Word: dakotas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...surprise twin retirements announced this week by Democratic Senators Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota cap a dismal month for Democrats. Early in December, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved to stem the tide of lower-chamber retirements after four veteran moderate, so-called Blue Dogs announced that they would not run for re-election. Then, instead of a retirement, another Blue Dog - this time Alabama freshman Parker Griffith - jumped ship to the Republican Party. Only a year after celebrating an expected six GOP Senate retirements in 2010 and nearly a dozen in the House (that number...
...eyes of many political observers, Dorgan and Dodd were simply bowing to reality. They faced long odds of winning re-election in their home states - though Dems believe they now have a much better chance at holding on to Connecticut than North Dakota. Dodd, as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, had unpopular bailouts to contend with and a scandal over allegedly special treatment on his mortgage; Dorgan likely faced a tough battle against a popular GOP governor in a Republican-leaning state that disapproves of his vote for health care reform by a 2-to-1 margin. But there...
...declarations of being a traitor: witness Lindsey Graham's second censure this week by a South Carolina County Republican Party for his bipartisan work on climate change. On the Democratic side, the death of Massachusetts' Ted Kennedy, the retirement of John Breaux of Louisiana and the loss of South Dakota's Tom Daschle, along with the bitter wounds from years of being in the minority, has left the party less open to cooperation. "The Senate is a nasty and brutish place now compared to anything I've seen in 40 years, and it's still better than the House," says...
...talk of polarization in Washington, a bad 2010 cycle could actually hasten the return of the center, says Stu Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report, which tracks congressional races. Senate Republican victories in Illinois, North Dakota and Delaware could usher in three new GOP moderates. And the enormous Democratic classes of 2006 and 2008 will be up for re-election in 2012 and 2014. "If 2010 is a bad year, they're going to look at that," Rothenberg says, "and they're going to go, 'This is not the image of the Democratic Party I want...
...Emma. Murphy played the tough, gauche kid - the title character, so to speak - who is given mentoring and a makeover by Alicia Silverstone. I liked Murphy as Eminem's girlfriend in 8 Mile and in the starring role in Uptown Girls, as a rock star's daughter who becomes Dakota Fanning's nanny. She flitted memorably through Sin City and squirmed inside the romantic straitjacket of Just Married with Ashton Kutcher (who for a time was also her beau). I confess I missed a lot of Murphy's appearances before the camera. (See TIME's tribute to people who passed...