Our final post of 2010. From Roll Call:
From Demon Sheep to a spelling bee, there were dozens of memorable ads. CQ Roll Call staffers had their favorites, and we did some crowd-sourcing to find out some of the ads that were hard to forget. From simple attacks to goofy stunts that invited parodies, we came up with the 20 ads that represented the midterm elections.
Happy New Year.
Everything is still stalled in the State House.
Calvin Say still wants to be the Speaker but doesn’t have enough votes.
Other representatives want someone else, but don’t have enough votes.
This has gone on way too long.
The new Legislative session begins next month.
Next month.
People still don’t have permanent offices and up to now no one has staff.
Say has finally given the okay to hire staff members.
In a memo, Say says that each lawmaker will get $4,800 a month for salaries for session staff at this time.
Well, that’ll hire maybe 1 1/2 people.
Say has also approved staff hiring for three committees: Finance, Judiciary and Consumer Protection and Commerce.
But committee chairmanships are still up in the air and the Legislative session starts next month and planning is running behind.
Next month.
As we close off the year and look forward to more craziness from the nation’s politicians, we take a final look back.
These are the weirdest TV ads by politicians running for office. None of them won. Take a look and you’ll see why.
Can she balance a budget? Who cares! She can fire automatic weapons….with a smile!
This guy lost the election. After watching this, we can understand why.
He didn’t win either. Probably a good thing.
Vermont Senate hopeful Daniel Freilich ran as an independent. He didn’t take any special interest money, as evidenced by the production values in this commercial.
Finally, the strangest ad EVER. For this we have to go back to 2008.
We saw a disturbing story on KITV tonight.
Some Big Island public access TV folks were, in our opinion, acting kind of jerky wanting to take some video of President Obama.
They were told to leave – and they did.
After leaving the area they were pulled over by several officers. The camera started taping again.
One officer walked up to the car and said, “Put that camera off of me”. They turned it off. A few minutes later an officer reached into the car and grabbed the camera.
Let’s get something straight. It is not illegal to video tape police.
On the mainland, with the proliferation of portable video cameras and cell-phone recorders, police are all too commonly arresting or demanding people turn them off.
They can’t do that and we don’t like seeing that here.
Here’s how the courts have looked at it.
The issue is not that recording any conversation is illegal without the other person’s consent. Especially in Hawaii where only one party has to give its consent.
It’s that recording a private conversation is illegal without consent. That distinction is important.
So then the question is, are the words of a police officer spoken on duty, in uniform, in public, a “private conversation?”
Every court that has ever considered that question has said that it is not.
The White House announced a list of six recess appointments.
These include James Cole, a former independent monitor at AIG, as deputy attorney general, and Robert Stephen Ford for the controversial position of ambassador to Syria.
Predictably, some in Congress are howling at the end run.
Let’s take a look at Recess Appointments.
Political Science 101 is in session.
A recess appointment is the appointment by the President of a senior federal official while the Senate is in recess.
The U.S. Constitution requires that the most senior federal officers be confirmed by the Senate before assuming office, but while the U.S. Senate is in recess the President can act alone by making a recess appointment.
To remain in effect a recess appointment must be approved by the Senate by the end of the next session of Congress, or the position becomes vacant again. This means that a recess appointment must be approved by the Senate roughly by the end of the next calendar year.
The original idea was to make sure a position was filled when the Senate was adjourned for lengthy periods. Now it’s usually because Senate opposition appeared strong to a person and the hope is the appointee might prove himself or herself in office and built enough support to formally get the job.
