GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra called on the Senator to resign saying Craig “represents the Republican party,” and called for his resignation “as his conduct throughout this matter has been inappropriate for a U.S. senator.”

Meanwhile Arizona Sen. and 2008 candidate McCain and Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota who is also up for re-election in 2008 have also called on Craig to resign after pleading guilty to soliciting sex from an undercover cop in a Minneapolis airport.

In perhaps what will become a sign of things to come Craig has stepped down from his high-ranking position as top Republican on the Veterans’ Affairs Committee and two other subcommittees. In a statement from the Senate GOP “This is not a decision we take lightly but we believe this is in the best interest of the Senate until this situation is resolved by the Ethics Committee.”

Meanwhile YouTube & Cable television are digging up some video that won’t be very helpful for the Senator.

From the Associated Press:

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards told a labor group he would ask Americans to make a big sacrifice: their sport utility vehicles.

The former North Carolina senator told a forum by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, yesterday he thinks Americans are willing to sacrifice.

Edwards says Americans should be asked to drive more fuel efficient vehicles. He says he would ask them to give up SUVs.

My take? I have to say if Edwards thinks Americans are ready and willing to give up their SUV’s he probably doesn’t know America. I live in a suburb of a pretty small city and the amount of hummers I see driving around is insane. In my daily commute I see at least four hummers of all shapes and colors each and every day. If I go to a restaurant that doubles. I see regular old gas guzzling SUV’s non-stop and when I talk to SUV owners they wouldn’t trade them for anything short of another gas guzzling supped up sports car.

Ultimately I think any suggestion of people “sacrificing” their cars is a losing issue for Democrats. The much better strategy is the one adopted by Gov. Schwarzenegger which put simply is ‘instead of giving up our lifestyle, lets create the technology to make these cars fuel efficient and run on environmentally friendly technology and hold automakers to a higher standard’.

From the Associated Press top G.O.P leaders are calling for an ethics committee review into Idaho Sen. Larry Craig’s guilty plea into a lewd conduct sting operation in an airport mens bathroom. Craig tonights insists he is ‘not gay’ but the 24/7 news networks are already digging into his past, finding repeated allegations and similar statements issued by Craig in the past to deny them. That included a 1982 page scandal, similar to Mark Foley, in which Craig defended himself. See the clip below.

Sorry I couldn’t find a less partisan version of the clip.

Craig was walking into re-election in 2008 with a large campaign War chest in a heavily Republican seat but rumors have been around for awhile that he might not run. The prospects are not looking good for a re-election bid.

“Once again, we’ve found people in Washington have not lived up to the level of respect and dignity that we would expect for somebody that gets elected to a position of high influence. Very disappointing. He’s no longer associated with my campaign, as you can imagine… I’m sorry to see that he has fallen short.”

Romney said that to CNBC’s Kudlow & Company discussing the recent guilty plea by Senator Craig to lewd conduct with a man in a Minnesota airport bathroom. Craig was Romney’s Idaho state chairman but yesterday video of the Senator giving a message of support was taken down from the Romney campaign Web site. Craig also officially resigned from his duties for the Romney team.

“I think it reminds us of Mark Foley and Bill Clinton. I think it reminds us of the fact that people who are elected to public office continue to disappoint, and they somehow think that if they vote the right way on issues of significance or they can speak a good game, that we’ll just forgive and forget. And the truth of the matter is, the most important thing we expect from elected–an elected official is a level of dignity and character that we can point to for our kids and our grandkids, and say, `Hey, someday I hope you grow up and you’re someone like that person.’ And we’ve seen disappointment in the White House, we’ve seen it in the Senate, we’ve seen it in Congress. And frankly, it’s disgusting.”

This isn’t the first set of problems for the Romney campaign or for the presidential campaigns in general. Earlier in the year Romney’s ’security guru’ and driver Jay Garrity stepped down for allegedly impersonating an officer. Before that Rudy Giuliani’s South Carolina Treasurer Thomas Ravenel was indicted on cocaine charges.

The United Transportation Union has endorsed democratic Senator Hillary Clinton for the 2008 presidential election.

