“I don’t want get into the debate about climate change. But I’ll simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There’s no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.”
— Kentucky state Sen. Brandon Smith (R), quoted by WFPL, apparently not knowing that the average temperature on Mars is -81 degrees.
Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said he doesn’t support calls from members of his party to impeach President Obama, The Hill reports.
Asked about Sarah Palin’s comments that Obama should be impeached over child migrants illegally crossing the border, Boehner said, “I disagree.”
Then asked about members of the House GOP who have also urged for impeachment, Boehner repeated, “I disagree.”
“There is a new Clinton paid to deliver speeches — Chelsea, the former first daughter — and she is commanding as much as $75,000 per appearance,” the New York Times reports.
“Aides stressed that while Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton often address trade groups and Wall Street bankers, Ms. Clinton, now 34, focuses on organizations whose goals are in line with the work of the family’s philanthropic organization, the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. Organizers said her star power helped sell tickets and raise money.”
You're reading the free version of Political Wire
Upgrade to a paid membership to unlock full access. The process is quick and easy. You can even use Apple Pay.
Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years in federal prison, the New Orleans Times Picayune reports.
“Nagin, 58, the two-term mayor who was the face of the city during Hurricane Katrina, joins a list of Louisiana elected officials convicted of misdeeds. He is New Orleans’ first mayor to be convicted and sent to prison for public corruption.”
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) wrote a letter to President Obama more than two years ago in which he “raised a red alarm about an influx of unaccompanied children crossing the southern border, citing federal statistics showing that the number of minors had shot up 90 percent,” the Washington Post reports.
“Two years later, Perry’s letter appears prescient. The number of unaccompanied children at the border, which was 5,200 in 2012, has shot up to more than 52,000 this year — and it could reach 90,000 by the end of September, according to internal Border Patrol estimates.”
Politico notes Perry will now greet Obama on the tarmac in Dallas when the president arrives for a visit.
First Read: “One thing is pretty obvious when you look at Hillary Clinton’s fav/unfav scores in our NBC/WSJ poll: Her numbers have come back down to earth since leaving her secretary of state position… That slight but steady erosion begs the question: If she’s planning a 2016 run, should Clinton have delayed her book tour and political re-entry, given that her numbers would start declining as soon as she was viewed as a more political actor (see the book tour) than as a non-political actor (secretary of state)?”
“On the one hand, that erosion has taken place maybe a bit faster than many had anticipated. On the other hand, with all the early attention on 2016 — book tour or no book tour — the numbers were probably going to go down, since the erosion is primarily coming from GOP respondents and right-leaning independents. There’s one other potential plus to the 2014 book tour: She’s answered every question, and has had everyone kick her tires. If you’re going to run, don’t you go ahead and get that out of the way?”
A new Wall Street Journal/WNBC-TV/Marist poll in New York finds Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) leading challenger Rob Astorino (R) by 59% to 24%.
Washington Post: “Tuesday’s announcement that the 2016 Republican National Convention will be held in Cleveland underscored the importance of Ohio in the party’s national strategy to win back the White House and affirmed the influence of Sen. Rob Portman, who pushed for months for the lakeside city to land the coveted nominating convention.”
“But Portman (R-OH) is interested in more than just hosting the convention in his home state. He would like a starring role, perhaps as his party’s presidential nominee.”
Former Sen. Evan Bayh (D) is keeping Indiana Democrats on hold about his possible intentions to run for governor, Howey Politics reports.
“Party loyalists longing for a political savior to retake the governor’s office have been waiting on Bayh ever since he abruptly decided to leave the U.S. Senate and political life three years ago. For now, it appears, they’ll just have to keep waiting, perhaps well into this fall. Despite a hefty campaign war chest and deep nostalgia for his days as a popular centrist Democrat, Bayh says he needs more time to decide whether he’ll try to recapture his old job.”
Said Bayh: “I think it’s less likely than more likely. I haven’t ruled it out.”
Derek Willis: “Members of the House have voted the wrong way at least 112 times since the beginning of 2011 (see all of them here). This isn’t an epidemic; the number of mistaken votes represents about one in every 10,000 individual votes taken during that span, and no member of the House has done it more than four times (Adam Smith, a Washington Democrat, holds the dubious honor).”
“In all, 84 of the 519 people who have served in the House since 2010 have registered an incorrect vote since the beginning of 2011. It’s possible that others have done the same but have not put a statement in the Congressional Record about it. If so, that’s a pity, because those statements both clarify the lawmaker’s intentions (in order to avoid any political missteps) and also provide some examples of creative assignment of responsibility.”
