It took a surprisingly long time for the call to come in, presumably because precincts were slow reporting results, but the call is now in, and the result is what we've all been expecting: Republican Bob McDonnell will be the next governor of Virginia, having defeated Democrat Creigh Deeds.
The only question remaining -- indeed, the only question that remained regarding this race as we went into Election Day -- is how big McDonnell's margin of victory will be. Polls have been indicating for some time that it could be quite large, more than double digits.
Radio host Rush Limbaugh was rushed to a Hawaii hospital Wednesday afternoon after suffering from chest pains, KITV, a local television station, reports.
Paramedics reportedly responded to a call from the hotel where Limbaugh is staying, and transported him by ambulance to the hospital. He's said to be in serious condition.
During the race for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, a previously-unknown group was suddenly all anyone in politics could talk about. The superdelegates -- a group of elected Democrats and Democratic National Committee officials -- held the votes that would decide the party's nominee. Though practically no one even knew they existed before the race began, by the end, the undeclared superdelegates' every cough was carefully studied.
Next time around, though, things are likely to be different. The Democratic Change Commission, a group created by the DNC to study the primary process, said Wednesday that it was recommending what amounts to the elimination of superdelegates.
If the commission's recommendation is approved by the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee, superdelegates would still have a vote; they just wouldn't have a choice about whom it went to. They'd be bound to go along with the state they represent.
Something like this has been coming for a while -- really, since around the time that Barack Obama officially became his party's nominee. Just before the Democratic convention, the campaign announced that it would ask the DNC to form the commission, and a reduction in the number of superdelegates was to be its primary focus. As is traditional, now that he's president, Obama and his people control the DNC, so it's no surprise the outcome of the commission's study would be something like this.
That said, though, it's unlikely that this change will have any impact for Obama himself. It's very rare for a sitting president to face real opposition in a party primary. But 2016 is going to be a whole different ballgame.
Even by his standards, former Vice President Cheney was particularly harsh on Wednesday in his criticism of President Obama and his administration's handling of terrorism and the attempted bombing of Northwest Flight 253. Now, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer has responded in kind.
"I think we all agree that there should be honest debate about these issues, but it is telling that Vice President Cheney and others seem to be more focused on criticizing the Administration than condemning the attackers. Unfortunately too many are engaged in the typical Washington game of pointing fingers and making political hay, instead of working together to find solutions to make our country safer," Pfeiffer wrote in a post on the White House blog.
"To put it simply: this President is not interested in bellicose rhetoric, he is focused on action. Seven years of bellicose rhetoric failed to reduce the threat from al Qaeda and succeeded in dividing this country. And it seems strangely off-key now, at a time when our country is under attack, for the architect of those policies to be attacking the President."
Pfeiffer also specifically addressed Cheney's claim that Obama has been pretending we aren't at war, and won't admit that we are.
"The difference is this: President Obama doesn’t need to beat his chest to prove it, and – unlike the last Administration – we are not at war with a tactic (“terrorism”), we at war with something that is tangible: al Qaeda and its violent extremist allies. And we will prosecute that war as long as the American people are endangered," he said.
Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., is apparently in more than a little hot water over his reluctant support of Democrats' healthcare reform legislation. A recent Rasmussen poll showed him trailing one potential challenger by almost 30 percentage points.
Fortunately for him, Nelson's not up for reelection until 2012. But he seems fairly nervous anyway, enough so that he's bought airtime during the Nebraska-Arizona bowl game Wednesday night for an ad in which he explains his position. According to the Associated Press, the spot will be airing statewide for a few days to come, as well.
Sometimes, while reading through the blogosphere, I find things written by intelligent people that are so at odds with that intelligence that, dumbfounded, I can only think of that famous quote from "Shawshank Redemption," "How can you be so obtuse? ... Is it deliberate?"
Today, an example of that was provided on the Corner, one of the National Review's blogs. The guilty party was one Victor Davis Hanson. Hanson — who is, swear to God, a former professor — wrote, in a post titled "Adverbs Can Tell Us a Lot":
When we do know for a fact that Mutallab tried to blow up a plane, we get a presidential "allegedly" ("a passenger allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body, setting off a fire"), and yet when we don't know all the facts, as in the Professor Gates mess, we get instantaneous certainty ("the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.")
I won't get into the Gates saga, except to say that by the time Obama spoke it was well-known that Gates had shown his identification to the police. so the "already" Hanson emphasizes was simply a statement of fact.
Besides, it's the "allegedly" part that left me slack-jawed.
I had thought that most people, especially ones smart enough to have won the National Humanities Medal, as Hanson has, knew that in the American system of justice, even terrorists are considered innocent until proven guilty. ("Fox and Friends" hosts are obviously excluded from "most people" here.) Indeed, unless someone changed this without telling me, the Supreme Court has said the presumption of innocence "is the undoubted law, axiomatic and elementary, and its enforcement lies at the foundation of the administration of our criminal law."
So why does Obama use the word "allegedly," especially in a case where so many witnesses saw Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt to set off a bomb? Well, hopefully it's at least in part because it's nice for the president to show that someone still believes in the principles outlined in the Constitution. But it's also because the word "allegedly" is standard language for prosecutors and for people like the president; Obama's pronouncement of guilt could, in some instances, lead to legal hassles for the prosecution over the question of whether he'd tainted the jury pool.
Following on the news that the man who attempted to bomb Northwest Flight 253 came by way of Yemen, and that an al-Qaida group based there has claimed responsibility, three senators had a request for President Obama. Sens. Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman and John McCain wrote to the president to express their concerns about the impending transfer of six Yemeni detainees from Guantánamo Bay.
"Given the security situation in Yemen and the failure of the Yemeni government to secure high-value prisoners in the past, we believe that any such transfers would be highly unwise and ill-considered. Recent events underscore why this is so," the three wrote.
"[W]e request an immediate halt to the transfer of all detainees to Yemen until the American people and the Congress can be assured of the security situation in that country. We must do everything in our power to ensure that these detainees do not pose a future threat to the United States. Until we are certain that released detainees will not return to the battlefield, all detainee transfers to Yemen should cease."
Now, I'll leave it to the reader to determine whether this is a good point on the part of Graham, Lieberman and McCain or whether it's a politically motivated call to close the barn door after the horses are miles away.
There is one piece of information that seems relevant to that determination, though: Turns out that the six detainees were actually repatriated about 10 days before the senators sent their letter to Obama. Apparently, no one on their staffs bothered to check on these sorts of details, much less talk to anyone in the administration, before trying to get some press for the request.
War Room is written and edited by Alex Koppelman, with contributions from Salon reporters around the country.
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