Rhode Frog: In Langevin's Seat

From ProJo:

Marketing consultant and former North Kingstown Town Council member Mark Zaccaria, a Republican, is seeking to challenge incumbent U.S. Rep. James Langevin in Rhode Island’s 2nd Congressional District.
...“Congressman Langevin has served in the Rhode Island House, and the U.S. House, but I don’t think he really understands the problems you face in your house,” Zaccaria said, in remarks aimed at voters.

And Mr. Zaccaria does?

...The encumbent, [Zaccaria] said, “has done exactly what he has promised to do. But I don’t think he has promised the right things. His approach is not the best one for the times now facing us and I don’t think he realizes that.

Well, Langevin just voted for the "Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act" back in October, and correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't housing the biggest thing on everyone's minds right now? He supports universal health care. Langevin also just scored a victory with Patrick Kennedy on the "Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007."
So we have a wildly successful and popular congressman who, contrary to the nature of politicians, has lived up to the promises he made to constituents. How is that not enough?
And, throughout this article, Zaccaria does not give one specific example of what Langevin is doing wrong, or why he would be a better candidate. Every word he said was too vague. He essentially said nothing.

Bits & Pieces

Senator Al Franken has proposed a "Pay for War" resolution that would require Congress to raise taxes and/or cut spending before authorizing new acts of war, so that American foreign adventures can't contribute to the national debt.

In "The Long Road Home," historian Ben Shephard tells the neglected story of the refugee crisis the Allies faced when, at war's end, millions of displaced persons -- among them prisoners of war, slave laborers and survivors of concentration camps -- had to be repatriated to their homelands or resettled somewhere else.

For most of the last century, talk of secession, nullification and the rest of the extreme states-rights lexicon were relegated to the fringiest parts of the political fringe. But since Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2009, mainstream Republican rhetoric and proposed legislation at the state level have both warmed to the hoary idea that state governments can take their relationship with the federal government on what amounts to an a la carte basis or perhaps abandon it altogether.

Is the tantalizing dream of a universal library dead? Some scholars and librarians across the country fear it may be, now that a federal judge in New York has derailed Google’s bold plan to build the world’s largest digital library and bookstore.

...the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office... finds that a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts. In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade the plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law.

...Republicans in Mississippi are divided over a wholly different wedlock issue: interracial marriage.

Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz writes in this month's Vanity Fair about the corrosive, self-reinforcing wealth concentration that has hijacked American politics, in which the America's future is sacrificed to give ever more money to an ever-smaller group of oligarchs.

In Langevin's Seat

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