Daily Kos

Anonymous Republican sources tell the National Review that polling in on the April 5th Wisconsin Supreme Court election between JoAnne Kloppenburg and incumbent David Prosser is "near even."

Two sources with knowledge of internal GOP polling tell us that Prosser and Kloppenburg are near even, a bad sign for the incumbent. “She has driven his negatives up,” one source says.

The sources are anonymous, the specific numbers are not released, and the author clearly has an agenda, so take this with a big helping of salt. Even so, it's a decent indication that the Wisconsin Supreme Court campaign will not be a cakewalk for former Republican state Assembly Leader David Prosser. That's pretty surprising, since Republicans swept the state just four month ago and since this is likely to be a very low turnout election.

The newfound energy in Wisconsin has made Prosser vulnerable. A group called The Greater Wisconsin Committee is hurting Prosser's chances, too. From the same National Review article:

The Greater Wisconsin Committee, a leftist organizing group with deep union ties, has funneled $3 million into anti-Prosser advertising, taking relentlessly to the airwaves. “They are the Left’s biggest political player in the state,” says Brett Healy, the president of the MacIver Institute, a Wisconsin-based think tank. “They run the ads that no one else wants to run.

Indeed. The GWC is airing ads that tie Prosser to the budget bill. “Prosser equals Walker” is the usual theme.

As Prosser himself has said, there's a about a 100% chance that the budget repair bill will end up before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. With conservatives currently holding a 4-3 advantage on the court, the outcome on April 5th may well determine the fate of the budget repair bill, at least in the short-term.

The Republicans' scorched earth Affordable Care Act repeal obsession has veered into the truly stupid. In their zeal to paint the law as the result of nefarious deals struck by various organizations in the law's development, they've decided to attack the AARP, according to The Hill.

The Ways and Means health and oversight subcommittees are hauling in the seniors lobby's executives before the panel for an April 1 hearing on how the group stands to benefit from the law, among other topics. Republicans say AARP supported the law's $200 billion in cuts to the Medicare Advantage program because it stands to gain financially as seniors replace their MA plans with Medicare supplemental insurance — or Medigap — policies endorsed by the association.

The hearing will cover not only Medigap but "AARP’s organizational structure, management, and financial growth over the last decade."

The charge against AARP is being led by Reps. Wally Herger (CA) panel, and Dave Reichert (WA), who accuse the organization of being "a mouthpiece for this president at the expense of what is best for America's seniors," profiting from reform. According to Reichert, "AARP's support for healthcare reform 'just doesn't make sense' until 'you dig a little deeper and see that [a lot] of their revenues come from these royalties.'" Because there is no motivation other than the profit motive if you're a Republican. Maybe it honestly doesn't occur to them that the extension of health insurance to tens of millions of previously uncovered Americans is just something individuals and organizations could support because it's the right thing to do.

At any rate, go for it Republicans. Between this and the all-out assault on Social Security and Medicare, you're doing a bang-up job winning the hearts and minds of the most committed voting bloc in the country.

Yesterday, Newt Gingrich denied that it hypocritical for him to have led the impeachment of Bill Clinton while simultaneously having an extramarital affair with a political staffer because the impeachment had nothing to do with personal behavior:

The question I raise was very simple: should a president of the United States be above the law? I don’t think the president of the United States can be above the law. And it’s not about personal behavior...it’s not about what he did in the Oval Office.

But as Greg Sargent reminds us, that's not what Newt Gingrich was saying back then:

Around the world today, the institution of the presidency has been degraded to the point that it is viewed as the rough equivalent of the Jerry Springer show -- a level of disrespect and decadence that should appall every American.

As Stephen Colbert said, Gingrich really needs to come up with a better explanation for why his position on women was so often on top of ones that weren't his wife. But on the bright side, at least his answer might be getting better; at least he's not saying he had the affair thanks to his overwhelming sense of patriotism.

• This is funny given that there's about a dozen potential GOP presidential candidates for 2012:

  Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said that the current GOP presidential field "might not be sufficient to inspire voters and he would welcome a last-minute entry by another candidate," the New York Times reports.

