Island Dave's View

From Reuters:

OTTAWA (Reuters) - After a two-year stint delivering papers to Canadian senators, Marijuana Party candidate and career dominatrix Carol Taylor said she has entered the political arena to help ease people's pain.

Taylor, who says she smokes marijuana to cope with a painful neurological disorder, has whipped up excitement in her Ottawa district, despite being given little chance of beating the incumbent Liberal Party candidate in the June 28 election.

Her campaign workers left postcard leaflets on Wednesday in mailboxes featuring Taylor with one breast exposed under the banner "Can the cannabis crackdown."

She is fighting to legalize the use of marijuana for medicinal and personal use. The Liberals proposed a bill to decriminalize the personal use of pot but the proposal died when the election was called on May 23.

"This is the only political platform with which I have ever been in total agreement," Taylor says on her Marijuana Party Web site.

The Liberals under Prime Minister Paul Martin are in a close race against the Conservatives, who are generally not in favor of easing up on illegal drugs.

Taylor was a Senate page shuttling paper to and from lawmakers in the early 1990s and since then has worked in a Montreal "dungeon" as a dominatrix.

"I can't believe Elections Canada allows this kind of stuff. I'm not uptight but I can see how some people would consider this to be pornographic," one Senate employee said. "I'm shocked, and a little aroused."

I got a call a few minutes ago from Roger Eaton, the Democratic candidate for the 3rd Congressional District in NC. He expressed his interest in having me join his campaign as a volunteer, and we've set a meeting for Tuesday at his campaign office in Morehead City.

Eaton suffers, as he told me on the phone, from a lack of name exposure, and one thing he has asked about is passing out fliers at polling spots during the July primary. His opponent, Walter Jones, is a conservative in the same mold as Jesse Helms, and can count amongst his many lackluster accomplishments the coining of the term "Freedom Fries." Jones has served in the House since 1994, and has the fortune to represent a rural, heavily right-leaning district.

I'll bring everyone an update soon. Mr. Eaton's website does not host online contributions yet, but if you can help his campaign with even a few bucks, send a check to:

Roger Eaton for Congress
PO Box 674
Morehead City, NC 28557

Be sure to include the name of your employer and your occupation as required by law. (Mr. Eaton is limiting contributions to only those individuals who live in the 3rd District of NC.)

According to the AP, Republican Jack Ryan is going to withdraw from the Senate race in Illinois. After serious charges of forced sexual acts, made by his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan, GOP candidate has been constantly assaulted in the press and by his own party members. Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, was already heavily favored in the race, and his seat may now be considered a certain pick-up for the Democrats.

WASHINGTON - Illinois Republican candidate Jack Ryan intends to abandon his Senate bid after four days spent trying to weather a political storm stirred by sex club allegations, GOP officials said Friday.

A formal announcement was expected within hours, said these officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Ryan conducted an overnight poll to gauge his support in the wake of the allegations made by his ex-wife in divorce records unsealed earlier this week. Aides said in advance his only options were to withdraw or to redouble his campaign efforts with a massive infusion of money from his personal wealth.

Illinois GOP leaders would select another candidate in the event of a withdrawal. Ryan's replacement would become an instant underdog in a campaign against Democratic State Sen. Barack Obama.

One official said a withdrawal statement was in the drafting stages. Two officials said Ryan's staff was spreading the word of his intentions. "He knows he can't go on," said one official, who spoke with the campaign.

Illinois Republican Party leaders convened a teleconference, although it wasn't clear whether they had yet turned to discussion of who might replace Ryan some four months before the November election.

While polls have shown Ryan trailing Obama from the start, several party strategists said they were concerned about the impact on Republicans running for the state legislature and other offices if he stayed on the ballot.

The Senate election is to replace Republican Peter Fitzgerald, who decided not to seek a second term.

Ryan has been struggling for political survival since Monday, when divorce records were released showing that his ex-wife, actress Jeri Ryan, said he took her to sex clubs and tried to pressure her to perform sex acts while others watched. Ryan has denied the allegations.

Although Fitzgerald and the National Republican Senatorial Committee stood by Ryan, he came under immediate pressure from many GOP officials in his home state to relinquish his nomination.

Members of the state's GOP congressional delegation met with House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., on Thursday to discuss the issue, and one official said afterward that the speaker concurred that Ryan needed to step aside.

Hastert declined to elaborate Friday, simply saying, "That's up to him. It's his choice. It's not whether I want to or not."

Fitzgerald said Friday that he had encouraged Ryan to stay in the race, calling the response to the scandal "grotesque."

"I told him that it troubled me greatly that so many party leaders who had no trouble stomaching years and years of corruption and insider deals and scandals under George Ryan were now lining up to throw stones at Jack (no relation to George Ryan)," Fitzgerald said.

"I think the public stoning of Jack Ryan is one of the most grotesque things I've seen in politics," he said. He said he talked to Ryan on Thursday but hadn't spoken with him since then.

Ryan, 44, was seen by many as the party's best hope of revitalization after a devastating 2002 election, in which Illinois Republicans lost control of the governor's office and nearly every statewide office, and an ongoing corruption scandal involving former Gov. George Ryan, who has since been indicted.

But those hopes were dashed by the unsealing of his divorce records. Ryan had fought the unsealing, saying it would harm his 9-year-old son. The Chicago Tribune and Chicago TV station WLS sued to have the records released.

Ryan had no public appearances planned Friday and his campaign staff did not return calls. Campaign spokesman Kelli Phiel declared repeatedly Thursday that "Jack Ryan is in the race to stay," even as Ryan saw GOP support dwindle even further during the day.

Meanwhile, the Illinois Republican Party prepared for a previously scheduled evening leadership retreat designed to advise GOP candidates on winning in November.

The GOP cannot force Ryan off the ballot, but if he drops out before Aug. 27, the party can put up a new candidate. Among those mentioned: state Sen. Steve Rauschenberger and dairy owner Jim Oberweis, both of whom lost to Ryan in the primary, and former state Board of Education (news - web sites) chairman Ron Gidwitz.

From the AP and Washington Post:

A federal appeals court on Thursday largely reversed a landmark set of rule changes from the Federal Communications Commission that would have allowed companies to own more radio and television stations in the same market.....

"This is a big, big win for diversity," said Andrew Jay Schwartzman, CEO of the Media Access Project, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest law firm that led the lawsuit against the FCC.

"The court recognized that debate and democratic values are more important than letting big media corporations grow bigger," Schwartzman said. "It's especially important that the court has told the FCC to remove its deregulatory thumb from the scales."

From the new USA/CNN/Gallup Poll, more than 50% of respondents feel that Iraq was a "mistake." Although much of the rest of the poll shows a fairly tight race, the Iraq questions are really important as we see today's escalation of violence in that nation. The coordinated and devastating attacks at 5 locations in Iraq have marked renewed armed resistance to American occupation and the establishment of Iraqi democracy.

The poll also shows that the Iraq "mistake" numbers have propelled the conflict to discontent approaching that of Vietnam.

You can read it here.

Just to let everyone know, I have finished my finals, and have been taking a couple of days down at the beach enjoying this beautiful island. I'll be back to full-speed blogging this week, and will soon have the Current Events Monitor transitioned into the blogosphere by Thursday of next week, but possibly much sooner.