Tidbits From Elsewhere

Just a sign that I'm behind, most of the other bloggers have already covered stuff that I've bookmarked in my browser to remind myself to cover later. Hopefully, they'll forgive my lack of originality. I'm just going to touch on a few things, here, instead of providing a full post for each.

Artur Davis says that politicians should focus on issues instead of attacks. I happen to agree with him.

Doc and Dan have both covered the Republican loyalty oath that everyone was talking about a few months back. What at first seemed harmless now seems to raise a few concerns. As Dan pointed out, the loyalty oath only covers voting with Republicans on leadership positions and operating rules of the legislative body. But as Doc pointed out, Rep. Todd Greeson has received a warning letter about not voting with Republicans against a BIR. While a BIR can technically be considered a procedural vote, voting against it will kill a bill. (Those of us following the I&R issue are well aware of that.) This brings up concerns over Republicans voting with party interests, rather than constituent interests, to kill legislation. That doesn't look harmless to me.

A big tip o' the hat to Between the Links, which has posted a link to Lucy Baxley's answers to a Project Vote Smart survey. A big kudos to Lucy for answering the questions when Governor Riley has not. Our Libertarian candidate should probably look at answering the questions as well.

Meanwhile, the Gun Toting Liberal has touched on the ABC 9/11 movie, which has turned events leading up to the terrorist attacks into a work of fiction in an attempt to blame everything on the Clinton Administration. I would hope that Republicans will yell just as loudly about this movie as they did about the Reagan movie that would have aired on the CBS network, but I doubt it. One particular scene that never happened shows CIA agents about to take down Osama bin Laden but deciding not to after they can not get authorization to do so. (Seems like I've heard that before somewhere.) You can read about the Democrats' reactions here and here.

Finally, Outraged Moderates have suggested replacing Donald Rumsfeld with Lindsey Graham. Not a bad suggestion.