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<p>Democrats privately lay into President Obama for his lack of a health-care strategy.</p> <p>President Obama's session with Democratic Senators yesterday was carefully scripted, with the questioners all selected in advance by the Democratic leadership to address issues such as partisan gridlock and GOP obstructionism. Senators Evan Bayh and Blanche Lincoln, both of whom are facing serious opponents this fall, went off message with concerns about the liberal drift of the administration, but all other questioners stuck to their talking points.</p>

'And leaders should figure out they're better informed now than ever.' Boston When I arrived at his cramped state senate offices, Scott Brown had just opened one of the many packages he's received since his stunning U.S. Senate victory 11 days ago. A local artist has done up a version of the iconic red, white and blue collage from the 2008 presidential campaign that shows Barack Obama with the word "Hope." This one features a smiling Mr. Brown instead, but the word below is different. It reads "Change." By filling the seat vacated by liberal lion Ted Kennedy in a...

Will Harry Reid retire at the end of this year?/ In the end, I don't believe Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will run for re-election. Whether or not the health care bill he muscled through the Senate becomes law, the 70-year-old will bow out of his race for a fifth term. The major reason has nothing to do with his many verbal gaffes, the latest of which exploded over the weekend. The simple fact is that he probably can't win re-election -- almost no incumbent senator as far down in the polls has come back to win. Asked if Mr....

<p>Confronted with their gloomy poll numbers, Democrats have decided the solution is to discredit the pollsters they blame for dragging down their standing with the public. Politico.com reports that the No. 1 target is the proprietor of Rasmussen Reports, source of widely reported polls tracking the declining popularity of President Obama and his legislative initiatives.</p>

Christopher Coates, the man who approved the civil rights complaint against New Black Panther Party for its behavior at a Philadelphia polling place in the November 2008 election, has been removed from his post as chief of the Voting Section of the Justice Department. Reportedly he is being transferred to the U.S. attorney's office in South Carolina.

They believe the liberal base expects them to deliver and will punish them if they don't. Voters are increasingly worried about unemployment, but Democratic leaders in Congress remain obsessed with passing health- care reform. Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin was asked recently if a health-care bill would pass the Senate by the end of this month. "It must," he said. "We have to finish it." Still, many in the trenches are uneasy about the sprawling, complex bill they privately acknowledge has no bipartisan support, doesn't seriously tackle soaring costs and will increase insurance premiums. That may explain Majority Leader Harry...

NOVEMBER 27, 2009 She Wants to Reboot California After chemotherapy, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina says taking on Sen. Barbara Boxer isn't so intimidating. By JOHN FUND Washington When Carly Fiorina sat down to speak with me recently, I was briefly taken aback. The former CEO of Hewlett Packard and current candidate for U.S. Senate from California was sporting a close-cropped, salt-and-pepper hairdo. Having completed six months of treatment for breast cancer, the 55-year-old Ms. Fiorina has dispensed with the auburn wig she'd been wearing as her hair grows back. She says her health is now fine, and that "after...

Inhabitants of the self-obsessed Beltway political world already have a beef with Sarah Palin's new memoir, "Going Rogue." Political types in Washington make a show of turning up their noses at actually buying and reading such books, but familiar faces can regularly be spotted in store aisles anyway scanning for their names in the index. Sarah Palin's book won't have an index, denying Beltway habitués the instant gratification of knowing whether they are included. Instead, political and media types who want to know if they figure in accounts of her conflicts with the McCain campaign or with major news media...

OK, here's what should be the nail in the coffin for conservative claims that ACORN is poised to steal the New Jersey governor's race through rampant voter fraud. Brian Kettenring, an ACORN spokesman, tells TPMmuckraker that the much-maligned group has conducted absolutely no political or voter registration activity in the state during the 2009 cycle. And Kettenring added that ACORN had done very little such work during the 2008 cycle. In a column published yesterday in the Wall Street Journal, John Fund sounded the alarm about the threat from ACORN -- but a close look reveals that even here he...

ACORN: Bizarre and Corrupt Allie Winegar Duzett, November 6, 2009 According to John Fund of The Wall Street Journal, there is one question above all that Americans should be asking with regards to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now): “How did they get away with so much for so long?” Fund posited two possible answers at Accuracy in Media’s 40th Anniversary Conference held on October 23, 2009, the first being a “presumption of good intentions. ACORN was a community organizing group,” Fund said. “When their offices were raided in Nevada,” he noted, they told the world, “We’re just...

