Holy, Moly. The Colorado governor's race just went into overdrive. Congressman Bob Beauprez who is running on the Republican side has been running an attack ad on Democrat and former District Attorney Bill Ritter for plea deals made while in office that allowed some defendants to avoid deportation. (I've been a big Bill Ritter fan for years.) Ritter now says,

Beauprez is running an ad that accuses Ritter of plea bargaining to probation illegal immigrant and accused heroin dealer Carlos Estrada Medina. Medina, the ad says, was later arrested for the sexual abuse of a child. However, Medina's name does not show up on court files in either Denver or California - where Beauprez's campaign says he was charged. Beauprez's campaign contends that Medina used aliases in both cases.

Ritter said Beauprez used non-public law enforcement identification numbers to make the link between the aliases and Medina. He has asked the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to investigate the charge. (my emphasis.)

Beauprez responds he used an informant to get the information and did no wrong.

Rick Manguson, the pro-drug war challenger in the Pitkin County Sheriff's race, is complaining that Grass Roots Television has shown a video he made a year ago showing him spanking the monkey.

Magnuson admitted the video shows him masturbating. The shot, however, is from far away and Magnuson says the piece was a legitimate mode of self-expression....The 12-minute movie shows Magnuson digging a hole in the Mojave Desert on his 40th birthday. When he strikes water, the shot switches to about 20 yards away, with Magnuson's back to the viewer as he faces the hole and masturbates into it.

Republican Congressman Chris Shays (CT) is scrambling, trying to backtrack from his comments at a debate this week in which he said the Abu Ghraib scandal didn't involve torture.

"Now I've seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture," Shays said at a debate Wednesday. "It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked," added Shays. "And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn't torture."

Today he told the Associated Press he didn't mean sexual abuse was not torture. Yet, he still maintains what happened at Abu Graib was the result of a sex ring of a National Guard unit run amok. He says the scandal was more about pornography than torture.

That dog won't hunt. Staging a mock execution as Ivan Frederick did is not sex abuse. It's torture, plain and simple. Frederick also admitted to stomping on prisoners' hands and feet and punching them in the chest.

From Big Tent Democrat

Charlie Cook's upcoming column says:

If you want to know how much pain the midterm elections are likely to inflict on the Republican Party, keep your eyes on the national spotlight. If, for the next three weeks, attention remains focused on the war in Iraq and on congressional scandals, the Republicans could lose 20 to 30 seats--or perhaps even more.

. . . In short, we need to be aware of how bad this election could be for Republicans, while also keeping in mind that politics is a volatile business. The spotlight could shift another time or two before November 7. Anyone who focuses only on the Republicans' vulnerability or only on the impossibility of knowing what will hold the public's attention in the coming weeks is missing half of the story.

Charlie is darn smart. I listen to him.

Beleagured Jeanine Pirro, running for New York Attorney General, is catching more flak. This time it is for over-emphasizing her tough stance as a prosecutor in sex offender and pedophile cases. The New York Times reports:

In press releases she issued over six years, Jeanine F. Pirro, the Westchester County district attorney, trumpeted the arrests made in Internet sex stings that her office ran. By the time she left office at the end of 2005, that undercover pedophile operation had snared 111 men, including a Roman Catholic priest, a private-school headmaster, a New York City detective and a former Brooklyn prosecutor.

In her campaign, Pirro has repeatedly referred to her 100% conviction rate in these cases and stressed that the offenders were convicted of felonies that carried up to four years in jail.

Has Tom Reynolds become radioactive? John McCain may think so.

Erie County Republicans on Tuesday quickly recruited White House power hitter Karl Rove to speak at their annual black-tie dinner Oct. 20 after the front-runner for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. John McCain, dropped out unexpectedly.

In addition to speaking at the dinner, McCain was scheduled to lead a rally in Buffalo for embattled Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds, R-Clarence. McCain's office Tuesday scrubbed both events, claiming that the popular Arizona Republican had a scheduling conflict.