  Said DeMint: "If no one is an immediate front-runner, I think you might see a whole new cast of Republican candidates out within the next couple of months."

  Translation? Even DeMint realizes what a pack of losers there are vying for the nomination.
• And one of those hopefuls, Herman Cain, supports an incredibly unconstitutional position on religious tests:

  KEYES: You came under a bit of controversy this week for some of the comments made about Muslims in general. Would you be comfortable appointing a Muslim, either in your cabinet or as a federal judge?

  CAIN: No, I would not.

• Infidelity not only made Newt Gingrich feel patriotic, it also helped him realize that he had to impeach Bill Clinton. Either that or he's trying to explain away his multiple affairs.
• Added to the list of words I never thought I'd read:

  Joe Biden's spokeswoman sent an apology note to Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers for using a storage closet as a holding area at a recent event in Florida.

  The "victim" offers his take on the ordeal.
• John McCain will skip the movie "Game Change."

  In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, John McCain offered his first public comments about the upcoming film, based, in part, on his tumultuous 2008 presidential bid.

  Last week, HBO tapped Academy Award nominee Ed Harris to play the Arizona senator—but that's apparently not enough to get McCain to watch.

  "I think he's a very fine actor and a great actor," McCain said of the casting. "I obviously haven't read the book, so I don't think I'll be watching the film."
  

• Maine Gov. Paul LaPage has had the mural depicting labor history at the Labor Department taken down. Apparently it was too much labor for a Republican to take.
• Uh oh:

  Visitors to the Bronx Zoo were greeted with locked doors when they tried to enter the reptile exhibit this past weekend, and with good reason: a venomous snake was on the loose.  

  “The World of Reptiles is closed today,” a sign explaining the closing said. “Staff observed an adolescent Egyptian cobra missing from an off-exhibit enclosure on Friday.”

  A zoo spokesman held an very interesting press conference about the missing viper.

• But I'll bet they vote for cutting government spending on education:

  Evangelical college Liberty University is the largest recipient of federal aid to a student body in Virginia and the eighth largest recipient in the country overall, reports Lynchburg’s News and Advance.

  Eighty-eight percent of the $445 million in federal aid that Liberty, of Lynchburg, Va., received in the 2009-2010 school year was comprised of student loans; the remaining 12 percent came in the form of Pell grants and other federal education subsidies.
  

• From the face of the White House to the friendliest friend?

  Facebook is in talks to hire Robert Gibbs, President Obama’s former White House press secretary, for a senior role in helping to manage the company’s communications, people briefed on the negotiations said.
  

• They're going to have a lot of reviewing to do:

  Japan's nuclear power plant crisis is no laughing matter in Springfield: Networks in several European countries are reportedly reviewing episodes of "The Simpsons" for any "unsuitable" references to nuclear disaster.

Excluding the biased and inaccurate Rasmussen polls, President Obama still enjoys a net positive approval rating, but as everybody knows, his numbers have come down to earth since the spring of 2009.

What is less well-known is that over that same time period, his top Republican rivals have experienced a similar slide in their ratings. A new Public Policy Polling survey shows that since April, 2009, the GOP's Fab Four—Mike Huckabee (-15), Mitt Romney (-17), Sarah Palin (-15), and Newt Gingrich (-23)—have averaged an 18 point drop in net favorable ratings. Moreover, each of them has a net negative favorable rating, unlike President Obama who has a net positive favorable rating.

It's easy to see why Newt Gingrich had the worst performance of the bunch (his attempts to explain affair with a staffer during impeachment hearings continue to astound), but none of them did well. TPM's Jon Terbush took a look at a composite of all polling since early 2010 and found the same trend—each of the Fab Four are significantly less popular now than they were at the beginning of the year. During that stretch President Obama's numbers have held fairly steady.

Bottom-line: President Obama may wish he still had his sky-high ratings of early 2009, but at least his numbers still put him in positive territory. His leading political rivals were never that strong to begin with, and their numbers are worse now than ever. No wonder Jim DeMint is talking about a new candidate entering the race. Who knows? Maybe the stars are aligning for Michele Bachmann, who apparently stole the show in Iowa this weekend. Wouldn't that be fun?

