Captain obvious

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody hears it, did the tree really fall?

If Rob Wasinger endorses someone and there's only one candidate left, did he really endorse him?

Granted, at the time Rob thought he was just what Brownback needed to scare off that pesky Ron Thornburgh. Never mind that 50 point deficit in the polls. I'm sure Thornburgh dropped out of the race because Rob threw his political might behind his old boss. I'm rather shocked Wasinger's campaign hasn't tried to claim credit for Thornburgh's demise.

But I can't help but laugh at Wasinger "endorsing" any candidate, for governor or otherwise. Does Rob really think that one single person in Kansas cares that he thinks Brownback would make a good governor? Um, no. I'm pretty sure they have to know who you are first to care.

So while it was cute to try and (again) use your old boss to further your own political ambitions, it just further proves that your willing to throw anyone, and I mean anyone, under the bus to get yourself back to Wasington. I mean Washington. Wow, Freudian slip.

Wasinger's "endorsement" of Brownback is yet another cry for help. One that I doubt will be answered.

Steve Rose says vetoed abortion bills are constitutional

Okay, so the headline is a little misleading. But not by much.

Steve Rose, publisher of the JoCo Sun, wrote an editorial that gives his take on how the state will look when Sam Brownback is elected Governor. First, there's this little tidbit.

Under Sam Brownback, there will be no checks and balances with the conservative Legislature.

Well, shucks Steve, I guess I must have missed the editorial you ran blasting Obama and Democrats because of the lack of checks and balances between Congress and the President. Perhaps you were waiting for a filibuster proof majority in the Senate before running that piece, huh? I'd say now would be the time to run it. Or is it only unbalanced when conservatives are in control? You might want to clarify that one.

To me what is most freighting is that his hypothetical isn't even true. Perhaps the 2010 elections will shift the House to be more conservative, but the Senate will remain in the hand of Morris and Vratil, hardly my definition of conservative. And I wouldn't exactly call the House conservative either, having just reject a completely reasonable 2010 budget. So while I appreciate the cred Rose is handing out, it seems to be mostly self serving so he can frighten people into not voting for Brownback.

As entertaining as that was, this is my favorite part.

Every conceivable anti-abortion piece of legislation that is constitutional will be approved by Sam Brownback.

Isn't that interesting? Every piece that is constitutional will be approved. So, what's he saying about the past? That every piece of legislation that was constitutional was rejected by Sebelius? I thought the party line was that anything the Legislature passed was unconstitutional? That's the last reason she gave before jetting off to D.C. Does Rose disagree with Queen Kathleen? It seems like it.

So there you have it. Even the liberals think past abortion policy changes in Kansas were constitutional. Hats off to Rose for finally having the guts to admit it, even if it was just in a passive absent-minded editorial.

Brownback made his own problems

It's sad to say but the mess Sen. Browback finds himself in is mostly of his own making.

When Kathleen Sebelius was announced as a candidate for HHS, all Sen. Brownback had to do was stay quiet. Either that or talk up what an honor it was to have someone from Kansas considered for the post and stay quiet on his opinion of Sebelius. After all, isn't that what Senate hearings and floor debate is for? Why go through the motions if everyone has already made up their minds about who should and shouldn't be confirmed into the Presidents cabinet? Who could have predicted the tax problems that arose? Or the lies about donations from Tiller? Had Brownback just kept quiet, he would have been handed the right ammo to justify a no vote. Coming out so quickly with a statement of support was just plain stupid.

And the icing on the cake was the explanation of vote. A yet to be seen pandemic flu is not a reason to vote to confirm. Conservatives aren't about to buy that.

In short, Sen. Brownback decided to play politics. I'm not going to say that he played politics rather than stand by his principles, because I don't believe that's true. I do however think his political strategy was misguided. Sebelius was out of the US Senate race before she ever got in. While everyone talked up the DailyKos poll that showed her way ahead of Tiahrt or Moran, she was also at 48%, against two Republicans with worse name recognition statewide than her. After over six years in office she should have been well over 50%.

No one in the media or the party wanted to say it, but 48% isn't exactly a glowing endorsement. I think Sebelius saw the writing on the wall. She knew with a properly funded Republican on the other side that her record would be drug out into the open and getting above 50% would be difficult. After all, she's a calculating politician, one that is certainly not going to take a chance on a Senate seat when she can get a confirmed reservation to Washington two years early.

I voted for Brownback each time he ran for US Senate. I still support the good Senator and I will not only vote for him, but work on his gubernatorial campaign. There are elements of the pro-life movement that now say he can't be trusted and is as worthless as Sebelius herself. It's a lie that couldn't be further from the truth.

Sam Brownback has done more for the pro-life movement during his time in the Senate than nearly all other politicians combined. Anyone who says they will not support Sen. Brownback for Governor over this one vote is completely misguided and has become so enthralled with themselves and their holier than thou I'm pro-life ego that they have lost sight of viable, reasonable steps that can be taken during this next election to shut down Tiller and Planned Parenthood. Anyone breaking from Sen. Brownback because he's not "pro-life enough" has broken from reality itself.

Thank you Sen. Brownback for all you have done. Please though, rethink the counsel that you've been receiving. I think you could genuinely benefit from some new ideas in your office.

Sebelius vote set for Tuesday

A vote on Sebelius has been set for Tuesday, one day before the full Legislature returns to attempt an override of her veto of better abortion regulations. I doubt that date was chosen at random. Waiting any longer will only put her nomination in further trouble. If the Legislature would happen to override her veto (which I don't think will happen), she'd be in more trouble. Right now, Sebelius says she has the votes to win confirmation. I doubt that will change by Tuesday.

