"Ron Johnson, Tammy Baldwin: No pair of senators are further apart."

"Johnson, a Republican, ranks to the right of roughly 95% of his Senate colleagues in two well-established nonpartisan rating systems.... Baldwin, a Democrat, ranked to the left of the vast majority of her House colleagues in the same rating systems before she arrived in the Senate last month."

From Wisconsin.    

To use the old travel-guide cliché: a land of contrasts. 

Attacking the aggressive Ted Cruz when Liz Warren simultaneously hits the Senate in full aggression mode.

Big Media is hot to wreck Ted Cruz. Here's the NYT piece: "Texas Senator Goes on Attack and Raises Bipartisan Hackles." Oh? Bipartisan has hackles? Well, then I guess those bipartisan hackles are also raised by Elizabeth Warren. Here's HuffPo: "Elizabeth Warren's Aggressive Questioning Prompts Anger From Wall Street."

The NYT forefronts this quote from Barbara Boxer:

“It was really reminiscent of a different time and place, when you said, ‘I have here in my pocket a speech you made on such and such a date,’ and, of course, nothing was in the pocket,” she said, a reference to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s pursuit of Communists in the 1950s. “It was reminiscent of some bad times.”

Boxer didn't name names, but the NYT wants us to know that referred to Cruz, but why not Warren too? Because the NYT wouldn't have structured its rhetoric that way if it had known that a new Senator from the Democratic Party was going to go into attack dog mode the day they published the piece?

In just two months, Mr. Cruz, 42, has made his presence felt in an institution where new arrivals are usually not heard from for months, if not years....

In a body known for comity, Mr. Cruz is taking confrontational... sensibilities to new heights...

Ha ha ha. Cruz, that clod, doesn't know the comity tradition. Meanwhile, here comes the brilliant Harvard lawprof, and she's not meekly conforming to the be-seen-and-not-heard routine. So how are those hackles doing now — those bipartisan hackles — raised... or lying flat and flobby?



Hackles? More like hacks.

"It’s time for me to be mature."

Says the 89-year-old Frank Lautenberg, ceding the stage to Cory Booker.

Hagel nomination blocked... for now.

"The vote was 58 to 40, with one vote of 'present,' falling short of the 60 required to break the Republican filibuster. Members were set to leave for recess on Friday, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said they would vote again on Hagel when they returned, leaving Hagel’s nomination in limbo until then."

Chuck Schumer tells Cory Booker: "Frank deserves the time and respect to make his own decisions."

Let the 89-year-old Senator Frank R. Lautenberg decide when it's time to yield to the younger generation, the Dems are saying to the 43-year-old Newark mayor. They're saying that publicly anyway. I'm sure nobody wants to get caught showing any disrespect for the the old man, despite the absurdity of his intransigency. Privately, they must be dying for him to go.

"I’m not a politician, and there will be times when folks will ask me questions about the inner working of politics that I don’t know about."

"I’m a quick study, I’ll figure all the political jargon out, but I’m not going to adopt it.

Says Gabriel Gomez, running for the Senate seat vacated by John Kerry.

Look at my training – serving my country, U.S. Naval Academy, Navy aircraft carrier pilot, Navy SEAL, successful private sector, business career.... I’m not saying governance or being a Senator is easy, nor am I saying I don’t have some things to learn – I am saying I am up to the task.  And let’s look in the other direction – maybe Washington has something to learn – they clearly need some new ideas and sending career politicians would be the same old same old. 

We'll see how well that pitch works in Massachusetts.

Scott Brown will not run for the Senate again.

"I was not at all certain that a third Senate campaign in less than four years, and the prospect of returning to a Congress even more partisan than the one I left, was really the best way for me to continue in public service at this time."

I'm thinking that he didn't want to hear the criticism: you just lost. Why should he win on this fluke of the other seat opening when the people just voted him down? Exactly what would you say to that?

"Speaking is difficult, but I need to say something important. "

"Violence is a big problem. Too many children are dying. Too many children. We must do something. It will be hard. But the time to act is now... You must act. Be bold. Be courageous. Americans are counting on you."

Gabrielle Giffords speaks very slowly and very briefly to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

ADDED: Is she a witness or an exhibit?

What is dehumanizing?
	For her to be used, like that, as an exhibit.
	For Althouse to suggest -- even in a question -- that she is being used as an exhibit.
	I see nothing remotely dehumanizing here, even if she is more of an exhibit than a witness.
	The real dehumanization is the killing that happens with guns. Get on with the gun control. Now!
pollcode.com free polls

The bipartisan group of 8 senators presents an immigration reform proposal containing a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million who've illegally immigrated.

Here's the document. Summarized here:

It would allow undocumented immigrants with otherwise clean criminal records to quickly achieve probationary legal residency after paying a fine and back taxes.

But they could pursue full citizenship — giving them the right to vote and access to government benefits — only after new measures are in place to prevent a future influx of illegal immigrants....

[And they] would be required to go to the end of the waiting list to get a green card that would allow permanent residency and eventual citizenship, behind those who had already legally applied at the time of the law’s enactment.

Harkin quittin'.

