From the Politico:

Republican Rep. Jim Walsh of New York is expected to announce his retirement soon, according to a GOP aide familiar with the decision, giving Democrats another pick-up opportunity following a wave of Republican retirements this cycle.

The veteran appropriator had a tough reelection fight in 2006 and was expected to face another challenge in the fall.

Big hat tip to Rottenchester on this one.

We first wrote about rumors of Walsh’s retirement a few months ago, but I never believed them…til now.

It’s like deja vu all over again: Reynolds and Kuhl voted against SCHIP, Slaughter and Walsh voted for it (here’s the roll call)

The total number of yeas was 260 — below the number needed for an override of The Decider’s veto.

(h/t Fighting29th)

We’ve talked before about how Sen. Harry Reid (D), majority leader in the Senate, seems intent on letting Bush have his way in granting immunity to companies that have been breaking the law by spying on all of us.  How it makes sense to let a president who’s at 30% in the polls have his primary 2008 goal acheived is beyond me.  But then, I’m outside the Beltway.

The 3 main Dem candidates for Prez, including NY’s own Hilary Clinton, have been touting their leadership skills.  Well, now’s the time to put up or shut up. The proud progressives over at Working Assets have put together a website where you can quickly and easily send an email to each of the candiates all at once, asking them to help Sen. Chris Dodd in fighting this.

Apparently, so many folks have emailed, it’s crashing the candidates’ mail servers.  Let’s keep it coming!

It’ll be cool to see our candiates show some real spine, instead of just talking a good game.

(…and now I go back to blog tech hell…wish me luck! Hope to see you all again soon… :-))

I normally try to stay away from “here’s something cool from YouTube” type posts, but these two are so funny, and in a strange way, so similar that I feel the need to pass them on. First, here’s Mitt Romney singing “Who Let the Dogs Out”.

Then there’s Rudy’s new “Disaster Fund” ad which features a bizarre musical accompaniment some have described as “a slightly funkified 70s porn soundtrack.”

A dear friend of mine, jokingly, advised me to say that if I ever wanted to get out of jury duty. We both laughed because neither of us ever ever want to get out of jury duty.

Well, I’ve used that line multiple times talking to folks who simply can’t understand why we aren’t executing more people because, well, they got convicted. Remember Governor Bush proudly proclaiming, like a trophy, the amount of people put to death in Texas?

Well, check this out. I picked up the story from the NYT via dkos.

HOUSTON — After nearly 27 years in prison for a rape he did not commit, Charles Chatman walked free on Thursday, the 15th wrongfully convicted prisoner in Dallas County to be exonerated by DNA testing since 2001.

Read the story. You will learn more about Dallas, the innocence project and a bunch of other things that you may or may not be ready for.

In the end remember, just because the cops arrest someone, they may not be guilty and more importantly, that whole Constitution stuff applies equally to every member of our society.

Oh, one more thing - It’s not like this hasn’t happened in NY. Jeanine Pirro and Jeffrey Deskovic come to mind. What about Betty Tyson - who, thanks to the rock solid reporting of the D&C’s Gary Craig, is not in jail.

Oh, one more thing. How important is it to have have a rock solid Public Defender unencumbered by politics?

This is one of the many reasons the Public Defender selection needs to be apolitical.