It looks like the combover who would be president has settled on a signature issue for his 2012 campaign—birtherism. Here's a few snippets from Donald Trump, earlier today during an appearance on (what else?) Fox and Friends, on President Obama's place of birth:

I am really concerned.

And why is Trump so concerned? Because:

... I will tell you, when this all started a week ago, I assumed, hey, look, you have no doctors that remember. You have no nurses - this is the President of the United States - that remember.

And not only that:

The Governor of Hawaii says, "I remember when he was born 50 years ago." I doubt it. I think this guy should be investigated. I doubt it. He remembers when Obama was born? Give me a break! He's just trying to do something for his party.

Got that? Not only is it suspicious that someone doesn't remember, it's suspicious that someone does. It's a veritable smoking gun!

Transcript is below the fold, where you can also see the Fox crew helping the idiocy along with comments like, "Yeah, I've heard that as well," and, "Donald Trump, who we all know was born in this country."

Former Washington, DC schools chancellor Michelle Rhee made her name on union-busting and allegedly improving test scores in the city's public schools. The test score gains were always overhyped by her supporters—now it turns out that they may have been fraudulent. According to a major investigative piece by USA Today reporters Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello, at Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus:

Standardized test scores improved dramatically. In 2006, only 10% of Noyes' students scored "proficient" or "advanced" in math on the standardized tests required by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Two years later, 58% achieved that level. The school showed similar gains in reading.

Rhee elevated the school as an example of how successful her program was, and handed out large bonuses to teachers and administrators. But a look at the test sheets of students during the time scores at Noyes were soaring shows a startling pattern of erasures in which an initial incorrect answer was erased and replaced with a correct one:

In 2007-08, six classrooms out of the eight taking tests at Noyes were flagged by McGraw-Hill because of high wrong-to-right erasure rates. The pattern was repeated in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years, when 80% of Noyes classrooms were flagged by McGraw-Hill.

On the 2009 reading test, for example, seventh-graders in one Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on answer sheets; the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than 1. The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance, according to statisticians consulted by USA TODAY.

It wasn't just this one school, either:

Among the 96 schools that were then flagged for wrong-to-right erasures were eight of the 10 campuses where Rhee handed out so-called TEAM awards "to recognize, reward and retain high-performing educators and support staff," as the district's website says. Noyes was one of these.

Rhee's administration resisted calls to investigate these patterns.

While it's unlikely that Michelle Rhee personally went around erasing incorrect answers from student test sheets and replacing them with correct ones, it seems very likely that the intense pressure she placed on principals and teachers to show massive improvements or be summarily fired created the incentive for some to cheat. Rather than investigating it, Rhee touted their results as signs of her own success. And for that alleged success she was featured on magazine covers, endlessly lauded, and given a massive platform to advocate for her methods as the one true answer to education reform. Clearly, some reevaluation is in order.

In our legal system, it's crucial that judges enter each and every case with an open mind. So JoAnne Kloppenburg, running against incumbent Republican David Prosser for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, leveled a pretty hefty charge in a recent debate:

"I, unlike my opponent, will approach cases with an open mind and without having prejudged the matters that come before the court."

Kloppenburg is right. But PolitiFact, which has a problem with politics in general, also has a problem with this statement, alleging that the evidence to support it is weak. Let's put aside their dismissive attitude toward Prosser's unambiguous statement that he'll serve as a "complement" to Gov. Scott Walker and the new Republican legislature, or that his ideology "closely mirrors" Walker's. Those are pretty damning statements to me, but evidently not good enough for PolitiFact.

But even if you want to play their game, PolitiFact still managed to miss key occasions where Prosser crossed the line into prejudging cases. Major credit to the blog Uppity Wisconsin for these catches. The first is from a video interview Prosser did with the Dane County Republican Party:

PROSSER: I would think that there’s going to be champ—I’m sure there’s going to be litigation on the Court and in fact, I think part of the effort against me in the campaign is to replace me on the Court in the event this bill and other legislation passed by the new governor and legislature are litigated. I think that they want someone on the Court who will be an almost automatic vote against anything that comes out of the new legislature.

