Updates

Sorry for the long delay in blogging. I'll be putting up some more things over the weekend and we're soon going to move this blog to our own website, so stay tuned!

But in the meantime, I just wanted to let you all know the following.

The awful detainee bill has passed the Senate and the House; while the majority of Democrats voted against it and while several made excellent speeches, including Sen. Clinton, Sen. Feingold, Sen. Kerry, Sen. Obama, Rep. Skelton of Missouri and others, the bill unfortunately passed both Houses. Unfortunately, 12 Senate Democrats and 34 House Democrats voted for the bill, including some shocking ones like Rep. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. Brown, who is running for the Ohio Senate seat and is winning right now, has one of the most liberal records in the House. On this he's wrong, and so are the other Democrats who voted for the bill. The one consolation is that the majority of the Senate and House Democrats ARE against this bill and there's a very good chance that the Supreme Court will rule this unconstitutional.

Really, if you want to be enlightened on the detainee bill, I can urge nothing else but to watch this brilliant clip by Stephen Colbert, who explains it probably better than anybody else.

Elsewhere, I'll turn to some happier news. Democratic prospects in Congress are looking up! (That's the happy part.) Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.) resigned suddenly today following the release yesterday of emails and instant message communications (some sexually explicit) he had sent to a 16-year old boy.

Foley's resignation instantly and unexpectedly practically gives the Democrats another pickup; Foley's name will remain on the ballot and the Democrat, who was a no-hoper yesterday morning, is now the likely winner.

This means that we will need to pick up only 12 seats in the House to take control!

In the Senate, our prospects are going in two directions. We are still in a dead-heat here in Missouri, but we're entering a dead-heat in Tennessee and Virginia looks set to be a dead-heat as well, following a host of allegations of racism against Sen. George Allen (R). On the other hand, New Jersey Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez is running behind and is coming under fire for ethical concerns, which may mean a loss of one seat.