President

President Barack Obama submitted his first seven nominations for U.S. Attorneys on June 4.   The U.S. Senate confirmed five of the seven on August 7, but New Jersey's Paul Fishman was not one of them.  The five who were confirmed came from New York (Southern District), Alabama, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Vermont. 

Until the Senate confirms Fishman, which is unlikely to be any earlier than next month, Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra will remain in the post he's held since Christopher Christie resigned on December 1, 2008 to seek the Republican nomination for Governor.  The Associated Press, citing two unnamed sources, reported earlier this week that the Department of Justice is investigating whether Marra made inappropriate public comments during a high profile announcement of public corruption cases that might have boosted the Christie campaign.

Representatives of New Jersey's two U.S. Senators, Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) and Robert Menendez (D-Hoboken), continue to predict a smooth confirmation for Fishman, who jointly recommended his appointment to Obama in February.  But Lautenberg and Menendez have not been able to get the Democratic-controlled Senate to move forward on Fishman.  They have not said why.

Political discourse in America contains much in the way of intellect or intellectual honesty. One considers the Federalist Papers with wistful awe: that advocates offered such documents to the public as political arguments astonishes us. Fancy: honest, intellectually respectable political arguments.

And, then, we peruse the latest effort by no less a personage than the President of the United States – Mr. HopeandChange himself – on the subject of health insurance reform and we wonder: how does a man of such obvious intellect offer such self-evidently vacuous, downright dishonest arguments?

Not that Republicans are wholly innocent, but leftists raise demagoguery to an art form. Recall during the Clinton Presidency, when Republicans suggested restraining Medicare’s rate of growth, the Democrats produced a litter of kittens – and a plethora of attack ads. Clinton himself branded the "cuts" as "draconian". Democrats ran as the unapologetic advocates of unlimited growth in Medicare spending.

U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-Hoboken) speaks today at Metro Park with, from left: U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park), Gov. Jon Corzine, Assemblywoman Linda Stender (D-Fanwood), and U.S. Rep. Rush Holt (D-Hopewell Twp.).

WOODBRIDGE - Saddled with a subpoena to nowhere - at least to date - during his 2006 U.S. Senate bid by the office of then-U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-Hoboken) has lived with the open-ended question mark of that probe ever since.

Now Christie is running for governor and Menendez allies say the senator has a personal stake in reelecting Gov. Jon Corzine.

Testimony this week by former George W. Bush mastermind Karl Rove that Rove had political conversations with Christie while the latter served as U.S. Attorney, intensified Menendez's own questions about whether Christie pursued him politically in that 2006 battleground campaign as a way of currying favor with Bush.

Rove said the discussions he had with Christie related to New Jersey's top cop's prospective gubernatorial aspirations, but Menendez sees deeper, more troubling implications.

Going back to January of 2006, Christie's name appeared on a federal Attorney General's list of U.S. Attorneys slated for firing, then came off the list after information leaked in the middle of a contentious U.S. Senate campaign that Christie was probing Menendez.

Despite campaign time headlines about the U.S. Attorney's Office examining the Congressman-turned Senator's rental of property to a nonprofit organization receiving federal funds, Menendez defeated state Sen. Tom Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield).

But with the subpoena back story unresolved and Christie beating incumbent Democratic Gov. Corzine by nine points 81 days until Election Day, Menendez now wants a stepped-up Congressional counter probe of how Bush's AG Office and U.S. Attorney's offices such as Christie's administered justice.  

"Clearly the Rove information under oath creates very serious concerns about the political process that took place at the Justice Department and U.S. Attorneys offices across the country and the effect upon those U.S. Attorneys offices," the senator said today after appearing with Gov. Jon Corzine, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) and U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood at Metro Park to celebrate the state's receipt of a $298.7 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Transit Capital Grant from the feds.

President Obama has a 56%-39% job approval rating in New Jersey, down from 61%-33% last month, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. 

"For President Barack Obama, the bloom is fading in the Garden State as his approval rating wilts," said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.  "The President still is on the positive side when we ask about his overall job approval and his grades for handling the economy.   But the trend - and that's what you always look at - is heading down."

Among independents voters, Obama has an upside-down 45%-48% approval rating.

By a 52%-42% margin, New Jerseyans approve of Obama's handling of the economy.  More than half (51%) say his economic policies will help the economy, while 35% say they will hurt it and 10%  believe it will make no difference.  Just 35% of state voters think Obama's economic plan will help them personally.