HOST: Is that right?

PROSSER: Oh, yes. I think that there’s no question at all as I’ve talked to people that part of the motivation for the candidates running against me is to have a block of four people who will reapportion the legislature along more liberal lines whereas the conservative members of the Court don’t want any part of legislative redistricting.

By his own admission, Prosser is one of the "conservative members of the Court"—even PolitiFact acknowledges that. So how has Prosser not pre-judged potential redistricting cases by saying he wants nothing to do with them? Of course he has. The GOP wants to ram through new legislative maps this year, and Prosser wants to give them his seal approval by refusing to even entertain litigation on the topic. That's textbook pre-judgment.

Prosser was more slippery in a different interview (this one with an outfit called "Northwoods Patriot Radio"), but he knows exactly what game he's playing:

STEVE: It is for sure and another thing that I’d like to point out that’s quite interesting, in the upcoming race for Supreme Court is that Justice Prosser is a pro-life candidate and the three opponents that he’s running against are not pro-life, so... I take it, Justice Prosser, that you hold life dearly and you believe that that is not something that is not to be messed with.

PROSSER: Well, Steve, I have to be very careful what I say because I cannot commit myself, I, as a judge...

STEVE: I understand.

KIM: Yeah.

PROSSER: In deciding a case in a particular way. On the other hand, people can look at what I’ve done over a lifetime and kind of read between the lines.

So when asked about a hypothetical reproductive rights case, Prosser goes through the charade of announcing that he can't pre-judge a case... but then—nudge nudge, wink wink—assures his listeners than they can "read between the lines" to know how he'll rule. For a potential litigant in such a case, can this mean anything other than Prosser's already made up his mind? No, it can't.

So you tell me: Will this self-described "political conservative" whose views "closely mirror" and "complement" Gov. Walker's, who says he doesn't "want any part" of any legislative redistricting cases, and who assures observers they can know how he'll rule on abortion cases by "reading between the lines"... will this guy approach cases with an open mind? Or has he already pre-judged matters before they even reach his bench? I'm not surprised that PolitiFact blew it once again, but what matters is that we all know better.

The Wall Street Journal reports Democrats are preparing a plan that would bring the total cuts to the FY2011 budget to $30 billion, exactly half of the $61 billion in cuts proposed by House Republicans:

The White House and Democratic lawmakers, with less than two weeks left to avoid a government shutdown, are assembling a proposal for roughly $20 billion in additional spending cuts that could soon be offered to Republicans, according to people close to the budget talks.

That would come on top of $10 billion in cuts that Congress has already enacted and would represent a deeper reduction than the Obama administration and Senate Democrats had offered previously in negotiations. But it isn't clear that would be enough to satisfy Republicans, who initially sought $61 billion in spending cuts and face pressure from tea-party activists not to compromise.

Meanwhile, Republicans are showing absolutely no interest in achieving a compromise to avoid a government shutdown. On Friday afternoon, responding to optimistic comments from Chuck Schumer that Congress would be able to avoid a shutdown, Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor denied that Republicans thought progress was being made in negotiations and claimed Democrats would be blamed for the coming government shutdown. Essentially, in the face of Democrats agreeing to meet Republicans halfway, Republicans are responding with a raised middle finger. They are doing everything possible to force a government shutdown.

That might play well with the tea party, but it's bad for the country and it's bad for our economy. And what's bad for the country is ultimately bad politics. Their overreach is about to become Walker-esque.

"No Labels" sounds a lot like Third Way when it comes to Social Security. Apparently no one in either organization can read a poll. The American Prospect's Ben Adler catches them in the act of "ignoring the public on Social Security."

Last week, No Labels -- a supposedly nonpartisan group that seems to exist to promote Alan Simpson's austerity agenda -- blasted Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid for refusing to join in the deficit hysteria. "Senator Reid's position is out of step with the majority of [the] country when it comes to our financial woes. Most Americans want bipartisan action that goes to the heart of the fiscal crisis," said Lisa Borders, a No Labels' "founding leader." (Apparently, the organization's effort to avoid labels includes job titles.)

