LEAVWORLD: GRAFFITI POLITTI

The appointment of Judge Sonia Sotomayor is being hailed as a "political masterstroke" by many pundits, but the fact is that the Senate Republicans couldn't block her (technically, they could, today, but the vote is not today), if they wanted to. So what was considered so politically terrific about it? Her "compelling" life story is the conventional narrative. However, that doesn't quite wash, because many Republican Supreme Court appointees have had compelling life stories, but it didn't stop the media and Democrats from critcizing them. White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs gave us an idea of what the real political masterstroke was, when he said this: "I think it is probably important for anybody involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they've decided to describe different aspects of this impending confirmation." ( link ) That's when the latent political strategy behind this appointment became visible. By...

I'm sorry to say it, but there seems to be a problem with the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Speaker Pelosi has a serious credibility problem, which has been exposed by the recent "torture briefing" scandal. Her public appearances have had a bizarre quality to them, as if she were on a bad SNL skit. I'm no psychiatrist, but if she's not conciously lying, she's mentally "detached" from reality. By this, I mean she didn't hear what she didn't want to hear. Lots of people do this, or just "misremember" things. Perhaps it could be dismissed so easily, if she had not accused the intelligence community briefers of "misleading" her. Now, that will have to be investigated, because lying to Congress is a criminal offense. Her comparison of it to the intelligence on Iraq doesn't hold up, either: a briefing about our actions on captives is much different than one about a potential foe's strength and strategy. She...

Democrats in Congress refused to fund the President's proposed shutdown of the Guantanamo Bay prison. There is good reason for this: it's a bad idea, with no plan for where to relocate the detainees. Now that the Dems are on track to have a 60-vote majority in the Senate, look for more opposition to other promises that Obama made during the campaign. I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but politically, it's realistic. Democrats are responsible for the direction our country goes, and will be held accountable, just as the GOP was over six of the last eight years. What Congressman wants to be blamed for bringing terrorists into our country, possibly to be set free on our streets? Other Obama initiatives are likely to face a similar fate. "Cap and trade" is almost certainly doomed to failure in the Congress, and his health care initiative also faces an uphill battle. These political battles will be waged on the Democrat side of the Congress, with Republicans united ...