'Bout time.

Ron Johnson — by raising his voice, getting testy, and interrupting — tricks Hillary Clinton into losing her modulation.

My interpretation of this is that Clinton had prepared for this question and practiced getting indignant, but she was not quite ready for the tension cranked up by the wily Wisconsinite Johnson. So the workshopped outrage flipped out over the top. Great theater.

ADDED: "It was theatrics... she didn’t want to answer questions so she makes a big show of it," said Ron Johnson afterwards.

Barney Frank does want Kerry's Senate seat.

"A month ago, or a few weeks ago, I said I wasn’t interested... It was kind of like you’re about to graduate, and they said: 'You gotta go to summer school.' But [the fiscal cliff deal] now means that February, March and April are going to be among the most important months in American financial history.... “I’ve told the governor I would now like, frankly, to do that...."

Common Cause v. Biden, challenging the Senate filibuster, was "a nostalgic evocation of the old days of public law litigation."

Observes Garrett Epps.

The federal courts have become almost implacably hostile to this kind of reform lawsuit, and those who bring them know that their chances of victory are vanishingly slim. Whatever one may think of the filibuster, however, we can be glad this suit was dismissed; its cure for the filibuster would be worse than the disease.

Robert Bork has died.

He was 85.

From the above-linked NYT obituary:

Judge Bork, a bear of a man with a scraggly red beard and untamed frizz on a balding pate who liked to eat, drink and smoke for much of his adult life, handled himself poorly in front of the [Senate Judiciary] committee and failed to give doubters confidence. As Tom Shales, the television critic for The Washington Post, wrote of his testimony: “He looked, and talked, like a man who would throw the book at you — maybe like a man who would throw the book at the whole country.”

See that's what I was just talking about: Liberals used to express abhorrence of law-and-order types.

The NYT obit refers to "the notion that the nominee was somehow unfeeling as a judge." Somehow... a notion... Where, oh, where could it come from?!

This [notion] was amplified when, asked by a sympathetic senator, Alan Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, why he wanted to serve on the Supreme Court, Judge Bork replied that it would be “an intellectual feast.”

And that was it, the worst answer ever given to any question in the history of the United States. Intellectual feast! The feast turned out to be a feeding frenzy for the liberal media. Why, they're still picking kinky reddish beard hairs out of their back molars! Burrrrp! Tasty! What a time! And no Supreme Court nominee has said one interesting thing since. Every single one has promised to be a good little judge who would never ever do anything but serve humbly and modestly deciding the cases according to the law.

You think it was interesting that John Roberts said he saw himself as an umpire, calling balls and strikes? That proves my point! I know, Clarence Thomas, "high-tech lynching," but that wasn't about doing the judicial work, so I'm excluding that from the point, which is that they all learned what not to do from Bork. Presidents learned to avoid even picking someone Borkish, so no one was allowed to look weird, speak quirkly, seem like an intellectual with ideas of his own, it would just be bland blandness served atop a steaming pile of blandness. That is: Not tasty! As a live-blogger of nomination hearings, I want to know: Where's my intellectual feast?

ADDED: When C-SPAN put its entire archive up on-line, the first thing I looked up to relive was the Bork hearings:

Arlen Specter has died.

He was 82.

ADDED: He played an important role in Supreme Court nominations:

Arriving on Capitol Hill in 1981, he became a dominant force during the Judiciary Committee’s rancorous Supreme Court nomination battles. More than anyone else, he helped defeat conservative nominee Robert Bork in 1987, and his aggressive questioning of law professor Anita Hill four years later — he accused her of “flat-out perjury” — helped secure Clarence Thomas’s confirmation....

“He was a Rockefeller Republican, a liberal Republican, and was willing to take on Presidents Reagan and Bush, and became a true leader in the bipartisan efforts that strengthened all the civil rights laws and defeated Bork,” said Ralph G. Neas, a longtime civil rights and health-care advocate.

“Then you had a line of demarcation,” Neas said, beginning with Thomas’s Supreme Court nomination and continuing with the Republican majorities in the House and the Senate after the 1994 midterm elections. “Arlen Specter became an especially cautious politician,” Neas said....

After Sen. Specter warned President George W. Bush not to nominate judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade — the 1973 Supreme Court case that essentially legalized abortion rights — conservative Republicans protested his appointment to the Judiciary Committee. Sen. Specter later said he would not use a “litmus test” to deny confirmation to abortion opponents.

He presided over the confirmations of Supreme Court Justices John G. Roberts Jr. and Samuel A. Alito Jr. and was a key force behind passage of some of the Bush administration’s controversial anti-terrorism laws, including the Patriot Act. But as controversy erupted over the government’s handling of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Sen. Specter became a leading proponent of habeas corpus rights for unlawful combatants.

I was just watching old clips from the Bork and the Thomas nomination hearings — because, after the VP debate, I wanted to review Joe Biden's performance.

"Barack Obama in his old community organizer role," doing "what community organizers do... rub people's emotions raw to hype their resentments."

