All in All, I figure the next Governor of Tennessee will be crucial in shaping our state for decades to come. Whoever it will be, they will need superior leadership capabilities. The list of possibles just dropped a big name off the list...Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell is leaving Tennessee.

Link...

Major legislation from Obama and John Kerry has closed loopholes that allowed Dick Cheney's company to avoid paying Social Security to employees in Iraq.

Link...

Congressman Zach Wamp: I have more money than the disclosure forms indicate...but not much.

Congressman Lincoln Davis: The forms are about right.

Senator Alexander: After a life of public service to the people of Tennessee...I'm loaded.

Senator Corker: I don't know. First I was really rich and then I was broke...I need more time to fill out the forms.

From the (thanks for the correction) Nashville City Paper:

...Meanwhile, Davis has gubernatorial ambitions for 2010, in which Tennessee political history strongly suggests the Democratic strongholds of Shelby and Davidson counties with their large groups of black voters are a must for his or any Democrat’s aspirations for statewide office.

Fred Hobbs, a state Democratic Party Executive Committee member representing part of Davis’ district, said he understands why Davis is not endorsing Obama and is “skeptical” of the Illinois senator himself.

“Maybe [it’s] the same reason I don’t want to — I don’t exactly approve of a lot of the things he stands for and I’m not sure we know enough about him,” Hobbs said when asked why he thought Davis wasn’t endorsing Obama. “He’s got some bad connections, and he may be terrorist connected for all I can tell. It sounds kind of like he may be.”

Link...

Update: Beecher Frasier stands firm that he was misquoted:

"No one in their right mind, including me, believes Senator Obama has ties to terrorism. It is truly ridiculous for anyone to try to make hay out of these comments."

So there's the fact that President Bush's first business partner was Osama bin Laden's big brother. Is that a terrorist connection?

Congressman Cohen has shown himself to be a very capable Representative who supports every goal of the EMILY's List folks except one. When the ultimate goal should be to elected the very best leaders regardless of race or gender, this action would seem to justify discrimination based on sex.

Very disapponting...And harmful to long term goals of nondiscrimination and fairness.

Link...

There's too much in here to boil it down so go read it and form your own opinion.

Another factoid I find interesting is that Hillary outraised McCain last reporting period, and Obama outraised Clinton by at least $9 Million, pickin up 200,000 new donors in the process. McCain raised just over half what Obama took in, which doesn't bode well for McCain in the General election.

Link...

What's up with this?

Freshman Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee watched his average net worth slide from $78.1 million to a negative $1.8 million.

There's this comment on that:

Bill Allison, the Sunlight Foundation senior fellow who led the research, noted that members of Congress who sink into debt are worth watching because they could be ``more open to temptation'' and ``more likely to deal with special interests.''

Members of Congress are due to file their 2007 financial statements this week.

I guess we'll see if Corker bounced back. If so, how did he do that? On the Speaking tour with Clinton?

Other things that were interesting:

Voters are more uncomfortable with an old person than they are with a Woman in the Presidency. (34% to 17%)

Voters are slightly more uncomfortable with a woman than they are with a black person in the Presidency. (17% - 16%)

Other projections show Tennessee going solidly for McCain, even in the best case scenario for the Democrats. We ARE the firewall state for the neo-cons.

Link...

That's Two dead women connected with this very Republican scandal, and Senator David Vitter is still in office.

Let the Conspiracy Games begin!

"Ignore the Corporate Media spin, McCain is a weak candidate," Frank Rich in the NY Times

When the primary juggernaut finally ends — following picturesque day trips to Puerto Rico and Guam — the superdelegates will likely succumb to the math of Mr. Obama’s virtually insurmountable pledged-delegate total.

There’s also a way that two super-superdelegates, the duo on the Democrats’ last winning ticket, could trigger a faster finale. Bill Clinton could do so by undermining his wife once more with another ill-timed, red-faced eruption. Al Gore could possibly do so with a well-timed endorsement before his party gets mired in yet another Florida recount.

There’s only one way this can end badly, no matter how long it lasts. That would be if the loser, whoever it is, turns sore and fails to rally his or her troops around the winner.

Link...

I'm a card carrying member of the ACLU...Have been for a long long time. Sometimes I am more proud of that fact than others. This is one of those times.

A new article in Time Magazine Online explores what a number of us math-physics geeks have been harping on from time to time: Existing biofuel technology is not an ideal solution to our energy dilemma. There are three primary obstacles and one stubborn but irreducible consequence of our pay for play political system.

