Shoddy forensic science has led to a major setback in a murder investigation that could close the door on efforts to bring the killer to justice. The family of murder victim Suzanne Jovin was recently informed that the DNA evidence in her case was useless because it was contaminated by a lab technician. A DNA sample collected from under Jovin's fingernails after her 1998 murder was found to match that of the lab worker that processed the evidence, not her killer as was previously assumed.
In recent years, forensic science has become a staple of criminal prosecutions. Jurors increasingly expect trials to include conclusive forensic evidence pointing to the guilt or innocence of a defendant. Although forensic testing has a reputation for producing accurate and objective evidence, it is not flawless. In fact, a lack of quality standards in forensics labs and of adequate training for technicians has resulted in potentially important evidence being rendered worthless or just plain wrong far too often. Moreover, since most states lack any type of meaningful oversight of its crime labs, mistakes continue to occur and problems remain uncorrected.
The top hat and tuxedo-clad "Billionaires for Budget Cuts" descended on Hartford yesterday, heaping some damning praise on Republican Governor Jodi Rell for her steadfast refusal to raise taxes on the wealthy in order to close the state's $8 billion budget deficit.
The Connecticut Working Families Party sponsored the tongue-in-cheek rally as part of a month long campaign against the Governor's regressive budget proposal. Her plan calls for closing the gap with taxes on the middle-class and billions in cuts to basic services working families dependent on. But Rell is defiantly opposing a proposal to raise income taxes on the wealthy, what many progressive economists say is the best solution for states facing budget shortfalls.
The billionaires - "Robin Eublind, "Rich N. Luvenit," and "Iona Lottabotes" - called "Our Jodi" their "best investment." Arriving at the Capitol by limousine, they chanted a refrain the Governor has taken to heart, "taxes are for little people!"
With an estimated 23 million 18-29 year old citizens turning out to vote in the 2008 presidential election, it is easy to assume that young people today have overcome the stereotypical image of "apathetic youth." Yet, while the last few election cycles show an ever-growing interest in political engagement, young people are still underrepresented in the U.S. electorate-a problem that seems to have more to do with lack of access than lack of interest.
A new Quinnipiac poll shows Lieberman's approval rating in Connecticut is down to just 38%. This is actually record-breaking for the Quinnipiac poll:
"Sen. Joseph Lieberman appears to be paying a high price for his embrace of Sen. John McCain in the presidential race. This is the highest disapproval rating in any Quinnipiac University poll in any state for a sitting U.S. Senator - except for New Jersey's Robert Torricelli, just before he resigned in 2002. Among those who say they voted for Sen. Lieberman in 2006, 30 percent now say they would vote for someone else if they could.
Only 21% of Democrats approve of Lieberman's performance as Senator. Also, 40% of Independents, and 68% of Republicans approve of Lieberman's performance as Senator. It is kind of funny, but also not surprising, that Lieberman's constituents are far more aware of his partisan inclinations than his fellow Senators, or even President-elect Obama.
Lieberman isn't up for re-election until 2012. Given that, since 2006, he has been granted a committee chair, I won't be surprised if he is able to make a recovery. Obama validating Lieberman will, I'm sure, run through just about every campaign commercial Lieberman makes for the Democratic primary, too. Expect at least 42 Democratic Senators to endorse him, and campaign for him, in the 2012 Democratic primary, too. Further, don't expect many, if any, challengers to come from elected Democratic officials in Connecticut, for fear of reprisals should they challenge Lieberman. So, while Lieberman has a low approval rating, he is by no means particularly vulnerable right now.
Also, from the poll, it would appear that the northeast is more progressive than the West Coast:
Connecticut voters oppose 61 - 33 percent amending the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Republicans support such an amendment 49 - 46 percent, while Democrats oppose it 73 - 23 percent and independent voters oppose it 58 - 34 percent. Men oppose an amendment to ban same-sex marriage 56 - 38 percent while women oppose it 66 - 28 percent.
I always thought the northeast wasn't given sufficient recognition as the most left-leaning region of the country, which I think it fairly obviously is.
(One of the most devastating consequences of Bush Administration policy--not just the financial meltdown we are now experiencing--has been the systematic neglect of state and local governments, which have suffered two of the worst financial crunches in history under Bush. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
The financial crisis has dug in its heels and Treasury's plan to buy up troubled assets hasn't been able to dislodge them. There have been numerous reports that the crisis has spread outward from Wall Street to afflict auto dealerships and the commercial paper that businesses and public institutions use to meet payroll. But when The New York Timesreported last week that cities, states, and local governments are having difficulty in bond markets - stoking fears that infrastructure projects, services, and payrolls will have to be canceled or scaled back - MayorTV decided to set off to several cities to ask mayors how the financial downturn is affecting them.
