After college, I spent a couple years on the "Hippie Trail," the overland route from London to New Delhi and Kathmandu. There were places, primarily in western Turkey and eastern Iran where the idea of "road" was theoretical. But overall, a few hundred of us made it through every year from the late '50s into the mid '70s.
On Thursday evening the Houston Chronicle reported that when Blake Farenthold slithered out of Congress last week he did so without repaying the $84,000 he stole from the taxpayers to cover up the charges that he had sexually harassed a female staffer.
It was actually silly for Trump to tweet yesterday that Democratic Senate candidate Doug Jones is somehow a Pelosi/Schumer puppet. And, an hour later, he repeated the focus group-tested phrase. Puppet? Pelosi puppet? Jones is running for Senate and Schumer's name isn't toxic enough (yet) among the Fox/Hate Talk Radio masses to stand on its own.
Remember the good old days when the NRCC made Mafia thug Michael "Mikey Suits" Grimm a member of their Young Guns program? Grimm managed to beat a Democratic incumbent, Blue Dog GOP-lite backbencher Michael McMahon 65,024 (49.5%) to 60,773 (46.2%). But Grimm is a big time career criminal and Congress didn't slow him down one bit and he eventually wound up in prison. So now he's a felon-- and a candidate for Congress again.
Ruben Kihuen and Dean Heller-- 2018 Senate opponents?There really was only one feasible way to stop Betsy DeVos from being confirmed-- Nevada. Nevada is a swing state tilting Blue. Obama won it against McCain in 2008 (55-43%) and against Romney in 2012 (52-46%). This past November, Hillary took the state's 6 electoral votes against Triump 537,753 (47.9%) to 511,319 (45.5%).
Lame and lamerThis morning Alex Isenstadt's column in Politico, Homestretch made the case that the Republicans are blowing their chance to make the mammoth gains in the House many predicted they could.
