chris dodd

In Las Vegas this Thursday, at the Democratic debate, the elephant in the room will be housing. With the housing market meltdown, foreclosures are sweeping the country. Nevada has the worst rate with one foreclosure filing in every 61 households, while the nationwide rate is one foreclosure filing for every 196 households.

Democrats have done little on this issue...and are poised to make problems worse...

I'm still a Biden Guy, but I will admit that I've been really impressed with the campaign ideas coming out of Senator Chris Dodd's camp. Sure, I thought parts of the website were a little hokey - the "Dodd Squad" and the "Dodd Pod" get a nod - but many of us have seen the talk clocks; an Internet presence second only to that of Edwards; great use of ustream.tv; the first bare-bones, text-only "personal" e-mails; YouTube as a tool for pushing bills through Congress; and more. In the words of Marc Ambinder:

his campaign itself is near flawless; his argument is pitch-perfect and attuned to his audience ... he's the first out of the box with attractive policy ideas, like a carbon tax. And, especially for a campaign run largely by veterans of Washington, he's used emerging technologies more fruitfully than just about everyone else.

Dodd was definitely surging as my second choice due to his voting record, innovations, and subtle jabs, but his latest idea makes him a second-place lock ...

Last week, the Senate Rules Committee heard testimony on the Ballot Integrity Act of 2007 (S. 1487). Senators Diane Feinstein and Christopher Dodd are the bill’s chief sponsors, but Senators Biden, Boxer, Brown, Clinton, Inouye, Kennedy, Leahy, Menendez, Leahy, and Obama have also signed on. While much of the bill is taken up with voting equipment standards, a significant number of voting rights issues are also addressed. These include increased safeguards for voters from being purged, uniform requirements for training poll workers to a set of minimal standards, and equitable allocation of polling place resources. Most importantly, the bill prohibits states from restricting voter registration drives.

Voter registration drives by nongovernmental entities play a critical role in the health of our democracy. They have been effective vehicles through which eligible Americans from traditionally disenfranchised communities have become registered to vote. According to the US Census, 12 million Americans have registered to vote through a voter registration drive, accounting for 8.5 percent of all registered voters. Minority voters, in particular, rely on the voter registration drives. Fifteen percent of Blacks, 15.5 percent of Latinos and 12.5 percent of Asians registered to vote through a drive compared to 8.6 percent for White non-Hispanic voters. In fact, Blacks and Latinos are 65 percent more likely to have registered through a voter registration drive than Whites.

Yesterday Senators Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) denounced Senator Tom Coburn's (R-OK) announcement that he would place a hold on The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which was passed in the House of Representatives yesterday by a vote of 422 to 2 and scheduled to be passed by unanimous consent in the Senate Thursday. Thursday marked the anniversary of the kidnapping and murder of three young civil rights workers (Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner) in Philadelphia, Mississippi, and is also the anniversary of Edgar Ray Killen's conviction for those crimes two years ago.