Daily Kos

The new Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll of the race in New York’s 23rd Congressional District has Democratic candidate Bill Owens in the lead, benefiting from the split between GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava and Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman. The topline:
Bill Owens (D) – 35 percent
Dede Scozzafava (R) – 30 percent
Doug Hoffman (C) – 23 percent

Jesselyn Radack at Daily Kos slams The Washington Post for its editorial yesterday praising the Senate Judiciary Committee for its highly compromised Patriot Act reform bill. “The Post turns a blind eye to the vast amount of civil liberties protections Senate Democrats and the Obama administration gave up at last week’s Patriot Act markup, instead [...]

Daily Kos and Research 2000 are out with an interesting poll of likely voters in Montana. Kos flags the approval numbers of Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) — the chair of the Senate Finance Committee, from which just about everyone in Washington is eagerly awaiting a health care reform bill that is unlikely to contain a [...]

The American Civil Liberties Union will file a brief tomorrow urging the federal court to suppress evidence gathered using torture, which the government wants to rely on in the case of Mohammed Jawad, the boy who “confessed” to throwing a grenade at U.S. soldiers after being arrested and tortured by Afghan authorities in 2002, then [...]

First Read reported that Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-Calif.) choice for CIA director is current deputy director Steve Kappes. Kappes, unlike Leon Panetta, is a consummate intelligence professional. He played a key role in the nuclear disarmament of Libya, speaks Persian and Russian, and was purged by Porter Goss in 2004 for insufficient political loyalty to [...]