Terry McMahon's Awesome Blog

Two items of note today. One, Democrat Brad Ellsworth is making a serious challenge to Republican U.S. Rep. John Hostettler of Indiana. Hostettler is an interesting guy because he basically does no fundraising and has an outstanding get-out-the-vote effort. Also he says there's a connection between breast cancer and abortion and he tried bringing a gun onto a plane post-9/11.

Anyway, some IU law student found photos of Ellsworth's 19-year-old daughter drinking on her Facebook site. See, the idea is that Ellsworth is the county sheriff, and here's his daughter breaking the law. Hostettler's campaign is even making light of it.

At first I thought this was a major problem, since Ellsworth is one of our best recruits, and one of his best attributes is that he's tough on crime. Then I realized that this should wind up being a major mistake from Hostettler. Say it's mid-October, and this race is a huge slugfest, as it's expected to be. Brad Ellsworth goes on the air and decries Hostettler's tactics, then says, "he even went after my daughter." That is completely, absolutely, fundamentally true. And it would hurt Hostettler a lot. I hope the chick's strong enough to take it.

Next up is John McCain's recent letter to Barack Obama. See, recently, McCain suggested a bipartisan reform bill with Obama, who at first agreed and then sent McCain a letter backing off. Democrats really want to use reform as an issue in 2006, with cause, but McCain was not thrilled with Obama's withdrawal and wrote him a letter saying as much. Thing is, you want to see a smackdown, it's this. Here's the first line:

I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere.

UPDATE: Obama responds. Well reasoned.