by TChris

TalkLeft's look at new House Majority Leader John Boehner, which started here and here, continues with this AP story highlighting the similarities between Boehner and Tom DeLay. This is the guy House Republicans are counting on to repair their corrupt image?

Boehner has built a political empire with similarities to the fundraising machine of the man he's replacing, Rep. Tom DeLay. ... But like DeLay and [Roy] Blunt, Boehner has connections to indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. ...

[B]illing records from the Northern Mariana Islands, a former Abramoff client, show at least 17 contacts between members of Abramoff's Marianas lobbying team and Boehner's office - one with Boehner himself.

Atrios has this link to Rep. Boehner's voting record on religious issues. It's scary.

That prompted me to do a little research. Here's his abysmal record on abortion. Not surprisingly, he's terrible on criminal justice issues. Check these out:

by TChris

The new boss:

U.S. Rep. John Boehner of Ohio upset a former deputy to indicted Texan Tom DeLay on Thursday to become majority leader of the scandal-rocked U.S. House of Representatives. ... Republicans effectively gave a vote of no-confidence to Blunt, the acting majority leader and a close ally of DeLay.

Same as the old boss? In most respects, probably yes (they share "lifetime ratings of 94 from the American Conservative Union"), but this article highlights one difference: Boehner is less willing to take harsh steps to curb undocumented workers if those steps would actually punish businesses for hiring them.

Update: More on Boehner:

I'm at a Judges/Journalist conference in Reno. During a break, one of the judges asked me why no one is writing about President Bush's mention of the line item veto in his speech last night. It's another unbridled attempt by him to grab power from the legislative branch.

I was struck by his comment on the equality of the two branches of government, the executive and the legislative. Was his omission of the judicial branch intentional? The three branches are co-equal. So many things Bush has done has been in an effort to reduce the oversight power of the judiciary.

What were the biggest lies? The low points? How did Tim Kaine do? Any predictions as to whether there will be a bounce for Bush tomorrow?

Arianna will be on Anderson Cooper 360 discussing the speech right afterwards. Are any liberals live-blogging? Let us know in the comments.

[Graphic created exclusively for TalkLeft by CL.)

President Bush will give his State of the Union Address tonight. His approval rating hovers at 39%, no change from last month, according to the latest WSJ-NBC poll. The two most important issues to voters are health care and getting out of Iraq.

If you're not by a tv, the State Department will have live audio feeds of the State of the Union address on its Web site in English, Arabic, Farsi, Bahasa Indonesian, Spanish, French and Russian.

That won't help me since I'll be on an airplane, but I'm sure I'll catch the re-run.

[Graphic created exclusively for TalkLeft by CL.]

by TChris

Senator Frist wants to be President Frist. Not long ago, Frist believed he could secure his party's nomination by pandering to religious extremists. To that end, Dr. Frist thought it appropriate to question the conclusion drawn by Terry Schiavo's physicians that Schiavo was in a persistent vegetative state. Frist was wrong (basing a diagnosis on a videotape rather than an in-person examination turns out not to be a prudent way to practice medicine), but being wrong on the facts has never deterred the religious right from pressing forward. Why, then, has Frist again backed away from an extreme position of importance to the religious right?

While Republicans would have you believe the majority of Americans trust Bush to make appropriate decisions on his own to eavesdrop on our fellow citizens, the latest Zogby poll disagrees.

a poll released last week by Zogby International showed 52 percent of American adults thought Congress should consider impeaching Bush if he wiretapped U.S. citizens without court approval, including 59 percent of independents and 23 percent of Republicans. (The survey had a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.)

Given those numbers, impeachment could become an issue in this fall's congressional elections, and dramatically raise the stakes. If Democrats win control of the House of Representatives, a leading proponent of starting an official impeachment inquiry, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., would become chairman of the House committee that could pursue it.

Arianna skewers Scotty and his brother pretty good.

First, Mark, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, rolled out the president's Medicare prescription drug program -- which, right out of the gate, is being regarded as one of this administration's biggest debacles (and that's saying something!).

And while Mark was busy fending off angry senior citizens who want their drugs, brother Scottie has had his hands full fending off angry reporters who want to learn how well the president knew Abramoff.

Keep reading. It's an "ouch" type post.

[graphic created exclusively for TalkLeft by CL.]

David Corn wrote this post yesterday about Bush's proclamation (as if we didnt' know it) that he is not a lawyer. Bush said:

I'm not a lawyer, but I can tell you what it means. It means Congress gave me the authority to use necessary force to protect the American people, but it didn't prescribe the tactics. It's an--you've got the power to protect us, but we're not going to tell you how. And one of the ways to protect the American people is to understand the intentions of the enemy. I told you it's a different kind of war with a different kind of enemy. If they're making phone calls into the United States, we need to know why -- to protect you.

There's an excellent op-ed in today's Washington Post by Washington lawyer Robert Litt, who was the principal associate deputy attorney general in the late 90's, on the fake Cisneros scandal. He knows, because he was there. I urge you all to read his article for insights into the independent counsel's collossal waste of $22 million dollars over six years. Litt begins:

An independent counsel has issued a report claiming that officials of the Clinton administration blocked his investigation into allegations of tax violations by former housing secretary Henry Cisneros. Although these sensational charges have been trumpeted by partisans as evidence of Democratic corruption, they are completely false.

After debunking Independent Counsel Robert Barrett's claims, Litt concludes:

The Democrats have asked Virginia Governor Tim Kaine to reply to the State of the Union Address.

Arianna is seriously miffed.

....the Dems decide that the charge against Bush shouldn't be led by someone who can forcefully articulate why the GOP is not the party that can best keep us safe, but by someone whose only claim to fame is that he carried a red state.