Delaware Dem's Latest Posts
![Friday Daily Delawhere [12.21.12]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8199/8281255654_820a5c469f_z.jpg "Friday Daily Delawhere [12.21.12]")
Thursday Open Thread [12.20.12]
ABC News’ Sam Donaldson got arrested for DUI in Lewes. Once again, Washington’s elite play too hard at our beaches. The man is 78 years old in our human years. What is he doing driving?
Do you want to check out the cool Christmas light displays around Delaware? The News Journal and DelawareOnline have a nifty map for you to look at.
![Thursday Daily Delawhere [12.20.12]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8479/8280200691_eb710ffd66_z.jpg "Thursday Daily Delawhere [12.20.12]")
Wednesday Open Thread [12.19.12]
“Conservatives often embrace ‘originalism,’ the idea that the meaning of the Constitution was fixed when it was ratified, in 1787. They mock the so-called liberal idea of a ‘living’ constitution, whose meaning changes with the values of the country at large. But there is no better example of the living Constitution than the conservative re-casting of the Second Amendment in the last few decades of the twentieth century.”
“The re-interpretation of the Second Amendment was an elaborate and brilliantly executed political operation, inside and outside of government. Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 brought a gun-rights enthusiast to the White House. At the same time, Orrin Hatch, the Utah Republican, became chairman of an important subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and he commissioned a report that claimed to find ‘clear–and long lost–proof that the second amendment to our Constitution was intended as an individual right of the American citizen to keep and carry arms in a peaceful manner, for protection of himself, his family, and his freedoms.’ The N.R.A. began commissioning academic studies aimed at proving the same conclusion. An outré constitutional theory, rejected even by the establishment of the Republican Party, evolved, through brute political force, into the conservative conventional wisdom.”
The Polling Report [12.19.12]
![The Polling Report [12.19.12]](http://m.static.newsvine.com/servista/imagesizer?file=steve-benen46D46BF3-061B-D594-18D2-E2810F6E6B58.jpg "The Polling Report [12.19.12]")
“Tradition trumped suspense Monday as members of the Electoral College cast the official, final votes in an exhausting 2012 presidential election, a constitutional formality on President Barack Obama’s march to a second term,” the AP reports. The casting of votes occurred in each of the 50 state capitol buildings and in D.C. In Arizona, the crazy racist birthers there took the opportunity to once again complain that a white man is not president.
“[T]hree of [Arizona’s 11 Electors] said questions remain about whether Barack Obama was born in this country,” Arizona Public Radio reports. Said state GOP Chairman Tom Morrissey: “I’m not satisfied with what I’ve seen. I think for somebody in the president’s position to not have produced a document that looks more legitimate, I have a problem with that.” Birther Arizona elector tells TPM: “Yeah, some people are going to say, ‘Oh, those stupid Arizonans, there they go again.’ But, you know, I’d rather be right than popular.”
In this case, you are neither. I hereby demand that all three produce their original long form birth certificates. I can tell them preemptively that I will find all three illegitimate and demand their immediate deportation to Europe.
![Wednesday Daily Delawhere [12.19.12]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8345/8280201245_f1b252fd4b_z.jpg "Wednesday Daily Delawhere [12.19.12]")
Tuesday Open Thread [12.18.12]
Why is this time different? Why are things going to change this time? Andrew Gelman at the Monkey Cage has a thought:
– The event itself is particularly horrifying: an elementary school instead of a high school, more kids getting killed, and the killer using three guns that were just lying around the house.
– Cumulation: each new shooting is added on to what came before, eventually enough people become motivated to act.
– Political timing: no national election for 23 months, now is the time for politicians to act without fear of the gun lobby.
– Political alignment: the Republicans have had so much success getting gun voters to their side that Democrats now have nothing to lose politically by supporting gun restrictions. And, if the Democrats move to restrict guns, savvy Republicans can move toward the center on the issue, confident that their Democratic opposition won’t outflank them on the right.
– The pendulum: to put that last point another way, gun policy has swung so far to the right in recent years that the force of public opinion will tend to pull it back to the center. This latest shooting has given politicians a chance to realize this and act on it.
We are coming for your guns.
And you can do nothing to stop us. For if you do, you will be rightly and justly characterized as the defenders of the murder of children. You will accept common sense regulations, limitations and restrictions on your oh so precious right to bear arms. And you will do so without complaint, just as you have been mostly silent over the last few days. And we all know you have been silent because you have nothing to say. You can’t defend this. You cannot defend yourselves. Really, your silence is an admission of guilt. You, and we, saw this coming. Really, you had to know, eventually, our most vulnerable would fall prey. It was only a matter of time.
And now that time is here.
Take a cue from a fellow NRA 100% approved Conservative Republican, and follow his lead.
![Tuesday Daily Delawhere [12.18.12]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8058/8281257036_27d058c901_z.jpg "Tuesday Daily Delawhere [12.18.12]")
Monday Open Thread [12.17.12]
Multiple reports over the weekend have Senator John Kerry being nominated to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. If that is the case, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (D) will have to appoint an interim Senator who will serve until a special election can be held to fill the remainder of Senator Kerry’s term. That special election must be held no later than 180 and no earlier than 160 days after Senator Kerry resigns.
Assuming that Kerry resigns at some point on or near January 20, then the election won’t be until July 8 at the earliest. So we will need an interim Senator for six months. Jonathan Karl has heard that Governor Patrick has talked to Senator Kennedy’s widow, Vicki Kennedy, “about the possibility of replacing Kerry in the Senate and that she did not rule it out.”
Another reported possibility is a blast from the past. Former Governor and 1988 Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis (D) “may be headed back to the political spotlight as he’s considered a likely interim replacement for Sen. John Kerry (D-MA),” The Hill reports.
![Monday Daily Delawhere [12.17.12]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8202/8281167184_ce12a29cfb_z.jpg "Monday Daily Delawhere [12.17.12]")
![Sunday Daily Delawhere [12.16.12]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8197/8256946721_bc384e9ca5_z.jpg "Sunday Daily Delawhere [12.16.12]")
![Saturday Daily Delawhere [12.15.12]](http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8493/8256946771_09b7656713_z.jpg "Saturday Daily Delawhere [12.15.12]")
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