Kirk Fordham resigns from House office

This just in: GOP Congressional aide Kirk Fordham has resigned as a result of the Foley scandal. Fordham was chief of staff to Foley and was working in Reynolds office at the time. Pat Buchanan and some guy named Mike Papatonino (sp?) from Air America are debating the potential fall outs currently on MSNBC.

Despite being offered a full ride to play baseball for the University of Kentucky Wildcats, Kyle Orr has decided to go pro and signed a contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Los Angeles Dodgers made Kyle Orr of Victoria a relatively rich young man yesterday by inking the 18-year-old to a pro baseball contract with a guaranteed signing bonus of $435,000 US, and an additional $100,000 US thrown in for university tuition, if Orr goes to school at a later time.

Rock legend Eric Clapton talks about his fame, age, and the loss of friends.

Some good news dealing with the UN, they are empowered to use force against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

A former camp guard has had his citizenship revoked as a result of well, you know.

A must read article. I emailed the one campaign and have yet to recieve a single reply detailing where they stand on the issues dealing with Israel.

It's not about Lieberman the man, and it's also not about his rival Ned Lamont. It's about the Democratic Party. If Lieberman loses, the Democrats will have to work harder with pro-Israel voters.[...]

On the other subject I chose to ask about, I got a far more definitive answer than expected: The panel thinks that the Lieberman question - whether Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman will be able to get reelected after losing in the Democratic primaries and running as an independent - is of great relevance to Israel.

Four of the panel members rated it 5 out of 5 for "significance." No one gave it less than 3 out of 5. Here, the differences between right, center and left wing panelists are not as visible. It's unanimously thought to be important.

I asked some panelists why they consider it to be of such importance, and here's the basic theme I heard from them: It's not about Lieberman the man (while they do think Lieberman is a serious, thoughtful, excellent candidate, this is not the issue for Israelis). And it is also not about his rival Ned Lamont, whom the panel doesn't really know. It's about the Democratic Party. About the dominance of the more leftist constituency in the party.

Now, this is not a theme we have never heard before. The reason why this race was closely followed in the American national media is exactly the same: the implications it might have on the Democratic Party.

The Israeli issue, however, didn't play a major role in the race, as Lamont said all the right things and didn't give anyone any reason to be suspicious about him in that department.[...]

We can already see some decline in the overall ratings of the Democratic candidates this month. However, most of it can be attributed to small changes made by some of the more rightist panel members, who decided to be harsher in their judgement of the Democrats.

This will change in a more visible way if Lieberman loses next month, and, if the other candidates wish to avoid such harsh judgement, they will have to invest even more energy to prove that there's no justification for this concern.

And you know what? The leaders of the party understand this very well. That's exactly why some senior members of Congress took the trouble to chat with Jewish journalists. That's why Senator Joseph Biden told them that his and his party's support for Israel "comes from our gut, moves through our heart, and ends up in our head. It's almost genetic."