An estimated 1,700 people, "mostly women," joined Eunice Kennedy Shriver at a campaign tea in Far Hills a few weeks before the end of the 1960 presidential campaign, according to the New York Times' coverage of the event.

"They tell me this is Republican country," Shriver told the crowd while campaigning for her brother, then-U.S. Sen. John F. Kennedy.  "But I don't think so anymore."

The tea was held at the home of industrialist Charles Engelhard.  According to published reports, Shriver spent nearly two hours in a receiving line shaking hands.  She made the New Jersey campaign stop "because Jack asked me to come."

Sad news last week - it's official that Sarah Palin resigned as Governor of Alaska, presumably to attempt to burnish her leadership credentials at the national level.  This means we will have to suffer her pretensions to the national Republican leadership, and be constantly reminded of the bone-headed move by the McCain campaign to select her as Vice-Presidential candidate in 2008.

Some are comparing Palin's exit from the Alaska stage to Richard Nixon's self-described "final" press conference after losing the California Governorship in 1962, telling assembled media they would not have Nixon to "kick around anymore."  He was elected President of the United States 6 years later.

Her media-bashing is the only thing she has in common with Nixon.  By 1962, Nixon was a former Congressman, US Senator, 2-term Vice-President of the United States, candidate for President, and candidate for Governor.

The Star-Ledger is reporting that Vice President Joseph Biden has moved an event scheduled for Tuesday in Pennsauken to Philadelphia, suggesting that the Obama administration was unwilling to visit New Jersey so soon after dozens of public officials were arrested on federal corruption charges.  Biden and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder were "originally scheduled to hold the event, on community policing grants."

According to a criminal complaint, Hoboken Mayor Peter Cammarano allegedly accepted a bribe on the same day that he attended a Democratic rally in Holmdel featuring President Barack Obama.  Obama also gave a shout out to Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy, who admitted on Friday that he was one of the local officials referred to in several criminal complaints.

“On the Record”

Political analysts Brigid Harrison from Montclair State University and John Weingart from the Eagleton Institute of Politics talk about the federal corruption bust and the governor’s race with host Michael Aron.

Airs: Sunday at 9am and 11am, Monday at 6:30 am on NJN

“Reporters Roundtable with Michael Aron”

Politifax’s Nick Acocella, The Record’s Alfred Doblin, Newjerseynewsroom.com’s Josh McMahon and I, Matt Friedman, discuss the corruption sting, lieutenant governor selections and the gubernatorial race more broadly.  

Airs: Sunday at 10am on NJN

“New Jersey Now”

Former Morris County Prosecutor and Democratic Strategist Michael Murphy and Republican Pollster Adam Geller discuss the federal corruption sweep in New Jersey; Bryan Miller of Ceasefire NJ and Attorney Gary Needleman debate the concealed gun law defeated earlier this week in the U.S.
Senate; and Dr. Evelyn Rodriguez and Ed Geisler of Healthcare Payers Coalition of NJ discuss President Obama's healthcare reform bill and its impact on the Garden State.

Airs: Sunday at 12pm on My9

“Fox News Sunday”

U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-Long Branch) talks Health Care with host Shannon Beam.

Airs: Sunday between 12pm and 1pm

President Barack Obama, who last week came to New Jersey to campaign for Gov. Corzine, wrote a letter in support of him today.  

Those close to Gov. Corzine say that the promulgation of the letter today is evidence that he will not cave to pressure to drop out of the race, despite reported pressure from some Democrats to do so in the wake of yesterday’s corruption busts that snared dozens of public officials and politicians – most of them Democrats.  

Instead, the letter focuses on the economy, calling Corzine “a fighter for middle class.”

“We live in challenging times. Now more than ever, we need leaders with the strength to make tough decisions and the courage to do the right thing -- leaders who bring people together for a common purpose, and fight for the most vulnerable among us. Jon is one of those leaders,” read the letter.  

Below is the full text of the letter:

State Democratic Chairman Joe Cryan

HOLMDEL - Democratic State Chairman Joe Cryan told a brace of reporters jostled in the crowd outflow that Gov. Jon Corzine will not pick and announce a lieutenant governor tomorrow.

"Not happening," said Cryan, who received early criticism about how Obama appeared to use the venue more to talk about national healthcare than to discuss the particular merits of the incumbent governor by noting Corzine's standup for the State Children's Health Insurance Plan (S-CHIP).

"Those were two profiles in political courage on that stage today," said Cryan.