The New Jersey and Virginia governor's races aren't the only contests in which Democrats are feeling pressure from the growing unpopularity of President Obama's policies. A GOP upset may also be in the making in a California House special election on November 3. Democratic Lt. Governor John Garamendi and Republican attorney David Harmer are battling for the Bay Area congressional seat vacated by Democrat Ellen Tauscher, who left to join the Obama state department. Normally a staunch Democratic seat, there is a growing chance it could swing to the GOP given the state's latest budget collapse and the 13% approval...

Thirty-eight forged or fraudulent ballots have been thrown out, according to records at the Rensselaer County Board of Elections in Troy, N.Y. Enough votes, an election official admits, to likely have tipped the election to the Democrats. Brian Suozzo voted with an absentee ballot in the Working Families Party primary on Sept. 15 because, as his application stated, he was "at home recovering from medical procedure." Jessica Boomhower's application said she would be attending a "work conference in Boston." Michael Ward couldn't vote in person because he was "taking care of elderly parent." Kimberlee Truell was on a "Bus trip...

Mr. Gore has been strangely reluctant to answer questions or debate the more controversial parts of his work. But over the weekend, he deigned to take few questions during meeting of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Madison, Wisconsin. Irish documentary filmmaker Phelim McAleer was in the line. A former Financial Times journalist, his new film, "Not Evil, Just Wrong," is direct refutation of Mr. Gore's thesis and warns that rushing to judgment in combating climate change would threaten the world's poor. When his turn came, Mr. McAleer asked Mr. Gore about a court case in Britain in which a...

Voters want enough time to debate bills. Nancy Pelosi doesn't. Polls show overwhelming agreement outside the Beltway that it's more important for Congress to get health-care reform done right than done quickly. A Polling Company survey conducted last month found 95% agreeing that members of Congress shouldn't vote on any bill they haven't read in full. That's why the bipartisan duo of Rep. Brian Baird, a Washington Democrat, and Rep. Greg Walden, an Oregon Republican, came up with the "72-hour resolution," which would require all non-emergency legislation to be posted online, in final form, for at least 72 hours prior...

INDIANAPOLIS -- The Indiana Court of Appeals has ruled that Indiana's voter identification law is unconstitutional. 6News is looking through the 29-page ruling now and will provide details from it as soon as possible. The decision comes after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the state's voter ID law in 2008, a week before the presidential primary, in a splintered 6-3 ruling. Backers of the law, which requires a voter to present a photo identification to cast a ballot, said it curbs voter fraud. Those against the law contend that it keeps poor, older and minority voters from casting ballots. The...

You've got to just love John Fund and the work he has done on voter fraud and ACORN. Here's a video of John Fund discussing ACORN, which includes voter fraud, of course.

I thought I'd heard every possible charge about corruption at ACORN, a feisty, union-backed activist group that became infamous last year when it was investigated for voter registration fraud in 15 states. Just yesterday, 11 ACORN workers were accused by Florida prosecutors of falsifying information on some 900 voter registration forms. But this morning brings a Fox News report that ACORN officials in Baltimore offered to help get a housing loan and falsify tax documents for a proposed house of prostitution that would employ underage girls from El Salvador. ... In helping Mr. O'Keefe set up his supposed brothel, ACORN...

President Obama's Justice Department continues to stonewall inquiries about why it dropped a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. The episode—which Bartle Bull, a former civil rights lawyer and publisher of the left-wing Village Voice, calls "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I've ever seen"—began on Election Day 2008. Mr. Bull and others witnessed two Black Panthers in paramilitary garb at a polling place near downtown Philadelphia. (Some of this behavior is on YouTube.) One of them, they say, brandished a nightstick at the entrance and pointed it at voters and both made racial threats. Mr....

Why did the Justice Department dismiss such a clear case of voter intimidation? President Obama's Justice Department continues to stonewall inquiries about why it dropped a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party. The episode—which Bartle Bull, a former civil rights lawyer and publisher of the left-wing Village Voice, calls "the most blatant form of voter intimidation I've ever seen"—began on Election Day 2008. Mr. Bull and others witnessed two Black Panthers in paramilitary garb at a polling place near downtown Philadelphia. (Some of this behavior is on YouTube.) One of them, they say, brandished a nightstick at...

Two contrasting styles of conservatism were on display in Alaska yesterday in the formal transfer of power from Sarah Palin to Sean Parnell, her lieutenant governor. Ms. Palin appeared liberated by leaving office and used blunt words to take her media critics down a peg. “You represent what could and should be a respected, honest profession that could and should be a cornerstone of our democracy,” she said. “Democracy depends on you, and that is why -- that’s why our troops are willing to die for you. So how about in honor of the American soldier, you quit makin’ things...