Mark Kirk (IL-10)?? NO, NO, NO!

Thia guy practically sucked off Bush for the last eight years. He is the poster child of lockstep.

An Obama official has just stated that indeed the Governor of Illinois should resign.

Caroline Kennedy would be a great choice for senator: she has genuine intellect and interest and passion for history and politics that is being under-reported. In other words, she has what it takes beyond the name.

having been a warden (top dog) at an election precinct several times, i have great sympathy for the people in minnesota trying to count the ballots.

it is not necessarily an indication of sloppiness on their part that "mysteries" crop up during the process. how many millions of pieces of papers have they had to handle here?

it was a head-banging experience for me, and it was just one ward in one precinct, and not a very busy one at that.

Seems like either Cuomo or Kennedy would be a good fit for Hillary's seat. Kennedy has raised some hackles over trying to "jump the queue" or something but from what I've read she's been very active, just quietly behind the scenes instead of compulsively grabbing headlines like *cough* Sarah Palin *cough*. I would have no problem with her as a senator.

As for Obama's middle name, isn't about time that people were reminded that one of the best friends America had in the Middle East for decades was King Hussein of Jordan? Hussein = It's not just for terrorists anymore.

From what I've read, Hussein is a fairly common name in certain parts of the world. Republican morons tried to turn it into a dirty word and use it to scare voters, and failed.
I hope Steve Doocey is watching. Good for Obama.

Maybe one day we'll be close enough to a normal country where the incoming president need only say, "I'm proud of my name" and that silences the bigots.

Wow, apparently, my lying sack o' crap rep Kirk isn't as bad as some others.

http://www.progressivepunch.org/members.jsp?member=IA5&search=selectScore&chamber=House&zip=&x=19&y=4

Yikes.

Yikes, those are the contenders for the seat in Illinois?!? The best in that list is actually Bean - and that's not too good! Maybe some beneficent carpetbagger will fly-in and run...

Have no problem with the useage of Hussein.

However, for something truly dirty and scary, try Milhous.

karen marie this isn't a third world country yet. All the ballots are supposed to go to one place. It's not like one person is inspecting and counting each and every ballot.

try Milhous

Or W. Barbara Bush thought she was doing her son a favor by limiting the letters, not realizing how much trouble he would have with three syllables.

FWIW, hussein is Arabic for beautiful.

-Z

Speaking of New York, Rep. Pete King (R-N.Y.) will apparently run for Clinton's Senate seat in 2010

I thought the term was up in 2012?

Red Right Hand - This is rather odd, but Patterson gets to appoint a Sen until the next election cycle (2010). The winner of that then gets to serve until the regular term ends (2012), at which point you have another election. So you could have four Sens between now and 2013 (including Hillary).

I worked for Pete King in the 1980s. He sexually harassed me the whole time I worked there, until I finally quit -- and his secretary was very helpful in helping me make the transition as smoothly as possible -- clearly this wasn't the first time she'd seen this. If he runs, I'm calling a press conference.

karen marie this isn't a third world country yet. All the ballots are supposed to go to one place. It's not like one person is inspecting and counting each and every ballot. -- Gandalf. @12:49

I worked on the absentee team once and can confirm Karen Marie's experience. Absentee ballots are a royal pain and mistakes there are easy to make.

First, there are two kinds of absentee voting: one where you come, early, to the registrar and vote in person (because you'll be away during the Election Day). You use the same equipment and the same kid of ballot as the rest of the voters and it gets recorded in one way.

Then, there are the mailed-in absentee ballots, which are quite different from in-person ones and are recorded and stored differently. But both have to be brought to the precinct on the Election Day, reconciled, and reported together as a single block of absentee votes. The time I worked on that team, we only had 37 absentee votes and we spent an hour and a half counting and recounting them. Because, indeed, every vote had to be counted manually, by each of us (3 people) and each of us had to come to the same result before we could stop, put both kinds into a single envelope, signed by all three... The mail-in absentee ballots are a particular pain in the neck, because they're the ones where you have to make sure that the right envelope is within the right envelope, signed in the proper place, with the two witness signatures attesting to the truth of your signature, etc, etc, etc...