A Few Other Things About the Election

• I'm excited about the Democratic congressional agenda. From the Chicago Tribune:
  
  

  Democrats have vowed to raise the minimum wage, allow Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, make college tuition tax deductible and implement all of the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission to secure the nation's borders and ports.

  
  I do have some reservations about implementing all of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. The commission certainly did good work and Congress should follow its lead, but we should not hastily adopt every recommendation just because doing so makes congressional leaders look good. Congress still has a responsibility to carefully review and debate each proposal.


• In the meantime Democratic congressional leaders need to call on disgraced Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) to withdraw from his race. Lousiana requires a run-off if no candidate gets 50 percent of the vote (they have a great system down there). Jefferson was the leader on Tuesday, but is not favored to win the run-off. At any rate, the Dems need to send a message about corruption by asking Jefferson to bow out. They should have done so already; and if they don't, one has to call into question the integrity of Democratic congressional leaders.


• Minnesota's Fifth Congressional District (the "Fightin' Fifth"!) elected the nation's first Muslim congressman, Democrat Keith Ellison. (I'm amazed that someone with such a Muslim-sounding name was able to win in post-9/11 America.) Ellison was endorsed by Minnesota's American Jewish World newspaper, favors a two-state solution in the Middle East, and is no friend of Hamas.


• Exactly half of the states now have constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. Arizona, however, became the first state to defeat such an amendment. Curiously, the only state that is hip to change is the state that is essentially a retirement community the size of Ecuador.