Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Weld Self-Destruction Goes Largely Unnoticed   Lately, the magnitude of New York governor hopeful William Weld's failure as a manager and educator has become clear.  Massachusetts Governor William Weld has demonstrated that the only thing he can do that's worse than quitting (as he did as governor of Massachusetts) is staying on the job.  He has served as the CEO of a small college, which nearly imploded on his watch due to truly astonishing financial mismanagement.  Whether or not it will actually continue to exist in the wake of his noble service is uncertain.  He has to be thanking his lucky stars that Jeanine Pirro's failed Senate campaign, which a Republican operative has taken to describing as "like throwing a deer down a well" (I don't know what that means, but I don't think the guy likes deer), because if the press were focusing on what Massachusetts Governor Weld has done lately, or on his quitting as governor of Massachusetts, or even his ever having been governor of Massachusetts, he would be done in New York politics. In other news regarding Weld's campaign, Republican county chairman refused to endorse his candidacy for governor yesterday.  He's actually going to have to campaign for the nomination, which as near as I can tell he finds very upsetting.  Democracy comes to New York. 3:31:38 PM    comment []

Pro-Santorum Ads Only Minimally Effective   For three weeks an anonymously-funded pro-Santorum political organization has spent over a million dollars running an ad which they effectively Xeroxed from the Senator's own website.  This ad, which makes Santorum seem to be a friend to Social Security, when in fact he has been a supporter of the President's plans to seek the destruction of Social Security, has been running without any countering ads.  Despite that, Senator Rick Santorum's deficit in his campaign against state Treasurer Bob Casey, Jr. for the US Senate has only diminished from a leviathan 18-point deficit to a merely huge 12-point deficit.  And that overlooks the fact that when the campaign is joined in earnest, the Senator's support for the President's Social Security plan will make it impossible for reasonable people to conclude that Senator Santorum is a friend of Social Security. 12:55:31 PM    comment []

Tookie Wilson:  Gone and Soon Forgotten   I am unalterably opposed to the death penalty for murder.  I wouldn't object to executions in the case of rape, or corporate crime on the Tyco, Enron, Michael Milken scale.  (Well, there's also treason...you know, stuff like leaking the names of covert CIA agents...that should be death penalty stuff as well.)  Rape, stealing the savings of thousands, and endangering your own country, are each so far outside the bounds of civilized behavior that execution is the only reasonable response.  Inexplicably, though, those guilty of either class of crime never face the death penalty (treason is different...though virtually impossible to prove).  If I were a governor, I would declare that I offer a complete pardon to any man sentenced to death while I was in office...in order to preclude any prosecutor from even considering seeking the death penalty while I was in office.  But Stanley "Tookie" Williams repeatedly had his day in court, and there is next to no exculpatory evidence, and yet he continued to insist he was innocent.  Since his innocence is wildly unlikely, and he never expressed remorse for murdering four people, even I would have refused to stay his execution.  The Governator of California got a free pass on this one.  Even death penalty opponents have a hard time appealing for mercy on behalf of a man who showed no contrition. 11:54:28 AM    comment []