What is the supposed evidence that most Americans want cuts in Social Security, one of the most popular and successful domestic programs in the history of the federal government? A Washington Post/ABC poll that shows 81 percent of Americans "see the country's Social Security system as headed for a crisis, and most think a major overhaul is in order." This argument -- that Americans think there's a crisis, so there must be one, and action must be taken -- would be hilariously moronic were it not so lamentably powerful. Pardon me for questioning the wisdom of Americans -- a majority of whom cannot name two members of the Supreme Court or find Iraq on a map -- but the relevant question for policy-makers should not be whether we believe Social Security is headed for a crisis but whether it actually is. Ideologues masquerading as nonpartisan truth tellers have been telling the public for years that Social Security won't be able to meet its obligations, and now that they've convinced Americans, the ideologues have turned around and cited that public belief as evidence that the program must be cut.

Adler continues to lay out the the actual facts of the total non-crisis in Social Security, but I want to back up a bit. Even in that WaPo poll Borders cites, there's no majority support for cutting Social Security. Only 32% of respondents think benefits should be cut. The solution they most support for their conviction that Social Security is in crisis (which it's not) is lifting the payroll tax cap on earnings above $107,000. They're behind that idea with a 53% majority.

Adler's spot on:

Let the Republicans meet the Democrats halfway by agreeing to tax increases and cuts in defense spending, and then maybe Obama and Reid will get behind some reasonable adjustments to entitlement spending that they can sell to their party. But to expect Democrats to agree to make their painful concessions without a compromise deal in place is to ask them to trade away Social Security benefits for further tax cuts for the rich. There are already people doing that: They're called Republicans.

They're apparently also called No Labels and Third Way. Why all the Very Serious People seem to want to elevate and emulate this guy is beyond me.

It'd sure be something if someone who is in a position to make policy were presenting this side of the budget debate in DC. Atrios:

In a rational world, there should be no discussion of the deficit as policy. Team D and Team R would present their competing visions for what the government should spend money on, and where that money should come from. People should understand that modest deficits are never a problem, and that large deficits in recessions are predictable (drop in revenue) and often desired (stabilizers to prevent state budget cuts). We should not be discussing whether we must cut granny's pension to cut the deficit, we should be discussing how big we think granny's pension should be and how we should be funding that pension. Ideally, we'd have one party that thinks we should spend a bit more on things like social safety nets, and do so with more progressive taxation, and one party which thinks we should spend a bit less, and with more regressive taxation, and the voters would have a reasonably clear choice.

Or this, from Richard Eskow. He envisions a world where our elected official recognize that "25 million Americans are unemployed or under-employed," and have read a "recent Celinda Lake poll [which] shows that concern over jobs outweighs deficit concerns by 2 to 1, and that 77% of the public opposes cutting Social Security." In his world, a majority of Senators don't write a letter to the President demanding that make deficit reduction his top priority, but write this:

As the Administration continues to work with Congressional leadership regarding the current prolonged, recession-like situation for many millions of people, we write to inform you that we believe comprehensive unemployment reduction measures are imperative and to ask you to support a broad approach to solving the problem....

Beyond FY2011 decisions, we urge you to engage in a broader discussion about a comprehensive unemployment reduction package. Specifically, we hope that the discussion will include stimulus spending, entitlement increases and tax increases for the wealthiest among us.

Too bad Atrios and Eskow aren't in charge.

Senate:

• HI-Sen: Ex-Rep. Ed Case said he expects to decide by "mid-April" whether he'll seek Hawaii's open Senate seat. Case also says that the Merriman River Group took a poll for him and claims he kicked ass in both the primary and general—but he's only released a couple of selected toplines (click the link if you want them). PPP will have an HI-Sen general election poll out on behalf of Daily Kos/SEIU in the next couple of days.

