The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

Reader Elmer sends this morning's Corning Leader, which carries two Kuhl/Massa stories.  One is a State-of-the-Union reaction piece.  The second is a story headlined "Massa Challenges Kuhl to Debate", which is based on a letter that Massa wrote to Kuhl challenging him to a debate on S-CHIP.  Here's the beginning of both stories [pdf] and the jump [pdf].

As a bonus, Margaret Truman Daniel's obit is on the jump.  It alludes to a famous story about Harry Truman's anger when Margaret's singing got a bad review.  The New York Times obit has the full story, which is a great one, and you can read it after the jump:

Mrs. Daniel thought her performance at Constitution Hall to be one of her better ones.

But Paul Hume, the music critic of The Washington Post, while praising her personality, wrote that “she cannot sing very well.” “She is flat a good deal of the time,” Mr. Hume added, concluding that she had no “professional finish.”

Incensed, President Truman dispatched a combative note to Mr. Hume, who released it to the press.

“I have just read your lousy review,” it said, adding, “I have never met you, but if I do, you’ll need a new nose.”

In the ensuing uproar, reporters pressed Mrs. Daniel for her reaction to her father’s letter. “I’m glad to see that chivalry is not dead,” she told them.

In a revealing biography, “Harry S. Truman” (William Morrow, 1973), Mrs. Daniel wrote: “Dad discussed the letter with his aides and was annoyed to find that they all thought it was a mistake. They felt that it damaged his image as president and would only add to his political difficulties. ‘Wait till the mail comes in,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll make you a bet that 80 percent of it is on my side of the argument.’

"A week later, after a staff meeting, Dad ordered everybody to follow him, and they marched to the mail room,” Mrs. Daniel continued. “The clerks had stacked up thousands of ‘Hume’ letters received in piles and made up a chart showing the percentages for and against the president. Slightly over 80 percent favored Dad’s defense of me. Most of the letter writers were mothers who said they understood exactly how Dad felt and would have expected their husbands to defend their daughters the same way.

“‘The trouble with you guys is,’ Dad said to the staff as he strode back to work, ‘you just don’t understand human nature.’ ”

If you think that a Rudy Guliani candidacy would have excited Western New York Republicans and brought more of them to the polls in the Fall, then Randy Kuhl's election just got a little bit tougher.  I don't think that Rudy would have had much in the way of coattails, so it's probably a wash.

Back in the cold, windy North, farmers are worrying about the farm bill, which is stuck in the Senate.

Members of Congress spend most of their time in committee, yet there's little press coverage of most committee hearings.  This seems like an ideal opportunity for specialist blogging.  Here's an example of a blogger who wrote about a House Education and Labor hearing attended by Randy Kuhl.  The topic was the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Randy Kuhl is quoted in a couple of WENY stories on the State of the Union and Bush's legacy:

The president's legacy depends a great deal on his ability to cooperate and work with on a cooperative basis with congress, he can't do it by himself.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

Also, Politico has a analysis of the future of New York Republicans in Congress, "Congressional NY GOP Dying Out".

Randy Kuhl is a little uncomfortable with a stimulus package that gives money to those who actually might spend it, according to this article in the Jamestown paper.

Americans United for Change, the union-sponsored 501(c)(4) advocacy group responsible for anti-Kuhl S-CHIP ads last Fall, has a new mission.  They're spending $8.5 million on the Bush Legacy Project, which is an "effort to define Bush's legacy."  I can walk down any street in this country, put a couple of quarters into a newspaper vending machine, and pull out a newspaper that pretty clearly defines Bush's legacy:  a bloody war in Iraq, a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, a looming recession, and torture in the name of freedom.  Why a PAC would spend money on something the media is doing for free is beyond me.

A couple of area blogs (Rochesterturning, Albany Project) are wondering if Randy Kuhl is going to retire.  Kuhl's story has been the same for the last few months:  he won't say if he's decided to run yet.  I would have thought that it's far past the time to announce retirements in competitive House districts, but this week's Walsh retirement, and yesterday's announcement by Dave Weldon (R-FL-15), have people wondering.  Kuhl's current position is consistent with his strategy last cycle, which was to delay his announcement in order to keep from engaging Eric Massa directly in campaign mode.  I think he's doing the same thing this year, and that there's little chance he won't run again.

Update:  See Elmer's comment below.  Someone's polling Kuhl alternatives in the Southern Tier, and it sounds like a Republican organization.  The plot thickens.

In other retirement-related news, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) announced yesterday that Dan Maffei, the Democrat who challenged Jim Walsh in 2006 and is running again, has been added to their "Red to Blue" fundraising program.  This announcement comes before any other Democrat has an opportunity to even decide to run in the NY-25 primary.  That's an interesting change in the DCCC's position on primaries.  Last year, when Massa faced a primary challenge, the DCCC was the Switzerland of political committees, scrupulously neutral.  This is still more evidence that Eric Massa is not the candidate of the Democratic establishment.