Dana Millbank: “Imperial Japan taught its soldiers that death was preferable to surrender. The tea party’s code is similar: Stand firm, regardless of the odds of success or the consequences of failure. I’ve argued before that the struggle between the Republican establishment and the tea party is no longer about ideology — establishment figures have mostly co-opted tea party views — but about temperament.”
“It has become the amiable vs. the angry, the civil vs. the uncivil, a conservatism of the head vs. a conservatism of the spleen. The division now is between those who would govern and those who would sooner burn the whole place to the ground — and, in this struggle, McDaniel carries a torch.”
Politico: “Republicans will hold their 2016 national convention more than a month earlier than their 2012 event for one simple reason: money.”
“Two years ago, Mitt Romney raised $1 billion but found himself out of cash that August due to campaign finance laws that essentially force candidates to divide their spending between pre-and-post convention accounts. Moving the convention up, the GOP reasons, will help make those rules a non-issue.”
“When President Obama placed a call to Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany last Thursday, he had a busy agenda: to consult with a close ally and to mobilize wavering Europeans to put more pressure on Russia to end its covert incursions in Ukraine,” the New York Times reports.
“What Mr. Obama did not know was that a day earlier, a young German intelligence operative had been arrested and had admitted that he had been passing secrets to the Central Intelligence Agency.”
“While Ms. Merkel chose not to raise the issue during the call, the fact that the president was kept in the dark about the blown spying operation at a particularly delicate moment in American relations with Germany has led frustrated White House officials to question who in the C.I.A.’s chain of command was aware of the case — and why that information did not make it to the Oval Office before the call.”
The White House “formally requested $3.7 billion in emergency funding from Congress to deal with an influx of Central American minors along the southern border. But the proposal was quickly met with broad skepticism among Republican lawmakers, who were doubtful that the package would be approved quickly — if at all,” the Washington Post reports.
Jakarta governor Joko Widodo “claimed victory Wednesday in a closely fought Indonesian presidential election, but his rival disputed the unofficial vote count and refused to concede defeat,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Mr. Widodo, who saw his once-commanding lead in opinion polls evaporate in recent months, declared that he won based on unofficial vote tallies by independent organizations that showed him with a lead of 3-6 percentage points. Those organizations had been roughly accurate in using quick counts of a sampling of polling stations to predict results of April legislative elections. But Prabowo Subianto, a former army general from the era of authoritarian ruler Suharto, claimed that he had won a mandate and refused to concede. His camp said pollsters used by his campaign indicated he likely won by 4-5 percentage points.”
“We had two Roosevelts. We had two Adams. It may be that certain families just have a sense of commitment or even a predisposition to want to be in politics.”
— Hillary Clinton, in an interview with Der Spiegel.
“It’s time to impeach; and on behalf of American workers and legal immigrants of all backgrounds, we should vehemently oppose any politician on the left or right who would hesitate in voting for articles of impeachment.”
— Sarah Palin, writing for Breitbart, calling for the impeachment of President Obama.
Iowa U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst (R) told a crowd that she believed President Obama had “become a dictator” and that he needed to face the consequences for his executive actions, “whether that’s removal from office, whether that’s impeachment,” Yahoo News reports.
Said Ernst: “Unfortunately we have a number of legislators right now that simply let these things happen. They’re not speaking up against these actions. They’re not speaking out against the president when he oversteps his bounds, when he makes those appointments, when he’s appointing czars, when he is producing executive orders in a threat to a Congress that won’t do as he wishes. So he has become a dictator.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
“There are a lot of blogs and news sites claiming to understand politics, but only a few actually do. Political Wire is one of them.”
— Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press”
“Concise. Relevant. To the point. Political Wire is the first site I check when I’m looking for the latest political nugget. That pretty much says it all.”
— Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the Rothenberg Political Report
“Political Wire is one of only four or five sites that I check every day and sometimes several times a day, for the latest political news and developments.”
— Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report
“The big news, delicious tidbits, pearls of wisdom — nicely packaged, constantly updated… What political junkie could ask for more?”
— Larry Sabato, Center for Politics, University of Virginia
“Political Wire is a great, great site.”
— Joe Scarborough, host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
“Taegan Goddard has a knack for digging out political gems that too often get passed over by the mainstream press, and for delivering the latest electoral developments in a sharp, no frills style that makes his Political Wire an addictive blog habit you don’t want to kick.”
— Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post
“Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.”
— Glenn Reynolds, founder of Instapundit
“I rely on Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire for straight, fair political news, he gets right to the point. It’s an eagerly anticipated part of my news reading.”
— Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist.