National

I've frequently said, "We don't have a spending problem, we have a revenue problem." That is true as long as you are talking about domestic spending. Domestic programs from food safety inspections to college loan guarantees are cut to the bone. "Entitlements" such as Social security add nothing to the debt and could easily be self-sustaining well into the future with modest revenue side reforms. However, if you talking about the US budget in its entirety, the wingnuts are right. We do have a spending problem. We have a pretty big fucking spending problem.

I am not a reader of the right wing downstate "Delaware Politics." But I have the blog on my Google Reader RSS Feed so I can see when and what they post, and every once and a while, they will post something that piques my interest. Like David Anderson's reaction to the repeal of the Death Penalty in the Senate yesterday. Now, keep in my mind when reading this that David Anderson is supposedly a professed devout Christian, and he relies on those beliefs constantly to inform his opinions on women's healthcare, women's rights, abortion, homosexuality, marriage equality, contraception, education, the First Amendment, and I could go on and on and on. I am not saying there is anyting wrong with relying upon your religion to inform your political beliefs. But David does. And this is what he said....

After giving up on changing the sentences for current death row murderers, the Senate passed over bipartisan and law enforcement opposition to repeal the state death penalty. The bill goes on the House. 3 Republicans crossed over to support the bill, led by the Minority Leader.

Anderson then goes on to list the votes of the entire Senate, like I did yesterday. After reading this, I cannot tell if David is happy or said that death penalty repeal was passed by the Senate. There is no celebration, but there is no ranting and raving either. Given the comments from Don Ayotte and others on that post (reacting with the typical reserve, calm and discretion that is representative of the Teabagger movement(/snark)), I wonder if David is purposefully masking his true thoughts here for fear that he will offend his rabid readers.

Huffington Post had up as their lead banner story earlier this evening the pictures of 10 Senate Democrats who are still either opposed to marriage equality or who are silent on it, despite the avalanche of Democratic politicians who are rushing to be on the right side of history recently, namely their colleagues Claire McCaskill, Mark Begich and Mark Warner recently. The stunning facial features of our Senior Senator was among the pictures of the 10. Come inside to see what HuffPo had to say about Senator Carper.....

This late afternoon, the State Senate passed Senate Bill 19, the repeal of the death penalty in Delaware and replacing it with life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. It was not a straight party line vote, to my surprise. Come inside to see who voted which way....

THE technology of the righteous needs some tweaking. Doesn't everyone's? But hey... this is strange...Check out this panicky email and let me know if you find them beseeching God for his help in cracking down on their email leaks - because I must have missed it.

The idea of forcing Congresscritters to wear NASCAR-style coveralls with the logos of their financial backers has been bandied about before, but here it is in official White House petition form.

Molly Ball asks "Has Obama Turned a Generation of Voters Into Lifelong Democrats?," -- and answers in the affirmative.

The under-30 vote went nearly as strongly for Obama as it had before: Obama got 66 percent of the under-30 vote in 2008 and 60 percent in 2012, the best youth-vote showings for any presidential candidate since 1971, when the voting age was lowered to 18. Against the by-now-familiar backdrop of massive Obama rallies on college campuses, liberal youth might just seem like the normal order of things. But there’s nothing natural about it. Ronald Reagan came within a point of capturing the under‑30 vote in his 1980 presidential election, then won it by 19 points in 1984, giving the lie to the idea that kids are inherently liberal. Now some Democrats hope Obama’s repeat success with young voters signals the arrival of a cohort whose members will vote Democratic for the rest of their lives. “These are voters who are in their formative years, politically,” Joel Benenson, the lead pollster for the Obama campaign, told me excitedly in the days after the election. “People frequently maintain the partisan identity that shapes their entry point into politics. What’s happening now is something people will hang on to for decades to come.” Could Benenson be right? Has Obama turned an entire generation of voters into lifelong Democrats? The answer, according to political scientists who study partisanship, may well be yes.

Here is the third update to the PDD-DL Vote Tracker, to reflect the action that has taken place since the General Assembly returned from the Budget hearing recess during February and early March. One bill you will not see on the chart below is the Marriage Equality Bill. But that is only because it has not been filed yet. It has been reported that Rep. Melanie George Smith will introduce marriage equality legislation during this session. The session ends on June 30, 2013 at midnight. Interestingly, the Supreme Court will likely issue its ruling in two marriage equality cases (Hollingsworth v. Perry is about the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 and United States v. Windsor argues that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional) on or about the same day, as the Court usually holds its most important or controversial decisions for the very last day of its term, which also ends at the end of June (remember last year with the Obamacare ruling, it was on June 28). One thought I had was that Rep. Smith would wait until the ruling to introduce the legislation as the worst the Court could do is return the issue of marriage equality to the states. But I would think Smith and other advocates would not want to wait until to last minute to introduce and then vote on the bill. So we are probably looking at April, after the Easter break. Come inside for the full chart.