News you can use

Taking a quick look at some of the other political websites . . .

Tondee’s Tavern has posted the first of what will apparently be several analyses of legislative districts represented by GOP incumbents who might be vulnerable to an election challenge next year. The spotlight falls first on Rep. Jill Chambers, a DeKalb County Republican who has been elected four times in a district that went for John Kerry in 2004 and Barack Obama in 2008. The Tavern will also be looking at Reps. Mike Jacobs, David Casas, Katie Dempsey and Rich Golick.

Weird things keep happening in South Carolina. Over the weekend, a prominent Republican Party activist posted a Facebook comment comparing Michelle Obama to gorillas. On Monday, the news broke that a GOP operative, Mike Green, had twittered the following joke: “I just heard that Obama is going to impose a 40% tax on aspirin because it’s white and it works.” Well, whatever.

Over at Talking Points Memo, Eric Kleefeld reports that Republican leaders are pulling back a little from their verbal attacks on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor:

While most elected Republicans, especially Senators, had eschewed the harsh language coming from the party’s right, even some of the more vocal opponents, like Newt Gingrich, seem to have acknowledged at least implicitly the political damage the attacks were doing to the GOP.

It’s worth noting that a recent Ipsos/McClatchy poll suggested that Republicans could end up doing themselves a lot of harm among Hispanic voters if they overwhelmingly oppose Sotomayor.

The drip, drip, drip of articles examining Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine’s questionable fundraising tactics continued in the Sunday edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This one recounted how Dee Yancey and Donald V. Watkins have used political action committees based in Alabama to funnel money from contributors to campaigns and other political organizations – such as Oxendine’s campaign committee. “Using the PACs obscured the original source of the contributions, but raised no legal questions,” the article states.