Texas Democratic Women Candidate's Forum

Candidate's Forum

Dallas Morning News, Frisco – Democratic political rallies are a rare occurrence in Collin County, where Republicans dominate virtually every level of government.

Yet on Monday evening here in the heart of GOP territory, a slate of Democratic candidates rallied in the hopes of breaking the Republican stranglehold on Dallas' northern suburbs.

"We have a tough row to hoe here in Collin County," said Rafael De La Garza, who is running for Collin County district attorney against Republican Greg Willis.

--- Click here for REST OF STORY!... ---

Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia Dead

The longest-serving member of the U.S. Congress, Democratic Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, has died at the age of 92 after serving almost sixty years in public office.

Byrd was sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives on January 3, 1953 and was elected to the U.S Senate six years later in 1958. In November, he broke the record for congressional service that had been set by Democrat Carl Hayden of Arizona, who served in the House and Senate from 1912 to 1969. Byrd was reelected to serve a ninth term in the Senate in 2006.

Byrd was in frail health and had used a wheelchair in recent months to go to the Senate floor to cast crucial votes, including final passage of health-care legislation signed into law by President Barack Obama.

Byrd went to the hospital late last week suffering from what was believed to be heat exhaustion and severe dehydration as a result of the hot temperatures in Washington. Over the weekend Byrd's condition was reported as "seriously ill." Spokesman Jesse Jacobs said Byrd died peacefully overnight at about 3:00 a.m. in Inova Fairfax Hospital in suburban Washington.

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, will appoint Byrd's successor on an interim basis pending a special election.

West Virginia State election law states that, if a Senate vacancy occurs more than 2 1/2 years before the term is up, that a special election be held to fill the seat. However, that statute includes language stating the special election shall only occur after a candidate "has been nominated at the primary election next following such timely filing and has thereafter been elected." West Virginia held its 2010 primary almost two months ago, so the statute can be interpreted as the "next" primary in 2012, before the general election in November, 2012. The wording of the statute could open a legal challenge to force a special election this November. Had Byrd lived another 6 days, the wording of the statute would not be an issue, because his passing would then have been less than 2 1/2 years until the end of his term. Democrats currently hold a nominal 59-seat majority in the U.S. Senate, including two Independents who caucus with Democrats.

A good biography on Byrd appears in today's edition of the The Washington Post.

Times of London Retracts It's "Global Warming Is A Trick" Climategate Story

The Times of London retracts its "Global warming is a trick" climategate story the paper printed in late 2009 after a large batch of e-mails and documents were stolen from servers of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia, in England, and put up anonymously on the web.

The Times of London took isolated and out of context snippets of those emails and spun it into a claim of scientific malfeasance.

The result has been a field day for those intent on discrediting the idea of man-made climate change.

Climategate - part 1 Climategate - part 2

The spin that climate change deniers put out from the story, trumpeted by news organizations around the world, was that the stolen emails reveal what they always claimed, an evil global liberal conspiracy. See The Economist "Climate Change Mail-Strom" and the AP "Science not faked, but not pretty, "Climategate" Exposed]

Read fully and in context the stolen emails do not support claims that the science of global warming is faked. The stolen emails, read in their entirety, reveal only that climate scientists have discussed issues related to protecting their research from false distortion by climate change deniers and how to effectively and convincingly present their conclusive climate change data. (see News Week story, Why climate change is “even worse than we feared.”)

The Times of London and other newspapers are now retracting their ‘Climategate’ claims, but the damage is done with public opinion turning against the scientific proof of climate change.

News Week, June 2010: A lie can get halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on, as Mark Twain said, and nowhere has that been more true than in "climategate."