Our first stop was Stamford, Connecticut where Mayor Dannel Malloy was anything but optimistic about the economy.
In the aftermath of the presidential primaries, stories of unprecedented voter registration and turnout are drifting to the back burner. But with an exceedingly imbalanced electorate, the fight to create access to the voting rolls and enforce the voting rights of all Americans continues. With historic voter registration drives underway and a preview of the types of problems that could occur in November, the focus of the media is beginning to shift towards the less sexy, but crucial elements that work to maximize voter participation while ensuring eligible voters can cast their ballots and have them counted. In Project Vote's view, this is a welcome development since many of the potential issues require more time to sort out than is available if problems are noted only weeks in advance of the election. This week, election officials, advocates and a presidential candidate worked to assist in or restore voting rights for hospitalized veterans in Connecticut, minority citizens in Georgia, and former felons in Tennessee.
In January, I wrote the following about Ned Lamont's endorsement of Obama in which I expressed mild dissatisfaction with the decision. The gist of the post was organized around the idea that the endorsement made sense only if Lamont could persuade Obama to take on the FISA fight strongly because Obama had not been particularly helpful (to put it mildly) during the Lamont campaign.
And while it's not exactly what we're talking about today, I suppose it's worth noting that Lamont endorsed Obama, and then we did win the FISA fight. So my mild concern is now obviated. Lamont made a decision to endorse Obama. I had my reservations, but I was wrong, and the decision paid off.
So thanks, Ned, for what you did. It is possible to work from the inside and make change.
The donors threatening Nancy Pelosi are listed below. I bolded the ones who contributed to Joe Lieberman's campaign for Senate in 2006, when he won reelection as an independent.
Marc Aronchick Clarence Avant
Susie Tompkins Buell
Sim Farar
Robert L. Johnson
Chris Korge
Marc and Cathy Lasry Hassan Nemazee
Alan and Susan Patricof JB Pritzker Amy Rao
Lynn de Rothschild
Haim Saban Bernard Schwartz Stanley S. Shuman
Jay Snyder
Maureen White and Steven Rattner
... Adding that Haim Saban is the fiscal sponsor of extreme right-wing hawk Michael O'Hanlon at the Brookings Institution and Lasry was a Bush donor.
... Aravosis notices that 30% of these donors slept in the White House when Bill was President. I don't have any problem with that, actually, I just think it's funny how transparently transactional they are.
Here's the first bit of evidence I've seen on how race will matter from the primary to the general.
The vast majority of Democratic voters say they would support either Obama or Clinton over McCain. But in an Obama-McCain matchup, 14% of Democratic voters say they would support McCain, compared with 8% who would do so if Clinton is the nominee.
One-in-five white Democrats (20%) say that they will vote for McCain over Obama, double the percentage who say they would switch sides in a Clinton-McCain matchup (10%). Roughly the same number of Democrats age 65 and older say they will vote for McCain if Obama is the party's choice (22%). Obama also suffers more defections among lower income and less educated Democratic voters than does Clinton.
In addition, female Democrats look at the race differently depending on the matchup. While 93% of women in the party say they would vote for Clinton over McCain, just 79% say they would support Obama over McCain.
A quarter of Democrats (25%) who back Clinton for the nomination say they would favor McCain in a general election test against Obama. The "defection" rate among Obama's supporters if Clinton wins the nomination is far lower; just 10% say they would vote for McCain in November, while 86% say they would back Clinton.
While race is often considered the most important factor, I do not actually think that is the case here. The most obvious parallel, where a sizeable chunk of Democrats chose to vote for an incredibly hawkish maverick style politician with an undeserved reputation for liberal politics, was the 2006 Lieberman-Lamont race. I in fact said that the 2006 Senate race at the time was a test run for John McCain's campaign, and all campaign strategists working on the Presidential race noticed exactly what the limits were of the liberal coalition at that time.
In the primary, Lamont took 52% of the vote to Lieberman's 48%, but in the general Lieberman got 33% of the Democratic vote. And the primary determinant of that chunk was age. That is true right now as well. And frankly, why shouldn't it be? Old people get that that having an old President will mean that their views are better represented. Young people believe that having a young President will mean that their views are better represented. This isn't and shouldn't be a surprise.
