[BretLudwig]

((I say: Frank Lautenberg, Cocksucker Emeritus. I hope he gets what Ted
Kennedy has and dies. Bret.))


Frank Lautenberg, Democrat



"Voters in Tuesdays Democratic Senate primary in New Jersey have an
opportunity to choose between a four-term incumbent, Frank Lautenberg, and
a nine-term member of the House, Rob Andrews.

Mr. Andrews is slightly more conservative than Mr. Lautenberg, but has
focused his candidacy on Mr. Lautenbergs age. He has failed to make a
convincing case on that basis, or any other, that New Jersey Democrats
should fire Mr. Lautenberg and give him the job. We urge New Jersey
Democrats to choose Mr. Lautenberg to run in the fall for this vital
Senate seat.

Mr. Lautenberg will indeed be past his 90th birthday by the end of another
six-year term, but theres little evidence that he has slowed down from
the days when he was responsible for enacting a ban on smoking on domestic
airline flights and raising the legal drinking age in all states to 21.

He proudly tells anyone who will listen about how he continues to ski in
the Rockies. But what really matters is that he has not lost his
enthusiasm for sensible, progressive causes: smart restrictions on gun
ownership, effective protections against terrorism at chemical plants and
a greater federal commitment to mass transit and Amtrak. He also argues
strongly for a timetable for bringing United States troops home from Iraq,
and he recognizes that even though he was not in the Senate at the time,
his support for the authorization of force in Iraq was a mistake.

There is a third candidate in the primary, the mayor of Morristown, Donald
Cresitello, who is known almost entirely for his effort to crack down
unfairly on undocumented immigrants and is not a serious choice for the
Senate.

((How do you "unfairly crack down" on criminals??? Bret.))

Mr. Andrews, who is 51 and was first elected to the House in 1990,
maintains that he would be more effective than Mr. Lautenberg in working
with Republicans to break logjams on crucial issues. Thats not terribly
attractive to us, given his record in this area. Mr. Andrews did not just
vote for the war resolution in 2002, he was a prominent and eager
Democratic cheerleader for Mr. Bushs effort to sell the war to Congress
and the public.

Mr. Andrews also supported a misbegotten constitutional amendment to ban
flag burning; Mr. Lautenberg voted against it.

Both men voted for the disastrous 2006 law that suspended habeas corpus
for €œillegal enemy combatants€� and created sham courts at Guantánamo
Bay, Cuba, and both now say they regret it. Mr. Lautenberg has shown real
courage in standing up to the federal government on protecting chemical
plants. He also voted against the confirmation of Samuel Alito as a
justice of the Supreme Court, even though he is a fellow New Jersey
resident, and voted against Michael Mukaseys confirmation as attorney
general."


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