Daily News Roundup, 11/29/07: Getting Mud On The Suits

So the Republican free-for-all came and went — excuse me, I meant "debate;" I've been reading too much Washington Post — and if you Tivoed it to check out the best Republican brawls, just start watching it from the beginning. It's all there.

Anderson Cooper started off the festivities with immigration questions, so Romney and Giuliani got to continue their blood feud from over the weekend. You can tell that immigration is red meat for their base, and that they're all fighting for that base: Tom Tancredo went so far as mentioning, "all I've heard is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo." If you recall Tancredo's call to stop immigration of any sort, legal as well as illegal, that may worry you a bit. But it did make for a great bloodbath.

Huckabee got some swings taken at him as well, assuredly in response to his good recent polling in the early states. He responded to them well and without resorting to attacks, which gave him some of that gravitas that he usually seems to be lacking. Thompson, on the whole, came out pretty clean — I guess the "too lazy" bit has worn thin — and used the free pass to try to look dignified in comparison to the other frontrunners. It may have worked, but with the Rudy/Romney argument dominating the debate, I'm not sure he had enough attention drawn to him to matter.

I think the main thing I pulled from the debates is my impression in the last Democratic debate that CNN is catering to Republicans was incomplete; just like the questions for Democrats were slanted toward Republican talking points, a lot of the Republican questions were slanted toward Democratic talking points. So they just do a better job of what some in the mainstream media do anyway: stir the pot, create sensationalism, and from that get more viewers and make more money. Kudos to them, I suppose. They're not Republican or Democratic; they're sensationalist, but at least they're sensationalist on both sides. They've beat Fox's goose egg on their own "fair and balanced" metric with a 1-for-2 performance.

Not that that matters, as it seems people see through that sort of hyper-partisanship pretty easily. CNN asked online viewers ("I-Reporters") to comment on the debates, and on the whole, they seemed disappointed that the issues they cared about weren't discussed. On that list: health care, stem cell research, and bringing home troops. In other words, classic Democratic issues that Republicans don't want to talk about because it would alienate their base. If CNN's any indicator of the national political zeitgeist, things look good for Democrats.

If you're a debate junkie like me, and you were looking forward to the next Democratic debate on December 10, I have bad news for you: the CBS debate is off. CBS cited the cancellation as due to the continuation of the writer's strike and candidates unwilling to cross the picket line. Good going in part of the candidates — the writers deserve our support — but a little bit of a downer for us hardcore debate watchers. That's also somewhat of a blow to the lower-tier candidates; as limited as their time often is on those debates, it's more of a soapbox than they normally get in the mainstream media, and they could probably use as much of that as they can get. There are no plans to reschedule the debate. The next debate is scheduled for three days later, hosted in Iowa by the Des Moines Register and Iowa Public Television. There is also a Brown and Black Forum, in which candidates will be asked questions of importance to the African-American and Latino communities, on Dec. 1.

It's a rough day for political appointees both at the local and federal level. On the national side of things, retired U.S. Department of the Interior official and Bush appointee Julie MacDonald has been identified in an investigation as pressuring members of the Fish and Wildlife Service to deny endangered species protection to several species. That decision was labeled by House Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall as an example of "this administration's penchant for torpedoing science," and has now been overturned.

Locally, Texas' director of science curriculum has resigned after Texas Education Agency officials recommended her termination for sending an email. Chris Comer apparently forwarded an email she had received announcing a presentation by Barbara Forrest, a key witness in the Pennsylvania federal court ruling striking the teaching of intelligent design in Pennsylvania public schools as against the First Amendment's Establishment Clause as well as author of "Inside Creationism's Trojan Horse." Other causes were cited, but the email was the one that inspired the call to fire Comer:

The call to fire Comer came from Lizzette Reynolds, who previously worked in the U.S. Department of Education. She also served as deputy legislative director for Gov. George W. Bush. She joined the Texas Education Agency as the senior adviser on statewide initiatives in January.

...

"This is highly inappropriate," Reynolds said in an e-mail to Comer's supervisors. "I believe this is an offense that calls for termination or, at the very least, reassignment of responsibilities.

"This is something that the State Board, the Governor's Office and members of the Legislature would be extremely upset to see because it assumes this is a subject that the agency supports."

Supporting the idea that creationism and intelligent design was being used as a political tool and was inappropriate for teaching in schools wasn't something that seemed to trouble federal courts, but I suppose that the Texas executive branch hasn't been burdening itself too much with what the federal government thinks lately anyway.

Finally today, there may be another Harris County race getting competitive soon. Precinct 4 Commissioner Jerry Eversole is now under investigation by the District Attorney's office for misuse of campaign contributions. It's pretty hard to misuse campaign contributions in Texas, where just about anything goes, but converting items purchased with contributions for personal use is still prohibited. If this gets legs, it's likely to carry over well into the election cycle, which could make the incumbent's attempt to hold the seat that much more difficult.