TN-SEN

Apr 8 Rasmussen Alexander (R) 59%, Tuke (D) 30%

Apr 8 Rasmussen Alexander (R) 58%, Padgett (D) 31%

My insiders reported back from a sit down with Brian Schweitzer,Democratic Governor of Montana. He's a Super Delegate.

Governor Schweitzer announced to the small gathering that he was with a group of ten Super Delegates and he had gotten everyone to agree to vote with the majority of voters in Denver.

They will respect the will of the People and support their Majority pick for Democratic Nominee for President of the United States.

Schweitzer is wicked smart, a very successful Governor, and has a bottom line ethical baseline from which he makes his decisions. He's a future POTUS, if that's what he wants.

Update: Lincoln Davis is a SuperDelegate. Wonder if he will follow this lead?

This is an issue near and dear to me. I spend a good bit of my efforts on water issues and this one could affect us all. Outdated mining laws amount to a give away of public lands and resources belonging to the American people. They go to huge mining corporations with no conscience or care for what they leave behind or the damage that is done as they rape and pillage Natural America.

Watch this

WASHINGTON (CNN) – Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, a Republican who served under President Bush, said Friday he may not back the GOP presidential nominee in November, telling CNN that “I am keeping my options open at the moment.”

“I have voted for members of both parties in the course of my adult life,” Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “And as I said earlier, I will vote for the candidate I think can do the best job for America, whether that candidate is a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent.”

Well surprise, surprise:

We have now the Attorney General of the United States telling Congress that it's not against the law for the President to violate the law if his own Department of Justice says it's not.

Mukasey

It is as brazen a defense of the unitary executive as anything put forward by the Administration in the last seven years, and it comes from an attorney general who was supposed to be not just a more professional, but a more moderate, version of Alberto Gonzales (Thanks to Democrats like Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer for caving on the Mukasey nomination.).

John McCain has been using John Mellencamp songs "Our Country" and "Pink House" at his campaign rallies. Mellencamp wants McCain to stop.

I think they should let McCain keep using "Pink House":

...He says: lord, this must be my destination
cuz they told me, when I was younger
Boy, youre gonna be president
But just like everyting else, those old crazy dreams
Just kinda came and went

Yeah, back in the day, when Elizabeth Edwards was kicking her some Ann Colter adam's apple.

So which one of them is going to run against Liddy Dole? John...Or Elizabeth?

Link...

George W Bush's new Attorney General... the one who replaced the torture approving, stop investigating republicans, make stuff up about democratic officials and prosecute them, Alberto Gonzales...Robert Mukasey has a portrait of Eric Arthur Blair in his office.

We know Eric better by his pen name, George Orwell, author of Nineteen Eighty-Four

Oh that's just great...I feel much better now.

It's about time, actually.

If you claim to be a "Democratic" analyst, you shouldn't be, in fact, a "Clinton" analyst.

Now if CNN would only ban "Republican" analysts.

Or...Why the French take their politics much more seriously. (NSFW, I'm told)

Term for the day: "Conversational Viagra"

What is it with Democrats? They keep making these silly demands on their candidates that really make it hard to campaign for President.

I'm talking about "Honesty", and you know...Republicans don't think honesty is a particularly worthwhile trait in a candidate. It's a real handicap.

For instance

That's got to hurt.

...John Edwards calling for support of Chris Dodd's filibuster on retroactive immunity for telephone companies who spied on you. it was against the law, against the Constitution, and against the American people.

Hillary? Obama?

Will this election be about who will most fight for the American People, or about who will support Corporations breaking the law?

Bill: "I Kind of Like to See Barack and Hillary Fight"

John Edwards, good at arithmetic:

"I think this is a long haul. I mean, I think that there are three of us, it’s very hard for anybody to get to 50% when there are three of us taking a sizable chunk of the votes. I think it’s going to last a while."

Can you say, "Brokered Convention" Boys and Girls?

For years President Bush said terrorists hate America because of our freedom and prosperity, and today they have to think of a new reason to hate us.

- Argus Hamilton

So we're in a nasty recession and the President's plan to fix things centers on the Conservative answer for everything: Tax Cuts for the Rich.

America faces an economic disaster funded by those very tax cuts for the Rich that Bush says have done such a great job for America's economy that they need to be made permanent.

A certain Clemson junior whom I keep close tabs on...OK, "Pay" the tabs on, called in a report from a Preacher Huckabee rally in South Carolina today.

I was a bit shocked that he went to a Huckabee rally, since he was President of the Young Democrats Club in high school, but he said, "Dad! Chuck Norris was there."