As a progressive partisan, it's disappointing that so many older white people are willing to abandon the Democratic Party to send young people into wars just because they don't want a younger African-American male to run the country. And indeed, if you look further at the poll, McCain picks up most of his 'McCain Democrats' among the 26% of the Democratic population who want to keep some troops in Iraq. Most Clinton supporters aren't like that, only a quarter at this point are even considering voting for McCain, I have talked to a few, and the unspoken identity problems are both age and race.
I saw this during the Lamont race, only very few people were actually on our side. It was a scarring experience, and the youth surge had not yet happened the way that it is helping to offset the 65+ advantage for Clinton and McCain. At any rate, Obama's going to have to make up for his deficit by appealing to independents, something which fortunately he is doing against both McCain and Clinton.
Update: I thought this comment is illustrative of the conversations I've had with older Clinton supporters that won't vote for Obama in the general.
As one of those "older white people willing to send young people into wars," I think you just don't get it. First, I am old according to you, 68 to be exact. I protested the Vietnam War, dragged my children and friends to Washington to demonstrate for a woman's right to choose, made phone calls for Jesse Jackson back in '84, and worked for McGovern when there were lots and lots of young people energized to participate - you're not the first ones to get involved.
I, for one, am not going to shift to McCain, but I am part of the fall-off. I am not going to vote for Obama. I am going to vote LIKE Obama. When I go to the polls in November, if there is not a woman at the top of the ticket, I will simply be noted as "present." Then I'll look downballot and vote for the rest of the candidates.
I don't know now whether I will ever get to vote for a woman if Clinton is not nominated this year, but I do know that in the future I will vote for any woman over any man for president - regardless of her qualifications or her background (there have been a lot of male rogues and roués on the ballot over the years, I'm not expecting a female candidate to be perfect). And after all, this year, you and many others are eager to vote for a thinly qualified male over a more qualified female? Think of your own state senator (a part time job, by the way), put him in the U.S. Senate for a year and tell me if you think he or she is qualified to be president. That's how I see Obama - he may make your heart flutter, but so does Brad Pitt.
And so I wait to see what happens this year and if Clinton is not nominated, I just hope I live long enough for someone else to be able to crack the glass ceiling.
The Connecticut for Lieberman Party is holding a statewide party meeting to nominate candidates for office on March 6, 2008 at 6:30 PM at 243 Zion Street in Hartford, Connecticut.
Barack Obama has now cut the gap with Hillary Clinton to 6 percentage points among Democrats nationally in the Gallup Poll Daily tracking three-day average, and interviewing conducted Tuesday night shows the gap between the two candidates is within a few points. Obama's position has been strengthening on a day-by-day basis. As recently as Jan. 18-20, Clinton led Obama by 20 points. Today's Gallup Poll Daily tracking is based on interviews conducted Jan. 27-29, all after Obama's overwhelming victory in South Carolina on Saturday. Two out of the three nights interviewing were conducted after the high-visibility endorsement of Obama by Sen. Edward Kennedy and his niece Caroline Kennedy.
Clinton's lead in the three-day average is now 42% to Obama's 36%. John Edwards, who dropped out of the race Wednesday after Gallup conducted these interviews, ended his quest for the presidency with 12% support. Wednesday night's interviewing will reflect the distribution of the vote choice of former Edwards' supporters as well as the impact, if any, of Hillary Clinton's popular vote win in Florida on Tuesday.
The first Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Connecticut's Democratic Presidential Primary shows the race couldn't possibly get any closer. New York Senator Hillary Clinton attracts 40% of the vote and so does Illinois Senator Barack Obama. John Edwards is a very distant third at 11% while 3% say they'd vote for some other candidate and 6% are not sure.
On the Democratic side, the combined results of three nightly samplings of 400 different voters - for Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday - found Hillary Rodham Clinton at 36 percent, Obama at 31 percent and John Edwards at 12 percent.
But when taken alone, Sunday's tracking - just a day after Obama's big win in the South Carolina primary - had Obama leading Clinton, 35 percent to 32 percent, with Edwards' share growing to 16 percent. And pretty much the same numbers came up Monday.
Survey USA, the other organization to poll California after South Carolina, shows Clinton ahead by 8% among likely voters, but with a gaping 24% advantage among those who has already voted.