• ME-Sen: Democrat Hannah Pingree, former Speaker of the state House and daughter of 1st CD Rep. Chellie Pingree, left the state legislature earlier this year. Only 34, she's lately been managing the family's inn & restaurant and serving on a local school board, so she seems like a good potential candidate to run for office once again—perhaps even to challenge Sen. Olympia Snowe. But Pingree just gave birth to her first child a week ago, which probably makes her less likely to get back into the game this year.

• MI-Sen: A GOP operative passes along word to Dave Catanese that Pete Hoekstra is turning down the chance to appear at some Lincoln Day dinners—which this source thinks is a sign that Hoekstra isn't planning to run for Senate. Hoekstra's would-be pollster (the same guy who was basically spinning lies about PPP last week) vociferously disputes this interpretation. We'll see, but I personally think Hoekstra is going to tell us he plans to spend more time building turtle fences with his family.

• MT-Sen: Activist Melinda Gopher says she is contemplating a primary challenge to Dem Sen. Jon Tester. She explains her reasoning here. She received 21% of the vote and finished third in the Dem primary for MT-AL last year. I could not find any FEC reports for her.

• ND-Sen, ND-AL: Another good catch by Greg Giroux: ex-Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D) just closed his federal campaign account. While it's not dispositive, of course, this probably means he's not interested in seeking his old seat, or the retiring Kent Conrad's spot in the Senate. Note that Pomeroy didn't completely slam the door on a gubernatorial run, but I'm guessing that's not terribly likely, either.

• NM-Sen: New Mexico's Republican Lt. Gov., John Sanchez, sounded very much like a candidate on a recent trip to DC. He spent some time slagging ex-Rep. Heather Wilson (the only declared candidate so far) in an interview with The Hill, criticizing her moderate credentials, but also being careful to try to put a little daylight between himself and the teabaggers. Sanchez indicated he'd decide "in the spring," and perhaps hinted he'd announce on or around April 15th… because it's totally not teabaggish to make a fetish out of Tax Day. He also says he'll be back in Washington next week to meet with the NRSC (this trip was occasioned by a gathering of the all-important National Lieutenant Governors Association).

House:

• FL-22: Ex-Rep. Ron Klein (D) definitively slammed the door on a rematch this cycle, saying he's "looking forward to the private sector" (he's taking a job with the law firm of Holland & Knight). But he did hold out the possibility he might return to office some day (he's only 53). The same article also mentions a new possible Democratic candidate (despite the entrance of West Palm Beach Mayor Lois Frankel in recent days): state Rep. Joseph Abruzzo, who says he's keeping his options open. (Abruzzo, hardly alone among Democrats, backed Charlie Crist over Kendrick Meek in last year's Senate race.)

In other news, a firm called Viewpoint Florida released a very questionable poll pitting Rep. Allen West against Frankel. Really, the only reason you'd put out a survey of a district which is guaranteed to get reshaped is because you're hoping to set a narrative among people who don't know better (like, say, the tradmed… this piece doesn't even mention the word "redistricting"). In addition, the poll is way too Republican, and also purports to be of "likely" voters, about one billion years before election day.

• MI-09 (?): The question mark is there because who knows what districts are going to look like, or where state Rep. Marty Knollenberg—who says he's considering a run for Congress—will wind up when all is said and done. That name ought to sound familiar: Marty's dad is, of course, George McFly ex-Rep. Joe Knollenberg, who lost to current 9th CD Rep. (and potential redistricting victim) Gary Peters in 2008. Of note, Marty sits on a redistricting committee in the state lege, so maybe a House race is his… density.

• NY-25: This is the kind of news I like to hear! Dan Maffei, who lost a heart-breaker last year, sent an email to supporters saying that he is "strongly considering running again" for his old seat. Maffei was always a great vote and a strong progressive voice, despite his decision to take a job after the election with the annoying "moderate" group Third Way. (I don't begrudge the guy needing to eat, though, and the market was pretty saturated with one-term Democratic ex-Congressmen in need of a job.) We don't know how this district will wind up, of course, but I'd be surprised if there were nowhere for Maffei to run.

