G.O.P. Candidate Drops Out of NY-23 Congressional Race

Re: Important Races to Watch - NY-23

Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava suspended her campaign in the special election for a congressional seat in upstate NY. As we discussed in class, Scozzafava was facing two other major candidates: Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman.

Owens and Hoffman previously held approval ratings near 35%, but the withdrawal of Scozzafava should theoretically boost Hoffman's support as the RNC now supports the Conservative candidate, and Hoffman's campaign "will receive the financial backing of the R.N.C. and get-out-the-vote efforts to defeat Bill Owens on Tuesday.”

The New York Times reports that some Republicans think that "Ms. Scozzafava’s decision..[is] likely to encourage conservatives going into next year’s midterm elections, raising the prospect of more primaries against Republican candidates that they deem too moderate." Under this view, Scozzafava's withdrawal is "a clear victory for conservatives in the [Republican] party at a time when there has been a pitched battle among party leaders over whether Republicans needed to change their ideological appeal."

The House Health Bill

(Photo by Jesse Blumenthal)

From The Politico:

It runs more pages than War and Peace, has nearly five times as many words as the Torah, and its tables of contents alone run far longer than this story. The House health care bill unveiled Thursday clocks in at 1,990 pages and about 400,000 words. With an estimated 10-year cost of $894 billion, that comes out to about $2.24 million per word.

Unfinished Business

From the Census Bureau:

The Census Bureau counts students where they attend college or university through a variety of methods.

• Students residing in group quarters, such as a dormitory, residence hall, sorority or fraternity house, will receive census forms between April 1 and May 21, 2010. Each student should complete and return a form. Residence Life and Housing Staff work with Census Bureau employees to distribute and collect these forms.
• In March 2010, census forms will be delivered or mailed by street name and house or apartment to students living off campus. All students living at a particular off-campus address are considered part of one household, so only one form should be completed. It should include information about all the people living at that address. The form should be returned in the U.S. mail envelope provided.
• Students who commute to school and reside full-time at their parents’ or guardians’ household address should be counted on their parents’ or guardians’ household form.

The Army Chaplaincy has an official journal, which last year addressed a topic that came up in class:

The most publicly unpalatable aspect of chaplain ministry is its fairly recent support of fringe spiritual or religious groups which stand well apart from the mainstream religious life of America. One group is Wicca (i.e. witches). Despite the congressional grand-standing associated with the Army chaplains’ support of Wiccan soldier worship at Fort Hood, Texas in 1999, this author has no reason to believe that the Army Chaplaincy will not have at least one Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan, or Satanist in its future ranks. The Constitution’s protection of religious freedom and simultaneous proscription of “an establishment of religion” certainly places a legal and moral obligation upon the Government to provide for the free exercise of all religious beliefs, not just those acceptable to certain elected officials. This is the central rationale for installation chaplains’ accommodation and support of Wiccan and other groups on military bases. In the case of all four groups mentioned above, the traditional monotheism of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is absent from their belief systems. They may choose to serve Patria, but certainly not Deo.

Gallup Poll on Race

Those writing an update on the race relations chapter might take a look at a new Gallup survey:

A majority of Americans, 56%, believe that a solution to America's race-relations problem will eventually be worked out -- a figure that is roughly the same as those Gallup found in the years prior to last fall's historic election of Barack Obama as president. Responses to this long-standing trend today are almost exactly where they were in December 1963, when Gallup first asked this question. Fifty-five percent of Americans in 1963 were hopeful that a solution to the race-relations problem would eventually be worked out. Now, some 46 years later, the "hopeful" percentage is an almost identical 56%. In short, despite all that has happened in the intervening decades, there is scarcely more hope now than there was those many years ago that the nation's race-relations situation will be solved.

MORE HERE

Public Policy and Federalism

"Flakes of Danger"

For many big-city mayors, "a paralyzing blizzard or ice storm is the most serious crisis they ever face." This article discusses how various political careers have been destroyed because of bad responses to snow storms. Denver's had a few instances of this, but Mayor Hickenlooper was able to get reelected after a slow response to a storm a few years ago by joking that the storms are "politically motivated."

Read more here: http://www.governing.com/node/998/

Federalism and Public Policy

• Federalist 39
• Federalist 45
• Federalist 46

Federalism and medical marijuana.

Attitudes toward government waste