Overall, there does seem to be movement toward Obama, which is good news for his campaign when it comes to securing Edwards supporters. However, the evidence is both a little spotty and a little thin. Further, Clinton can still rely on a large advantage among early voters, and bounces almost always fade. Tomorrow's polling, which will be the first after Florida, and after Edwards has dropped out, will provide significant insight.
Barely noticed in the crush of attention paid to the Crawford v. Marion County Election Board case was coverage of what we think may be an emerging strategy to vilify Election Day Registration by using the same cries of voter fraud that typify arguments for voter ID laws.
Both Obama and Clinton betrayed Lamont and all of us during the 2006 campaign. Hillary Clinton, while she did do a fundraiser for Lamont, had her husband go onto Larry King after the primary and back Lieberman by saying there was no difference between the candidates. At that moment, all of Lamont's establishment support dried up, and we lost 30% of the Democrats in the general election. At the same time, after promising to endorse the winner of the primary, Obama went through Connecticut by train and refused to stop in the state out of fear of challenging Lieberman. He had earlier in the race spoken out at the Jefferson Jackson dinner for Lieberman, his mentor.
I talked to Ned today, and expressed all of this. And he knows it. And nothing can reverse the outcome of that election, which set the stage for the complete Democratic capitulation on Iraq we saw throughout 2007.
A few weeks ago, Obama refused to help out during the Senate FISA fight, when Chris Dodd bravely filibustered the Bush administration's top priority to expand wiretapping authority and immunize telecom companies who had broken the law. The fight is probably coming around again, and Lamont promised he would advocate internally for Obama to actually stand with Dodd this time. I doubt Obama will filibuster, though it would be really good for his campaign and I would become an excited advocate for Obama were he to do so.
Still, I hope Lamont is able to persuade Obama to actually stand for principle. That would make his endorsement truly meaningful.
Rasmussen, September 27th, 500 LVs, no trendlines.
Clinton 46%--40% Giuliani
Clinton 54%--32% Thompson
Clinton 54%--31% Romney
It is nice to see Clinton back ahead in Connecticut, but it is alarming to note that Giuliani performs 16-17% better in a northeast state like Connecticut than other top Republicans. Now, consider Survey USA's latest from Massachusetts
Survey USA, (9.14-9/16, 525 RVs, MoE 4.3):
Clinton 59%--34% Giuliani
Edwards 48%--40% Giuliani
Obama 48%--43% Giuliani
Clinton 61%--32% Thompson
Edwards 56%--31% Thompson
Obama 53%--36% Thompson
Clinton 65%--31% Romney
Edwards 57%--32% Romney
Obama 53%--36% Romney
Like Giuliani among Republicans, Clinton outperforms the rest of the Democratic field in a northeast state like Massachusetts. Now, I point this out, since there were those who mocked my maps yesterday showing Giuliani competitive in Massachusetts. However, I think it should be pretty obvious now that Giuliani will make Massachusetts a lot closer than it has been in recent elections if he is matched up against someone in the general election besides Hillary Clinton. In fact, both Connecticut and New Jersey would become full-blown swing states if Giuliani is the nominee, and they might even lean toward Giuliani if someone other than Clinton is the nominee:
Obama 49%--34% Thompson
Edwards 48%--34% Thompson
Clinton 49%--36% Thompson
Edwards 51%--30% Romney
Obama 51%--31% Romney
Clinton 52%--33% Romney
Dismissing the northeast as safe Democratic territory, even in the event that Giuliani is the nominee and Clinton is not, is foolish. One can see exactly the same pattern in New York, where everything is a blowout except for two matchups:
If you want to know why I don't buy the notion that Clinton is less electable than other Democrats, or that Rudy Giuliani isn't a threat in the general election, polling in the northeast is one of the major reasons why. If we find ourselves in a serious fight over New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, and a much closer than expected fight in Massachusetts, then the electoral math becomes extremely complicated. And just imagine Giuliani bombarding those northeast states with ads in the spring and summer while our nominee does not have the ability to fight back and is getting smeared by the Republican Noise Machine. That is a total freaking disaster in a year that is supposed to be so favorable to Democrats. Coming back from that hole will return us to the Gore and Kerry strategy of trying to slip in through a keyhole by running the swing state table.
Giuliani is strong in the northeast, and that cannot be dismissed. Continue Googlebombing the crap out of him. If he is the Republican nominee, we can generate tens of millions of negative voter contacts on these three articles (see Giuliani, Giuliani and Giuliani). The Rolling Stone article has already risen above his person of the year article in Time. This is a serious warning sign, and needs to be treated seriously as a result.