Thomas Sowell writes the pithiest thing that I've seen about the speech Obama gave on June 5, 2007. Remember, Obama told the predominantly black audience that the federal government — motivated by racial prejudice — would not waive the Stafford Act requirement that a city chip in 10% of the amount it would receive in federal disaster aid.

[L]ess than two weeks earlier, on May 24, 2007, the United States Senate had in fact voted 80-14 to waive the Stafford Act requirement for New Orleans, as it had waived that requirement for New York and Florida. More federal money was spent rebuilding New Orleans than was spent in New York after 9/11 and in Florida after hurricane Andrew, combined.

Truth is not a job requirement for a community organizer. Nor can Barack Obama claim that he wasn't present the day of that Senate vote, as he claimed he wasn't there when Jeremiah Wright unleashed his obscene attacks on America from the pulpit of the church that Obama attended for 20 years.

Unlike Jeremiah Wright's church, the U.S. Senate keeps a record of who was there on a given day. The Congressional Record for May 24, 2007 shows Senator Barack Obama present that day and voting on the bill that waived the Stafford Act requirement. Moreover, he was one of just 14 Senators who voted against -- repeat, AGAINST -- the legislation which included the waiver.

Sherrod Brown 46%, Josh Mandel 46%.

Wow.

Ohio now shifts back from Safe Democrat to a Toss-up in the Rasmussen Reports Senate Balance of Power rankings.  With the addition of Ohio, seven Senate races nationwide are Toss-Ups, but at this point it still appears likely that Democrats will retain control of the Senate.

President Obama holds a one-point lead in Ohio – 50% to 49% - in the first post-debate survey of the presidential contest there.

"The Tea Party's Senate Insurgency Hits Texas."

Have you noticed Ted Cruz?

A former state solicitor general and clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the 41-year-old Mr. Cruz... is a staunch defender of states' rights, or what he calls the "forgotten Ninth and 10th amendments." He was the lead lawyer representing Texas before the Supreme Court in Medellin v. Texas (2008), after the International Court of Justice had tried to override Texas's justice system, and in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) he wrote the amicus brief on behalf of 31 states challenging a gun-control law on Second Amendment grounds.

He favors school choice, personal accounts for Social Security and a "low uniform tax rate—either a flat tax or the FairTax," he says, and his goal in the Senate would be to "cut federal spending as much and as quickly as possible." He's contemptuous of congressional Republicans who suggest that some of the popular features of ObamaCare can be retained. "I will work to repeal every last word of the law," he insists.

Mr. Cruz's Hispanic surname also isn't a liability when many Republicans seem to be searching for the next Marco Rubio. Like the Florida Senator, Mr. Cruz is of Cuban descent and has a gift for communicating his conservative credentials to right-leaning audiences. (At the same time, some Texans grumble that the Princeton and Harvard Law grad has the Barack Obama disease of coming across as a slick know-it-all, "the smartest guy in the room.")

Too smart? Not the right kind of Hispanic? We shall see. The primary is tomorrow. The "establishment" guy is David Dewhurst, the Lt. Gov. He calls Cruz "Washington lawyer Ted Cruz."

Sarah Palin, who seems to have the magic touch, has endorsed Cruz. I'm making a tag for Cruz (and not for Dewhurst), so that's something like making a prediction.

ADDED: You can listen to Cruz arguing for the independent power of the states in Medellin here. (His turn begins about halfway through.)

Jonathan Chait sees "frightening outlines of a future systemic crisis"...

... in Richard Lugar's defeat. 

I'm seeing outlines of liberals getting really nervous about what is — I suspect — the American voters' preference for some crisp conservatism.

Is Eric Hovde the new Ron Johnson?

Larry Kaufman on the GOP Senate primary in Wisconsin.

But Ron Johnson did not have to fight off Tommy Thompson, the former governor who chose not to go for a Senate seat when it required ousting an incumbent. It's an easier seat to get in the general election because the incumbent is retiring, but that makes the primary more contentious.

Is Thompson up for that fight? Or is he just assuming we know him and like him? So far...

... Thompson is a no-show for debates and often "phones in" speeches at the events he does attend. There's a growing sense that Thompson is acting like he's entitled to the job...

When is the Senate primary anyway? It's August 14, after the recall elections, which are June 5th. Kaufman tries to predict the post-recall political climate:

If Gov. Scott Walker loses, dispirited GOP voters will be far more likely to hunker down and cast a "safe" vote for Thompson to take on Democratic challenger Tammy Baldwin. 

Really? Wow. GOP folk go completely beta? Gotta win something.

But in the more likely case where Walker wins, the surge in Republican confidence would favor candidates like Hovde running on a stronger and more forthright fiscal conservatism. Wisconsin's open primary could also favor Hovde, since he's a fresh face with more crossover appeal than his opponents.

Why wouldn't they cross over and vote for whoever is the weakest candidate to face Baldwin? These open primaries are a bitch.

IN THE COMMENTS: Original Mike said:

Thompson clearly doesn't have it in him anymore. He should step aside. 

If the GOP had a brain, all the other candidates would step down and endorse Hovde. Don't you think? There's only one declared candidate on the Democratic side, the primary isn't until August, and it's an open primary.