The Senate Majority Project may have been a factor in McCain's sudden pull-out:

As if Macaca wasn't enough, there's this:

Stock options that Senator George Allen described as worthless were worth as much as $1.1 million at one point, according to a review of Senate disclosure forms and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings. The records appear to contradict remarks he made to the Associated Press. ``I got paid in stock options which were worthless,'' AP quoted him as saying.

Allen served as a board member of Chantilly, Virginia-based Xybernaut Corp. from 1998 until December 2000 and was awarded options on 110,000 shares during that period. His Senate financial disclosure form for 1999, required for candidates as well as officeholders, doesn't report that he owned the options.

[Hat tip Patriot Daily.]

A new CNN poll finds a majority of respondents say Denny Hastert should resign over FoleyGate.

The poll, conducted Friday through Sunday by Opinion Research Corporation, found that 52 percent of the 1,028 adults interviewed think Hastert should step aside. Only 31 percent said they think he should keep his post, and 17 percent had no opinion. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 3 percent. (Full poll results)

I agree but I hope he continues to follow his ego instead of poll results so the Dems can win by an even greater margin in November.

I guess "the buck stops here" doesn't have the same meaning it used to.

by TChris

Today in Foleyville:

• This new information, while describing nothing illegal, keeps the Mark Foley story and the Republican cover-up in the news, and may help persuade Republican "values voters" to stay at home in November.

• Tom Reynolds apologizes for trusting other Republicans. But he cancels an appearance on "This Week" because (cough, cough) he has the flu.

• Republicans aren't helped by editorials like this one, which characterizes the Republican response to the Foley scandal as being "as chaotic as a clown convention." The editorial provides a small history lesson:

Some House members are rallying around Hastert, a genial fellow who came to power when Robert Livingston, the heir presumptive to ethically-challenged Newt Gingrich, foundered on an extramarital affair. He has spent his term deferring to more ruthless members like Tom DeLay, who's now under indictment in a campaign finance case and under investigation in a lobbying scandal, and also to the White House once George Bush became president.

by TChris

The times they are a-changin'.

For the first time since 2001, the NEWSWEEK poll shows that more Americans trust the Democrats than the GOP on moral values and the war on terror.

A change is gonna come.

Fully 53 percent of Americans want the Democrats to win control of Congress next month, including 10 percent of Republicans, compared to just 35 percent who want the GOP to retain power.

Newsweek's new poll shows the presidential approval rating at an all-time low: 33 percent.

(Guest Post from Big Tent Democrat)

Lieberman again reverted to his partisanship theme.

"I know some people are calling for [House Speaker Dennis] Hastert to resign, but the truth is that unless he knows what he saw and he saw something he should have acted on, he deserves to have essentially a fact-finder to come in," Lieberman said.

"The Foley case bothers people," he added. "If anyone thinks they can make this into another partisan flap, it's not. It's very real and human. The House Republican leaders and, frankly, the Democratic leadership, should not make it partisan."

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

If you believe this story:

A Democratic Congressman with whom I have very good relations (no, not the Mark Foley kind) was drowning his sorrows tonight at the thought of going into the majority now. His point was that if the Dems lose again this year, they can blame Pelosi and replace her and will inevitably take control in 2008.

But, because of Republican incompetence (to get an accurate account of what he said, insert the "F" word after every second word in this post and after every reference to either party), the Democrats are going to take the majority this year, will have to make Pelosi the Speaker or look really bad, and then she will screw up everything for the Democrats and destroy their majority for the next 25 years. He assures me that this is a widespread sentiment, particularly among Southern and Midwestern members of the Democratic delegation who would rather see Speaker Hoyer or Speaker Anybody but Pelosi.

Heh. I got four words for Republicans on that -- Henry Waxman, Committee Chairman. Steny Hoyer should keep quiet don't you think?