“It is a high honor and a distinct privilege to be the first labor union in making this endorsement,” said UTU International President Paul Thompson. “The UTU has a long history of picking winners early. Hillary will be a president that America’s working families can count on. Time and again, as a United States senator, she has stood with us.

“The UTU intends to devote our considerable resources to encouraging our 125,000 active and retired members, their families, friends and neighbors to register to vote and cast ballots on Election Day 2008 for Hillary.

- Iraq is urging over 1 Million pilgrims to leave the shiite holy city of Karbala and police have imposed a curfew after two days of violence including raging gunbattles between rival militias that claimed at least 35 lives during a religious festival.

Security officials told The Associated Press that Mahdi Army gunmen, loyalists of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, attacked guards around the two Karbala shrines that were under the protection of the Badr Brigade, the armed wing of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council.

In telephone calls to reporters in Karbala, gunfire and exploding mortar shells could be heard.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Hill reports that is how the Obama camp sees it.

A top adviser for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said Friday that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), the front-runner for her party’s presidential nomination, is obsessed “with what she calls the Republican attack machine.”

“I think we need a candidate who is obsessed with unifying this country again,” said Obama adviser David Axelrod. He added that Obama could break “the sort of decades-long battle we’ve had over this jagged divide — red state, blue state, American against American — and try to bring people together and attract disaffected Republicans and attract independent voters so that we could build not just a victory, but a governing coalition in this country.”

If I were an advisor to the Obama campaign, which I am not and I doubt they would want me, but if I were this is something that would really worry me. I understand the Senator is attempting to create this ‘new kind’ of politics. However this ‘new kind of politics’ sounds exactly the same the ‘new kind of politics’ Al Gore & John Kerry ran their campaigns on. The ‘we are above this’ mentality that had Gore demolished and Kerry, a Vietnam Vet, basically called a traitor who lied about his war record.

Read the rest of this entry »

Factcheck.org is reporting that while Senator Hillary Clinton was speaking at a presidential forum hosted by the Lance Armstrong Foundation she slipped saying 500,000 women die from the disease worldwide each year. Only 250,000 do. The 500,000 number is the institute’s estimate of how many new cases are diagnosed each year around the world.

Roll Call is reporting Senator Larry Craig, who is up for re-election next year, pleaded guilty today to lewd conduct charges in a Minnesota airport. From the article:

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) was arrested in June at a Minnesota airport by a plainclothes police officer investigating lewd conduct complaints in a men’s public restroom, according to an arrest report obtained by Roll Call Monday afternoon.

Craig’s arrest occurred just after noon on June 11 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. On Aug. 8, he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct in the Hennepin County District Court. He paid more than $500 in fines and fees, and a 10-day jail sentence was stayed. He also was given one year of probation with the court that began on Aug. 8.

A spokesman for Craig described the incident as a “he said/he said misunderstanding,” and said the office would release a fuller statement later Monday afternoon.

After he was arrested, Craig, who is married, was taken to the Airport Police Operations Center to be interviewed about the lewd conduct incident, according to the police report. At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, “What do you think about that?” the report states.

Craig was detained for approximately 45 minutes, interviewed, photographed, fingerprinted and released, and police prepared a formal complaint for interference with privacy and disorderly conduct.

According to the incident report, Sgt. Dave Karsnia was working as a plainclothes officer on June 11 investigating civilian complaints regarding sexual activity in the men’s public restroom in which Craig was arrested.

Airport police previously had made numerous arrests in the men’s restroom of the Northstar Crossing in the Lindbergh Terminal in connection with sexual activity.

It it is “he said/he said” and Craig plead guilty, aren’t they both saying the same thing?

All before he has officially announced:

da Rozett, a longtime U.S. Chamber of Commerce official, is gone from the former Tennessee senator’s committee to “test the waters” of a presidential bid after spending the last several weeks as communications director.

“I don’t know what the story is,” said Thompson, who was asked about the departure while campaigning at the Minnesota state fair. “I don’t know what to say about it except that she’s a wonderful lady.”

From the Associated Press

See also Thompson Taps Third Campaign Manager, & NY Times Reports on Thompson Campaign, & Another One Bites the Dust in Thompson’s Crew.