As mentioned a couple times on Calitics, Bob Novak is reporting that corrupt con Jerry Lewis may retire in 2008.  Novak may be a douchebag of liberty, but he usually has excellent inside information from the GOP (you know, like who’s a covert CIA agent and who isn’t).  It started me wondering why Lewis would retire at this point, when the investigations into his practices have slowed to a crawl.  Then I remembered this story I read in yesterday’s LA Times:

As Congress investigates whether U.S. attorneys across the nation were fired or forced out for political reasons, the Bush administration appears to be poised to nominate a respected career prosecutor as U.S. attorney in Los Angeles.

Thomas O’Brien, 47, the chief of the office’s criminal division, worked for five years in the district attorney’s hard-core gang division before moving to the U.S. attorney’s office.

“He’s probably the most apolitical person selected to that job for some time,” Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said. “He’s an excellent pick. He’s a career, professional prosecutor.”

The position of US Attorney for Los Angeles, which holds jurisdiction over Lewis’ case, has been vacant since Debra Wong Yang left in January to go to Gibson Dunn, a high-powered Republican law firm that is also REPRESENTING Lewis.  O’Brien appears to be an unlikely pick for an ideological White House – he’s competent, apolitical, and a respected prosecutor – but because the Congress is sniffing around all of these US Attorney threads these days, they may have no choice but to hire someone of his stature:

Carl W. Tobias, professor of constitutional law at the University of Richmond, said O’Brien’s nomination would be a healthy sign that the Justice Department is changing its policies.

“My sense of what’s going on is that there is an inclination at the Justice Department to pick these kinds of people to defuse the controversy,” Tobias said. “It seems like it’s going to be much more of a meritocracy.”

And this could be bad news for the thoroughly unmeritorious Lewis.  An independent prosecutor would follow the evidence, and there’s a mountain of it where Lewis is concerned.  He used the Appropriations Committee in the 109th Congress as his own personal earmark factory, steering contracts to clients of connected lobbyist Bill Lowery, who has graciously given half a million dollars to Lewis campaigns over the years.

A guy like this as US Attorney in LA could be Lewis’ worst nightmare:

…O’Brien motivates attorneys to be creative and volunteer for cases. When an assistant U.S. attorney passed out during opening statements last week due to a medical problem, O’Brien took over personally. On Thursday, he was in court on the case.

“He came out with that background as a D.A. where you get a file the day before and go try it,” Carter said.

A hard-charging former D.A. versus Jerry Lewis?  That’s no contest.  Maybe it’s better for him to get out of Washington while the getting’s good, and focus more time and money on saving his own posterior.

I have to admit, I look forward to lazy Saturday mornings, a cup of coffee and following a link from Atrios to Jamison Foser’s latest “Media Matters” column. Today’s column goes after San Francisco Chronicle reporter Carla Marinucci. Goes after her hard.

Last December I took a look at the potential for a Special Election in CA-41. While that scenario would be the best opportunity to pick up the seat, Democrats would have a strong shot against the embattled congressman. Yet there is a third option, an Open Seat. And GOP insiders on the Hill are floating trial balloons to Bob Novak that Jerry Lewis won’t be running for re-election. I especially enjoyed the context provided:

Lewis is one of at least six Republican House members from California who have faced ethical scrutiny, beginning when Duke Cunningham was sent to prison. Most recently, Rep. Ken Calvert, who was sponsored by Lewis for a coveted Appropriations Committee seat, is under attack. He replaced Rep. John Doolittle, another Californian who resigned from the committee because the Justice Department was investigating him.

The CA GOP has been running a racket and it is finally catching up. And if last night’s blograiser was any indication, the Democratic Party base is pumped.

Any word on potential candidates? Is San Bernardino Mayor Pat Morris interested? I’d expect that there should be a lot of chatter following this story.

Maybe not ever, but of the day at least.

Clinton Campaign Delayed In Sacramento By Coffin

Hillary had a big ticket fundraiser in Sacto at the home of Angelides biggest boosters, the Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis.  An Iraq War protester brought a coffin and refused to let the cops inspect it.  They brought in a bomb squad.  Hillary was three hours late to her own fundraiser.  And the protester was delighted.

That was not the only SNAFU she experienced here in Cali.  Turns out someone on her staff needs to learn how to spell tomorrow.  Photo from the ChronBlog.