Sen. Pat Roberts looks like he will still vote for confirmation. Sen. Sam Brownback looks as though he's still going to vote to confirm as well, although it certainly isn't going over well with the pro-life community.

I certainly don't want to see Sebelius confirmed to the HHS post. She's proven herself over and over again to be nothing more than a pro-abortion radical beholden to George Tiller even when she's getting ready to leave the state. I can only imagine the paybacks she'll have to hand out as HHS Secretary.

The circle of campaign money

Now that I've established there are very few people who could have approved the use of Sen. Brownback's name to Catholic Advocate and that have also left since February 2008, let's also take a look at some of the connections between the parties involved.

First, searching for "Catholic Advocate" returns insidecatholic.com, which is apparently its website. The site also features articles from the Morley Institute, which were written by Deal Hudson. Hudson is also a $250 donor to Rob Wasinger and lists Morley Publishing Group as his employer.

It took a few reads, but I finally noticed the mailing house that Catholic Advocate used to mail the fund raising letter. HSP Direct.

HSP stands for Hogan, Schenk and Paul, the three executives in the company. Each gave the federal maximum $2,300 to Wasinger. And another search told me why they had been so generous.

HSP Direct has received over $200,000 worth of business from Sen. Brownback. The three partners also formed a PAC and donated $5,000 each. The only donation made by the PAC, according to opensecrets.org, was to Brownback.

So, by following the money trail, it seems it becomes harder and harder to believe that Wasinger wasn't the staffer who approved the embarrassing fund raising letter.

Some points to consider:

First, Democrats should be very happy they don't have a candidate yet that I can look into.

Second, it would seem that while Rob likes to talk about how effective he is in Washington and how many people he knows, he's only been able to find a very short list of people to donate to his campaign outside of his connections to Sen. Brownback's office. More on that later.

And finally, Rob's connection to Catholic Advocate and it's founder, Deal Hudson, make it all the more confusing for me why he was been silent on the Sebelius nomination. The whole point of Catholic Advocate is to target politicians who have such a "deep personal Catholic faith" but then vote against or veto every piece of pro-life legislation that comes their way. It would seem to me that Sebelius could be the poster child for Catholic Advocate.

So why does Rob insist on remaining silent?

Who let the letter out?

Kansas politicos will remember not to long ago when Sen. Sam Brownback got a bit of unwanted publicity regarding lending his name to the Catholic Advocate. Something stuck in the back of my mind when I was reading about that story. It was this email that came out of Brownback's office.

"I think we've gotten to the bottom of the confusion over the mail piece. Neither the Senator nor I had seen the letter or were aware of it. I figured out that you did get permission to use his name on the piece from a former campaign staffer in February of last year."

That really sticks out doesn't it? February of last year. Why specify a month like that?

Well, no matter. The time line provided lends itself to narrowing down which staffer approved using Sen. Brownback's name to Catholic Advocate. Of course, keep in mind we're not looking for just any staffer. We're looking for someone who would have had the power to authorize such use of the Senator's name.

So, with a quick scan of Legistorm, I can see that 12 staffers have left Sen. Brownback between February and the end of September of 2008. That is the latest information available, so there is unfortunately a time lapse from Sept 08 til Feb. 09 when the flap hit.

In any case, of those twelve, all but two were either legislative aides, interns or regular staff. Not people I'd say that would have the power to approve the use of the Senator's name.

The two left were...I'm sure you can guess one of them...Rob Wasinger...and the other was General Counsel Sean Woo.

I doubt a lawyer would unilateraly approve the use of Sen. Brownback's name for a fund raising letter. Of course, it's always possible. And I'll reiterate that Legistorm only has info until September of 2008.

In any case, it's strong evidence to support what I've thought all along; that Wasinger was the staffer who approved the fund raising letter and caused such grief to befall the Senators office.

Of course, there's more to the story, but I'll save that for another day.

Wasinger brings in the bucks as campaign manager

Well, how about a good inaugural post just to let everyone know I'm still here and still writing about the first district race?

As Kansas Jackass noted, Rob was paid pretty well as chief of staff to Sen. Brownback. But there was something missing from that picture, and that's what he was paid to run Sen. Brownback's Presidential campaign.

According to opensecrets.org, Rob was paid various amounts between December 2006 and August 2007 totaling over $130,000. Quite a bit of cash, no?

Annualized, that works out to over $170,000.

That also works out to about $59.31 per vote that he was able to wrangle for the Ames, Iowa straw poll.

Nothing wrong with it. If I could get the gig, I would. Just interesting in light of discussing his congressional salary.

I'd be interested to know what Huelskamp made last year as a legislator. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it wasn't $170,000.

Governor sprints to catch fast moving bandwagon

A little laughable non-first district news for you.

The Kansas Democrat Buffalo Blog posted today that the Kansas Senate voted 40-0 to, (oh well, it's so good let me quote it), support "Gov. Sebelius's Position Against Housing Detainees from Gitmo."

Now how freakin' hilarious is that? HER position! You know, it was Sebelius (or Gov. Syphilis as my brother likes to call her...something about being contagious) who lead against putting the most dangerous men in the world in Kansas? Sebelius. Leading. Hilarious!

Because, she was the first one to talk about it, to dream it up, to say, "Hey, you know what, maybe that's not such a hot idea." Not Republican Senator Sam Brownback or Rep. Todd Tiahrt or Rep. Jerry Moran or Rep. Lynn Jenkins who have already taken the fight to Washington. Oh no. It was her idea.

Your first clue that's a flat lie is that the title implies she lead on something. Come on, when's the last time that happened? (Hello billion dollar deficit.)

I can't wait until Gov. Sebelius gets beat down by a good Republican! 2010 can't come fast enough!