1.) Steele haters have yet to find their paladin — “For all the talk of replacing Michael Steele at the Republican National Committee,” reports The Daily Caller’s Jon Ward, “Republicans who want him out are having a difficult time figuring out who’s the man or woman to do it.” This is a problem! Some insiders say that Steele’s detractors must choose their knight now, while the two obvious choices–Michigan’s Saul Anuzis, who lost in 2009, and Katon Dawson, who also lost in 2009–said they are not ready to make any decisions about anything regarding Michael Steele. Says Dawson, “[RNC people who hate Michael Steele] are not going to coalesce behind one person because that one person has not shown up yet.” Keep the dial right here for news about one of the most increasingly inconsequential organizations in the GOP Universe!
2.) Darrell Issa to Geronimo Joe: Let’s dance — “Vice President Joe Biden is huddling with the Obama administration’s stimulus oversight czar and a key former Clinton administration scandal guru after postponing the Obama White House’s first face-off with top GOP oversight chairman-to-be Rep. Darrell Issa,” reports The Daily Caller’s Jonathan Strong. “A spokesman for Biden cited a ‘scheduling conflict’ in postponing the face-off, which is now expected to take place when Congress returns to Washington for its lame duck session.” Here is the conflict: Biden has a bad habit of bringing knives to gunfights. Issa created the Viper car alarm system and carries a Sten gun in a laundry basket with a wire-activated trigger. Biden’s been there; not going there again. Ergo, the big-toothed vice prez is meeting with Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s criminal division. Says Strong, “Breuer served as one of the most effective members of a scandal response team during the Clinton administration, which was then under siege from an onslaught of subpoenas and political attacks from the Newt Gingrich-led Republican Congress.” According to a DOJ spokeswoman, Breuer and Biden met to talk about…the stimulus.
3.) Obama sides with Tea Party on pork — “South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint on Monday was collecting signatures on a letter calling for a vote by his fellow Senate Republicans to ban earmarks, in which spending is channeled to projects favored by individual lawmakers, outside the competitive federal funding system,” reports the Wall Street Journal. Incidentally, while House Republicans believe that earmarking is not just wasteful, but damn wasteful, and are we not called to be stewards of the Earth?, Pres. Obama just wants to determine himself where all that money goes!
4.) Dems give up all hope of lame-ducking away more Americans’ freedoms — The Democrats’ laundry list of stupid crap they have to do before surrendering the House for doing stupid crap is shrinking. “Democratic insiders question if anything more than a stopgap spending measure and temporary extension of Bush-era tax cuts can pass,” reports The Hill. A nameless labor official who now apparently speaks for elected Democrats told The Hill, “I’m very pessimistic we’ll get much done,” which is both infuriating and reassuring at the same time.
5.) Did the Democrats lose the House because they are godless? — “Of the many reasons cited for the Election Day ‘shellacking’ administered by Republicans to President Obama and the Democrats, perhaps none is as puzzling to political analysts — or as maddening to religious progressives who put so much faith and work into Obama’s success — than the Democrats’ failure to mobilize the Religious Left and reach out to conservative believers,” writes Politics Daily’s David Gibson. According to Gibson, Democrats’ hit-it-and-quit-it-treatment of evangelicals led religious folks to abandon Democrats “at a higher rate than the rest of electorate.”
6.) The Governator OKs weed on his way out the door — “No one cares if you smoke a joint or not,” California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger told Jay Leno on Monday’s Tonight Show. Apparently, the California governor, while decriminalizing up to an ounce of fun, doesn’t read the newspapers in his home state, which have done a great job documenting the Federal Government’s acts of aggression toward California and its joint-smokers.