Finally, Randy Kuhl made the news decrying the new border regulations.  The story on Rochester channel 13 began with Louise Slaughter (NY-28), who says that Chertoff is "absolutely breaking the law".  I assume that Louise will do what Congressional Democrats consistently do when faced with lawbreaking -- assume a fetal position and ignore it.  Unless, of course, it's lawbreaking in baseball, which gets some serious consideration.  The story ended with the claim that the identification law is necessary "to help avoid another 9/11 tragedy."   I wonder how long 9/11 will be trotted out to justify loss of liberty and convenience in return for a very questionable increase in safety.   As I've argued elsewhere, identity does not disclose intent.

The Messenger-Post's Bryan Roth has a long story, with some good local color, on the S-CHIP veto override.

Liz Benjamin has read Eliot Spitzer's campaign finance reports, and she finds that Eric Massa is one of the recipients of Spitzer's largesse.

In the speculation department, there's a rumor out that Jim Walsh (NY-25) is retiring.

There's a (small) possibility that Republicans will not be allowed to add earmarks to bills.

Finally, I'm not the only person who thinks that a stimulus package will grow the deficit and endanger the country's financial future:

"While much attention will be paid in the coming weeks to the contours of a fiscal stimulus bill, no one should overlook the implication of today's report by the Congressional Budget Office that we are heading into the baby boomers' retirement years in a position of fiscal weakness," said Robert Bixby, the head of the Concord Coalition, a budget watchdog group[.]

Update:  Reader Elmer sends the Corning Leader front page [pdf] and jump [pdf] with two S-CHIP stories.  One covers the override, and the other has reactions from Randy Kuhl and Eric Massa.

Some anti-abortion protesters from the Twin Tiers marched in DC and met with Randy Kuhl. 

Eric Massa will be leading a discussion of Fiasco, a book about the Iraq War, today at noon at the Corning Library.

Yesterday's Massa news conference on S-CHIP got some more press, as did Randy Kuhl's response to the new border regulations.

The Department of Homeland Security has long wanted every person passing across the US/Canadian border present a passport (or a drivers' license plus birth certificate or naturalization papers).  Since passports these documents are expensive or a hassle, Western New York's congressional delegation has consistently opposed that measure.  DHS keeps announcing deadlines far in the future, and our delegation continues to get those deadlines pushed back.  The last compromise pushed the "absolute, final date" back to June, 2009, a date that few took seriously.

Since the DHS was losing at the "final deadline" game,  they're trying a new tactic:  fuck-you arrogance. Yesterday, the DHS announced that they're going to require passports or two forms of id at the border starting January 31, and Director Michael Chertoff told all involved that "It's time to grow up."  Cue hyperventilation on the part of Randy Kuhl and every other resident of the 29th who was planning to travel to Canada without a passport.

I can only imagine that Chertoff's arrogance will end up with a win-win for DHS and our local Congressman. Our delegation will swoop in to correct Chertoff's injustice, thus protecting us from the evil and unfeeling DHS bureaucracy, by getting him to agree to a later deadline. In the short run, Chertoff will get slapped down, but in the end he'll get passports at the border.   

The only losers in this play are those of us who don't want to pay $70, or go through the hassle of digging up a birth certificate, to prove our identity at the border.

Update:  The original post indicated that only a passport will be accepted.  A drivers' license plus birth certificate or naturalization papers will also be allowed. 

I'm trying to avoid sounding like an old man sitting on the porch telling the young'uns how easy they have it nowadays, so I've combined all my hobby horse issues into one post.  Here comes voting technology and the D&C, with an Iraq chaser:

I haven't posted much about voting technology since New York wisely decided to delay their decision and stick with our lever machines for the near future.  But I can't help pointing and laughing at the recent Maryland decision to scrap their Diebold system and start over with paper ballots and scanners.  Money quote:

By 2010, four years before its $65 million touch-screen machines will be paid off, Maryland expects to be back on the paper trail, following states such as Florida and California, which have also decided that all-electronic systems make it too easy to compromise elections.

So it turns out that quitting the D&C isn't as simple as it sounds.  I canceled my subscription on New Year's Day, yet three weeks later  I'm still getting the paper delivered every day to my door.  I've called the D&C's customer service office in Louisville, KY and been assured that my subscription is canceled.   I can only imagine that this little bit of administrative incompetence is a tiny window into the irrational "rationalization" of customer service into a few mega-centers.

Finally I want to recommend last week's Fresh Air series on Iraq.  Host Terry Gross interviewed 10 different guests, each of whom had long experience and a different perspective on the war.  It's well worth listening to both shows, the first here, and the second here.  Fresh Air is also available as a podcast here -- pick the January 16 and 17 shows.  One of the most interesting guests, Lt. Col. John Nagl, who was a major player in writing the Army counterinsurgency manual, announced his retirement on the day the show was aired.

Eric Massa is holding a press conference at 11 A.M. today at the Rochester headquarters of the UNITE union.  The subject is the scheduled S-CHIP veto override, which is set for tomorrow.

Other than Kuhl's recent S-CHIP mailer, the only other event which might change how some feel about S-CHIP is Governor Spitzer's decision to include full S-CHIP funding in the New York State budget.  If Kuhl and others had supported the S-CHIP override, that $37 million would have come from the federal budget, not the state's.

Update:  Rochester City Newspaper has a story based on the press conference.

Update 2:  Video, from the Massa YouTube channel, after the break.