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1.) Meet future Congressman Awesome — Tom Cotton is running for — and most likely will win — the Fourth Congressional District in Arkansas. Once he sets foot in Congress, he will immediately be a congressman to watch. TheDC’s Jamie Weinstein (ME!) reports:
“Cotton, 35, is running for Congress in Arkansas’s Fourth Congressional District. He was in his third year in law school at Harvard, where he also earned his undergraduate degree, when America was struck 11 years ago. Though he didn’t join the military immediately — he said he “had some student loans” to pay off — he ultimately enlisted as an Army Ranger, serving in both Iraq and Afghanistan on the front lines. A 2011 profile of Cotton in the Weekly Standard said that when Cotton went to the recruiting station, he was immediately tagged as a perfect candidate for the Judge Advocate General Corps. ‘Cotton politely interrupted,’ said the profile. ‘I don’t think you understand. I’m here to volunteer for the infantry.’”
Start following him now. He’s going places. Fast.
2.) Jerusalem, where art thou?— The fallout from the Jerusalem debacle at the Democrats’ convention is still being felt — and may continue to be felt all the way until Election Day. TheDC’s Jeff Poor:
“Washington Post columnist George Will on Sunday excoriated Democrats for initially failing to acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in their official party platform, only to reverse course and amend the platform at last week’s national convention despite a chorus of booing from delegates … ‘[Taking] God out may have been an act of omission,’ Will said. ‘God will take care of [himself]. But removing the capital of Israel was an act of commission. You go out on the street of any American city — you go out in Newark, stop someone and say, ‘What is the capital of Delaware, Vermont and Israel?’ Some people are going to know, Dover. Some people are going to know Montpelier. Everyone except the American State Department knows that the capital of Israel is Jerusalem.'”
Newark Mayor Cory Booker, another panelist on ABC’s “This Week”, repeated the Democratic line that the president personally intervened to change the platform because he so strongly believes Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Glad to hear it, but as Will hinted at, it would be nice if Obama would tell his own State Department. They have assiduously avoided declaring that, despite being asked the question repeatedly by journalists.
3.) Academically questionable — In the early 1990s, Democratic Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren’s academic work was slammed by a fellow law professor. Charles C. Johnson reports for TheDC:
“In 1991, Rutgers Professor Phillip Schuchman reviewed Warren’s co-authored 1989 book ‘As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America‘ in the pages of the Rutgers Law Review, a publication Warren once edited. Schuchman found ‘serious errors’ which result in ‘grossly mistaken functions and comparisons.’ Warren and her co-authors had drawn improper conclusions from ‘even their flawed findings,’ and ‘made their raw data unavailable’ to check, he wrote. ‘In my opinion, the authors have engaged in repeated instances of scientific misconduct.’ The work ‘contains so much exaggeration, so many questionable ploys, and so many incorrect statements that it would be well to check the accuracy of their raw data, as old as it is,’ Schuchman added.”
One year later she was hired by Harvard Law, so either Schuchman was a crank or Harvard didn’t care about Warren’s sloppiness for some reason.
4.) Fight back! — Wall Street Journal reporter Kimberly Strassel said on Fox News Sunday that Mitt Romney ought to fight back against Team Obama’s charges that George W. Bush’s tax policy got us into the economic mess we are currently in. TheDC’s Jeff Poor reports:
“‘I don’t think they want to re-litigate the Bush years, but they want to hear an economic argument about — that makes the case that this was not Bush tax policy that got us to where we are, which is one of the sort of bizarre arguments that you get from Democrats these days, but that free market policies are actually the way to revive the economy,’ she said. ‘And he’s got to go out there more forcefully, defend them and promote them. This, by the way, is where I think his money is going to help. I don’t think the Romney campaign is going to be sending most of it attacking the president. They are going to be out there trying to make the positive case, which is something they were not able to do.'”
5.) Poll of the Day: Close in New Mexico — President Obama 45%, Mitt Romney 40%, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party candidate) 7%.
6.) Tweet of Yesterday — Andy Levy: Dumbest poll q ever? MT @ppppolls: Who is more responsible 4 killing of bin Laden? 38% of Ohio Republicans say Obama, 15% Romney, 47% unsure
VIDEO: Romney downplays Mormonism with “so many challenges ahead”