Whenever man comes up with a better mousetrap,
nature immediately comes up with a better mouse.
James Carswell
Image of the Day
Chart of the Day: Government is the Biggest Barrier to US Innovation
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| Via Reason |
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| Courtesy of Cato Institute |
I was online on the early hours this morning when the AP called the Alaska Senate race for Republican Dan Sullivan after the first 20,000 absentee and other votes cast maintains his 8000 vote lead over incumbent Begich. There are still an unspecified few thousands of votes outstanding, but not enough for Begich to close the gap. Begich has refused to concede with the usual "every vote needs to be counted" talking point. This moves the count to GOP 53, Dems 46 with the Dec. 6 Louisiana runoff between incumbent Landrieu and Cassidy remaining. It looks as though the Senate and the House are in a race to get Keystone pipeline authorization passed during the lame duck session, which both candidates favored. Third-place Maness has already endorsed Cassidy; I have not seen a post-primary Louisiana poll, but Cassidy has been consistently winning pairwise polls for months, and he finished higher than most expected in the primary by 4 or more percentage points.
No decisions in the 7 House races; 2 of those are Louisiana runoffs in which the leading Democrat candidate polled below 30% and GOP candidates split the vote. A couple of narrow GOP lead districts in California and Arizona are likely headed for recounts.
It looks as though the GOP outpeformed the generic party polls before the election. From WSJ:
Voters in House races cast 52% of their ballots for Republicans on Election Day, compared with 45% for Democrats, according to a tally of the 71.9 million votes reported by the Associated Press as of Tuesday.
That margin was far wider than pre-election polls had suggested. Prior to Election Day, RealClearPolitics’ average of nine recent polls of voter preference in a generic ballot put Republicans ahead by 2.4 percentage points.
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| Courtesy of Gallup |
Facebook Corner
(National Review). The Pope's demotion of Cardinal Burke, a loyal but eloquent critic, could turn out to be his greatest mistake.
It's a shame so many anti-Catholic trolls are spamming this thread. No, the concept of infallibility does not apply to everything a pope says or does. I'm a libertarian-conservative Catholic, and I find very little substance or moral leadership in this pope; he does not understand business or economics, and he has engaged in morally ambiguous rhetoric. He's all-miter, no-sheep, the Barry Obama of pontiffs. I applaud the priest author for pointing out the authoritarian nature of this pope, who seems more interested in his image and settling "progressive" scores than in standing up to a morally corrupt culture.
(Reason). This sort of drug-testing is not only repellent on ethical grounds, it's a clear waste of money.
It's shameful to see Walker engaging in unconstitutional populist nonsense; Florida's Rick Scott is obsessed with drug testing that doesn't even pay for itself, e.g., the low percentage of positives doesn't even cover testing costs, which makes it bad policy simply from a cost-benefit perspective. The last thing I heard federal courts have struck down Scott's mandatory testing both for welfare recipients and for state employees in general (some exceptions for public safety workers) on fourth amendment grounds. Assuming Walker is aware of how the courts ruled in Scott's case, why would he pursue policies that will almost certainly be struck down by the courts?
What Does "Hitler" Think of the Midterm Election Results?
HT Carpe Diem
The Unintended Consequences of Sandra Fluke's "Free" Birth Control
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Nate Beeler |
Glen Campbell, "Gentle on My Mind"
