FBI looking more closely at 6-month trip to Dagestan.

“Why are we still having problems connecting the dots?” asked House Homeland Security chair Michael McCaul, and he asked one of the right people.  In a hearing this morning, McCaul invited DHS co-creator and former Senator Joe Lieberman to analyze the issues of stovepiping that the 2002 consolidation was supposed to address, in the context [...]

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Outlier?

Two polls last week showed the race almost within in the margin of error, so the well-regarded Suffolk poll is — at least for the moment — an outlier.  On the other hand, it seems to fit a little better with what we know of the Massachusetts electorate and the candidates: Democratic U.S. Senate candidate [...]

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Plus: SC-1 update

Interesting: Only two days into the general election to fill Secretary of State John Kerry’s Massachusetts Senate seat, the race between longtime Democratic Rep. Ed Markey and Republican businessman Gabriel Gomez is fairly close. According to an Emerson College poll released Thursday, Gomez trails Markey by just six points in the blue state, 36 percent [...]

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June 25 showdown.

As optics go, not a bad look for the Republican Party in this usually reliable blue state. Perhaps another young, vibrant military man with an independent streak can surprise everyone there. He’s interesting enough to grab the lead in the Boston Globe, despite the R beside his name: Will he be the next Scott Brown? [...]

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"So he's somebody that they're really interested in."

The “Saudi national” thread continues to expand past the New York Post/Fox News report yesterday. Earlier on CBS, former FBI assistant director John Miller tells Charlie Rose that his sources say that the  man in the hospital has really piqued the interest of investigators now: Authorities say there is no clear suspect, but John Miller, a CBS [...]

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Evidence.

Possibly significant, not because of what he said but because there’s a roommate at all. If you’re building bombs, the person you live with is likeliest to know, yet I haven’t seen anything suggesting that the roommate’s under suspicion. Evidently the FBI didn’t haul him in last night for questioning. Assuming he’s innocent, then either [...]

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Comeback?

Everyone will applaud politely, of course, but there’s no way to avoid the ineffable awkwardness that will surround this speech. Then again, if there’s one thing Romney does well, it’s ineffable awkwardness. (“Severely conservative”?) Maybe it’ll just feel like old times. Alternate headline: “Man to appear at event devoted to repudiating him.” Former Republican presidential [...]

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No takers

Is Massachusetts still in play for elections on the state-wide level? If you asked anyone in the heady days of the 2010 cycle after Scott Brown shocked the nation, you’d probably get a lot answers in the positive. (Or at least a strong maybe.) But plenty of water has passed under the bridge since then, [...]

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Weld says no thanks.

With Scott Brown backing out of the special election to the Senate in Massachusetts, some wondered whether former Governor and erstwhile presidential candidate Mitt Romney might take a shot at filling the rest of John Kerry’s term in office.  Instead, the Boston Herald reports that the task might go to the next generation of Romneys: [...]

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Blue.

Alternate headline: “Lone popular Republican in extremely liberal state not seizing opportunity for some reason.” In fairness, he’s had to push the electoral boulder up Massachusetts’s blue mountain twice in three years, the last time with the House GOP’s unpopularity tied to his ankle. The guy must be exhausted. Scott P. Brown said on Friday [...]

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Temp job.

Soon-to-be Secretary of State John Kerry’s formal bowing-out via resignation letter of the U.S. Senate seat he occupied for 29 years will officially trigger the special election to fill the vacancy in Massachusetts. After indicating that he was looking for an “out of the box” candidate who hasn’t run for political office before to act [...]

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Taxachusetts.

All of these State of the State addresses going down this past week have certainly yielded an interesting range of proposals, including on the tax front — and while the governors of Louisiana and Nebraska are proposing to eliminate their income and corporate taxes in an effort to make their states more competitively pro-growth and [...]

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Pressure.

A governor looking to make a temporary appointment certainly wants someone who will be enthusiastic about a thankless job — caretaking a Senate seat for a period of time so short that it’s likely not to matter much.  At a certain point, though, enthusiasm morphs from a virtue to a kind of weird, embarrassing, and [...]

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Womp.

It’s been a particular hallmark of Obama’s presidenc,y and current Democratic trends in general, not merely to oppose the reform of the already and completely predictably spiraling welfare state, but to actively grow and expand it. To paraphrase Churchill on the British Empire, Barack Obama did not become president of the United States to preside [...]

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Wide open.

Democrats in Massachusetts found a lump of coal in their special-election stocking on Christmas Eve this year.  There had been some speculation that Ben Affleck might jump into the race to replace John Kerry, now the official nominee to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, and save Democrats from the specter of another Scott [...]

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His specialty?

Maybe Scott Brown will become the Manny Mota of politics — the guy who excels at pinch-hitting. After having just lost a statewide election to hold onto the seat he won in a January 2010 special election, Republicans want him back as their nominee if John Kerry gets his expected Secretary of State appointment.  And [...]

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Replacements.

It’s looking increasingly likely that Sen. John Kerry has the nomination for secretary of State pretty well locked up, and in the event that he steps down, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick will have to appoint an interim replacement to steward his Senate seat before the Bay State can hold a special election later this spring [...]

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No, not him.

Because what America needs is more failed presidential candidates from Massachusetts on the national stage, right?  The Hill reports that Governor Deval Patrick might consider replacing John Kerry, who lost the 2004 election to George W. Bush, with someone who feels his pain, and a former governor who knows Massachusetts well and who isn’t interested [...]

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"I am nobody's senator except yours."

The Senate race in Massachusetts between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren has certainly been one of the more dramatic of the election season (Fauxcahontas, hem hem), and while the polls have generally tended to indicate a lean towards Warren, the race is still squarely in the toss-up category. There comes a time in every campaign, [...]

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Important.

I’ve been avoiding this all day but my curiosity’s finally gotten the better of me. Question: Are Democrats obsessing over Romney’s “binders full of women” line at the debate purely as a joke, or are they actually pegging it as some sort of killer new “Big Bird”-style meme that’s going to turn the election for [...]

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Round two.

7 p.m. ET airing live on C-SPAN and WHDH.com. You already know why this is important so I won’t belabor it, but here’s the poll trend just to drive the point home. The question tonight: On what ground will this battle be fought? Another round over Warren’s phony Native American status, no doubt replete this [...]

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Character.

Video emerged on Tuesday showing supporters of Senator Scott P. Brown making tomahawk gestures with their arms and yelling Indian war whoops at supporters of Elizabeth Warren, his Democratic challenger, outside a pub on Saturday. The gestures were meant to mock Ms. Warren’s assertions, for which she has offered no documentation, that she has Native [...]

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Family lore.

I didn’t think that exchange over her heritage at the debate last week had drawn any blood, but evidently it did. There’s no way her team would waste resources in addressing this subject unless they didn’t like the feedback they got afterward. And if that doesn’t convince you, check out the second clip below: Brown [...]

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No unicorns zone

A week ago we talked about the evolving media storyline which predicted that the Massachusetts Senate race between Scott Brown and Elizabeth warren might be turning nasty. Apparently the press corps in the Bay State is bound and determined to see this script play out come hell or high water. There’s plenty of hand wringing [...]

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Identities.

Via BuzzFeed, five minutes of fun at the start of tonight’s debate. I agree with William Jacobson: In some ways, this is a tough subject for Brown to broach. To make the case effectively he’s got to get into details about the debunked genealogy, her dubious explanations for identifying as Native American, and her insistence [...]

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