing list was put.

Finger pointing and playing the blame game is a Republican way of life, but in this instance, not a very effective one.

In an interview today, Orange County GOP Chairman Scott Baugh said representatives of the Huntington Beach mail house that produced the letter told him that Nguyen was directly involved with the letter, calling and asking that it be sent out as soon as possible.

Minnesota state senator Paul Koering asks a salient question: "How can you be gay and be in the Republican Party?" The answer: you can't -- at least not if you're openly gay and want to hold a public office.

Never more than a tiny fraction of GOP politicians, openly gay Republicans are about to disappear from Congress with the retirement of Rep. Jim Kolbe of Arizona, and Koering is the lone openly gay GOP state legislator -- out of 7,382 seats nationwide.

There's no room for tolerance in the GOP.

Instead of an all-welcoming "big tent," the GOP "is more of a revival tent," [Chuck] Wolfe said. "It has chased out more and more gay Republicans."

Kevin Drum is, as he generally is, sharp and to the point today, cutting through Jonah Goldberg's platitudes to get to the essential question:

But Jonah says that even though it was mistake to go in, we still need to see it through.

. . . The conventional script requires that those who think we should stay need to suggest a way in which we can win.

. . . So what's the plan? It may be true that "if we can finish the job, the war won't be remembered as a mistake," but even if the Iraqis vote to keep us around, how do we finish the job?

Would that even one sentient being in the Media could even think to ask this obvious and essential question.

I'll be in court and with clients most of the day. Let's try another open thread, now that so many of you are registered and have mastered the comment area of the new site.

Feel free to let me know what you think of the change, whether you are getting accustomed to it, and whether you have found it speedier to load and to comment.

You can also weigh in on other subjects. Just remember, no profanity here. I can't edit your comments, so those with profanity or blazing attacks on other posters will just be deleted. I still intend to keep the site civil.

Colorado Congressman Bob Beauprez is in a heated battle with former Denver District Attorney Bill Ritter in the Colorado Governor's race. As I have been writing over at 5280.com, the campaign of Republican Congressman Bob Beauprez is in trouble now that the FBI agreed to join the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in investigating how the Beauprez campaign got confidential criminal records regarding a defendant prosecuted during Ritter’s tenure as District Attorney that were later used in an ad attacking Ritter.

Beauprez continued to refuse to disclose how he got the information. He referred to his source as an “informant” and tried to hide behind a kind of journalist’s privilege, which of course, is ridiculous.

Yesterday I wondered "which law enforcement officer or state or federal employee is going to be out of a job. The possibilities are numerous."

Not any more. the CBI said today they got their culprit and it was someone in federal law enforcement.

Let the sparks fly. Beauprez' tag line has been "I'm Accountable." I hope Colorado voters take him at his word. His tv ads attacks on Ritter have been straight out of the Willie Horton mold. It's time to pay the piper.

Writing about today's Connecticut Senate debate, Matt Stoller, in his fantastic piece writes:

After the debate, both Schlesinger and Lamont were mobbed by reporters and supporters outside, but Joe was nowhere to be found. Some friends here think that Joe is scared to face reporters, but I don't think that's what's going on. I think Joe actually and honestly doesn't like people and doesn't want to deal with them if he doesn't have to. That's why he doesn't like or care about doing good visibility events - his ego isn't fed by large crowds since he doesn't think much of people he doesn't know.

And Joe doesn't know the people of Connecticut. The central reality of the political creature that is Joe Lieberman is that he is of the Washington DC Establishment and of Washington, DC. Connecticut is not where Joe Lieberman's from at all anymore. This reality explains everything he does, says and yearns for.

Sally Quinn inadvertently performs a great public service by demonstrating, in no uncertain terms, how clueless the Beltway Media is:

Don Rumsfeld is the shrewdest person in Washington.

Oh there's more of course but let's consider that one line and think about how clueless and out of touch one would have to be to write that. I would say it gets better but of course, after that start, that is impossible, but this is almost its equal:

It is hard for the American people to turn completely against the president. It seems tantamount to patricide. We're much more comfortable being able to blame someone else for the president's mistakes. Laura Bush will never be the scapegoat. For now, it's [Snowball] Rumsfeld.

Lakoff vindicated one might say - strict father and all that. Except for the fact that the President's rating are in the 30s. Oh and the only for GOP Presidents Sally Quinn rule. See, she led the charge against Clinton trashing "her town."

The state of Florda executed Arthur Rutherford today. It was the 19th execution performed while Jeb Bush has been Governor. Florida has executed 62 people since the death penalty was restored in 1976.

Rutherford was on the gurney in January when he got a last minute stay from the Supreme Court. For his last meal,

He requested the same meal he had in January: Fried green tomatoes, catfish, fresh water, fried eggplant, sweet tea, and hush puppies (deep-fried cornbread).

He was surrounded by 20 members of his immediate family this morning. He was a handyman and a Vietnam Veteran.

More about his case is here.

A new Wall St. Journal/ NBC Poll finds support for Republicans in Congress has dropped to 16%, its lowest level in the 12 years they've been in power.

Public support for Republicans' control of the U.S. Congress has eroded to its lowest point since the party took over 12 years ago. And with just 19 days until the midterm elections, both President George W. Bush and his party are in worse shape with voters than Democrats were in the October before they lost their House and Senate majorities in 1994.

A big factor is scandals, both corruption and sex.

By 52% to 37%, voters say they want Democrats rather than Republicans to control Congress after the Nov. 7 election. That wide 15-point Democratic advantage is another record in the history of the Journal/NBC poll.

What does it mean? I'd say watch for Republicans to pull all the dirty tricks they can in the next two weeks.

Professor Cass Sunstein tries to forward this Obama bipartisan silliness, and rewrites history in the process. He now pretends that FDR and Abraham Lincoln were NOT politicians. Just silly:

At crucial moments, [FDR] offered large and contentious claims, attacking the beliefs of (for example) those who were committed to laissez-faire and to isolationism. On the other hand, FDR was also committed to a principle of mutual respect. And consider these words from Lincoln's Second Inaugural: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right...."

This is so ahistorical as to be incredible that a brilliant man like Sunstein could have even written those words. FDR was always at loggerheads with the Republicans, demonizing and being demonized. As for Lincoln, sure in 1865 after having won the election and the Civil War (or shortly to), he was all magnaminity. During the election? And of course, his Cooper Union address, which I have written about at length, is the very epitome of negative branding. Sunstein simply is writing nonsense.