I decided not to go for the obscure for the video tonight.  Instead I grabbed the title track off of my favorite recent album by the wonderfully f#ckedup Amy Winehouse “Back to Black”.  Teh Winehouse is such a glorious mess.  And that hair… Have you seen her rider?  Evidently she says No, No, No to Stella and Carling but loves her some Smirnoff and Zubrowka.  I do love the insistence on real mugs for her tea “(no Styrofoam its bad for our planet)”.

Hey did you see that eHarmony is finally getting sued for its discriminatory practices?  The company was founded by a Dobsonite named Nell Warren, who doesn’t like teh gays.  There is no women seeking women or men seeking men option at the site.  That is a tinsie problem under California’s non-descrimination laws.  The company is based in California, as is the woman initiating the class action lawsuit.  This shall be interesting.

Bush is continuing to crack down on the porn industry.  They just indicted an adult film producer on obscenity charges.  This is all part of the initiative started by statue draping Ashcroft.

No more wood fireplaces in SoCal.  A proposed air pollution would ban construction of wood-burning fireplaces in LA, Orange and parts of Riverside and San Bernardino.  I am not sure why one would need to burn a fireplace down there, but it does create a certain ambience.

Ok that’s all I have got.  Time to get ready to meet Brian for dinner and head to the Yearly Kos fundraiser.  See you there.  If not, you are missing out and it’s all your fault 😛

(cross-posted from ATM Watch)

Conventional wisdom has long had it that California's decision to move up its primary to February 5 (along with many other states) would result in several undesirable consequences, not least among them being the increased importance of money in the campaign and the rise in influence of Iowa and New Hampshire (although how they could be more influential than they were in 2004 is beyond me.) Both of these scenarios, so the argument goes, point to a Hillary Clinton victory, making a February 5 “national” primary all the more problematic.

But over the past few months, reality, as it is wont to do, has seeped in and undermined the conventional wisdom. Take Q1 fundraising — Obama outraised Clinton in primary funds taking her title of presumed money leader away; and then there are the Iowa and New Hampshire polls, which have generally shown her to be much more vulnerable in the early states than she is nationwide. So what's a poor would-be front runner to do when the conventional wisdom that she had relied on to take her to victory falls down around her? It looks increasingly as though Clinton's answer is to buck conventional wisdom altogether and run hard for February 5.

This strategy requires the dismantling of one of the central assumptions about a frontloaded primary schedule, namely the heightened kingmaker status of Iowa and New Hampshire. 

Follow me…

Step one in shattering this assumption: change the media narrative. Central to this was the “leak” last week of the memo by a Clinton deputy campaign manager recommending that Clinton skip the Iowa caucuses altogether. Clinton, of course, immediately came out and denounced the memo, stating unequivocally that she intends to compete hard in Iowa. But the memo did its job, which was to plant the seed in the media that for Clinton, Iowa isn't make or break. And we all know the importance of Iowa and New Hampshire depends entirely on the expectations game spun by the media. For example, right now, Iowa is must-win for Edwards, which is a dangerous place to be. Clinton is slowly building a new media narrative, which is about lowering expectations for herself in Iowa and building up the importance of Feb 5.

Step two: develop an aggressive early vote strategy. As juls wrote HERE, the fact that Iowans actually will not be the first to vote in the 2008 presidential election was central to the controversial Clinton strategy memo. California has that honor, as our permanent absentee voters, 3.9 million strong, will be able to vote beginning January 7. And how better to reduce the importance of the results of Iowa and New Hampshire than to maximize the number of votes people cast before those results are even known.

As we've seen Clinton swoop in for money over the past few months, it's become clear that California IS much more than an ATM for her, but it's not the voters she's engaging with; rather it's the politicians whose endorsements she's racking up, and the staff she's hiring on the ground. As juls put it:

She has locked up the two highest profile Latinos in the state and will use them as surrogates on her behalf…It will be a very top down coordinated campaign that relies heavily on voter files to drive in early votes.

But these endorsements are not only key to winning California, they are central to her overall February 5 strategy. Frank at California Progress Report shares with us yet another strategy memo, this one on winning the Latino vote, released by the campaign on Wednesday morning, the day she received Mayor Villaraigosa's endorsement. The memo cites her polling strength in states with large hispanic populations such as California, New York, Texas, New Jersey, Colorado and Arizona. She's way ahead in all of them. The dates of their primaries or caucuses: February 5. Not surprisingly, neither Iowa nor New Hampshire is anywhere to be found on that memo.

If anyone can pull this off it's Clinton, whose husband turned second place in New Hampshire into a media victory in 1992. Funny thing about conventional wisdom…even when it’s wrong, sometimes it ends up being exactly right.