Subject: [EL] Electionlawblog news and commentary 1/3/11 |
From: Rick Hasen |
Date: 1/2/2011, 9:01 PM |
To: Election Law |
Reply-to: "rick.hasen@lls.edu" |
The NY Times offers this
report.
Following up on this
post, see this
appeal.
MORE from AP.
The Chicago Sun-Times offers this
report.
Back in May I spoke on FOX News about Rep. Issa's statements
about whether anything illegal took place if in fact the Obama
Administration offered Joe Sestak an administration job to stay
out of the U.S. Senate Democratic primary against Arlen Specter.
(Sestak didn't stay out; he won the primary and lost the general
election to Pat Toomey.) I criticized Fox's
breathless coverage of the issue and said on the air that
I did not think the issue had any legs. (I also said that my
comments meant I likely would not be invited back on FOX News
any time soon.)
Now comes this
item from Ben Smith, noting that Rep. Issa, incoming chair
of the House oversight committee, won't be investigating the
Sestak issue as part of his larger investigative agenda. Issa
explained to CNN: "Once we knew, as we discovered, that it turns
out that Republicans and previous administrations thought it was
OK in spite of the absolute black and white letter of the law,
it got bigger -- it got bigger than President Barack Obama....it
was wrong if it was done in the Bush administration. It's wrong
in the Obama administration. But remember, the focus of our
committee has always been, and you look at all the work I've
done over the past four years on the oversight committee; it has
been consistently about looking for waste, fraud and abuse.
That's the vast majority of what we do."
Like I said, no legs.
UPI offers this
item on the Cao case.