• NY-26: Teabagger David Bellavia looks pretty doomed—despite having enough signatures (in theory), he failed to file a key piece of paperwork with the Board of Elections, which will probably terminate his candidacy. It's all the more poignant because, according to this article, the other campaigns said they would not challenge his signatures—and seeing as he submitted just 100 more than the 3,500 target, it's a good bet he was in the danger zone. (Is it really true that Republican Jane Corwin said this, though?)

Speaking of Corwin, she's got a third ad out, once again returning to small business themes (as she did in her first spot), rather than the negative attacks in her second ad.

• PA-17: Tim Holden could be in that rare bucket of Democrats who might not actually benefit from their seats being made bluer in redistricting. The conservative Holden could have Lackawanna County added to his district, according to a possible GOP plan, which might open him up to a primary challenge from the left. It would also move a couple of ambitious pols from the county into his district, including Lackawanna County Commissioner Corey O’Brien (who attempted to primary ex-Rep. Paul Kanjorski last year) and Scranton Mayor Chris Doherty. PoliticsPA also says that Holden's 2010 primary challenger, activist Sheila Dow-Ford, is "rumored" to be considering another run. (Dow-Ford lost 65-35 in a race fueled in large part by Holden's vote against healthcare reform.)

• VA-05: Last cycle, few establishment figures were as absolutely hated by the teabaggers as now-Rep. Robert Hurt. He won his primary with just 48%, against a typically fractured People's Front of Judea/Judean People's Front field. (We really need an acronym for that. PFJJPF, anyone?) The teabaggers have now taken to protesting Hurt's votes in favor of continuing budget resolutions outside of his district office, but given their feeble efforts to unite around a standard-bearer last time, I'm skeptical that they have the organizational power to threaten Hurt next year.

Other Races:

• Wisconsin Sup. Ct.: The Greater Wisconsin Committee is running a very negative new ad against Republican Justice David Prosser, accusing him of refusing to prosecute a child-molesting priest back when he was a D.A.—and explaining that the same priest went on to molest other kids after a parish transfer.

Remainders:

• Census: New York City pols, led by His Bloomberginess, got wiggy almost immediately after seeing the Census Bureau's largely stagnant new population figures for the city. Pretty much everyone is convinced that NYC grew by more than 2.1%, because, they say, the bureau undercounted immigrants. And here's a pretty good supporting piece of data: The city added 170,000 new homes over the last decade, so how could it grow by only 166,000 people? (There are no huge swaths of abandoned properties in New York, though the Census does claim vacancies increased.) As a result, city officials are planning to challenge the figures (which they think should be about a quarter million higher). But it's worth noting that a similar challenge 20 years ago wound up failing.

• Votes: The New York Times is getting into the party unity score game, finding that (according to their methodology) 14 Dems have voted with Team Blue less than 70% of the time this Congress. It's pretty much just a list of the remaining white conservative Blue Dogs who sit in red districts, though three names from bluer districts stand out: Dennis Cardoza (CA-18); Jim Costa (CA-20); and Gary Peters (MI-09).

Redistricting Roundup:

• Louisiana: A state Senate committee passed a plan for redistricting its own lines last Thursday; a vote by the full body could come this week. Notably, the new map increases the number of majority-minority districts from 10 to 11. Things are delayed on the House side, though.

• Virginia: A teachable moment in Virginia: Democrats in the state Senate adopted a rule that would limit the population variance in any new maps to no more than ±2%, while Republicans in the state House are using a ±1% standard. This issue often comes up in comments, but it's simple: For state legislatures, courts have said that a 10% total deviation is an acceptable rule of thumb—that is, if the difference in population between the largest district and the smallest district is no more than ±5% of the size of an ideal district, then you're okay. However, at least one map which tried to egregiously take advantage of this guideline (total deviation of 9.98%) was nonetheless invalidated, so while the "ten percent rule" is still probably a reasonable safe harbor, it may not be a sure thing. For congressional maps, it's even simpler: Districts have to be perfectly equipopulous unless the state can justify the difference as necessary to achieve legitimate state policy. (For instance, Iowa state law forbids splitting counties to draw a federal map; this is considered an acceptable goal by the courts, so Iowa's districts have slight variances.)