Pennsylvania Politics -- Irey Rising

Gateway Pundit has a nice roundup of news on Diana Irey's campaign here. She is beginning to emerge as a national figure, due largely to support from veterans organizations who see her as a way to dump Murtha. Check out Vets for Irey here.

One of my correspondents recently attended one of Diana's events and spoke at length with her. He writes:

She spoke well and made some good points that were well received. I always gauge effectiveness by the number of heads bobbing up and down in an affirmative manner. However she tended towards providing more details than necessary or more than welcome. For example, on the illegal alien issue, she started out saying that she was against amnesty and for greater enforcement of immigration laws but then went on to describe how she personally felt about illegals in general and I could see some of the human service professionals in the audience start to cringe.

In other words, she's making rookie mistakes, overexplaining rather than headlining the basics. She'll get better with practice. My correspondent notes that she is beginning to make some headway on the war issue and that tracks with other things I am hearing from people in Western Pennsylvania.

It's about time someone takes down Murtha, and I can't think of a better person to do it than Diana Irey.

Here's her website. Check her out.

And while we're on the subject of Jack Murtha, Michael Crowley, writing in the New Republic notes some of his liabilities.

A longtime Appropriations Committee baron, Murtha was notorious for his chumminess with defense lobbyists. Last June, the Los Angeles Times reported that a defense appropriations bill Murtha helped to write funneled more than $20 million to at least ten companies represented by the lobbying firm where his brother, Kit, is a senior partner.

More troubling is Murtha's role in Congress's last massive corruption scandal: the 1980 Abscam case. Murtha was videotaped meeting with an FBI agent masquerading undercover as an Arab sheik. When the "sheik" offered Murtha $50,000 in exchange for help gaining U.S. residency, Murtha demurred, saying he wasn't interested "at this time"--but suggested he might rethink it after getting to know the sheik better. Murtha later admitted he'd hoped the sheik might "invest" money in his district, which might be legal but certainly doesn't sound pristine. The Justice Department named Murtha an unindicted co-conspirator, and, when the House Ethics Committee ultimately voted not to bring charges against him, the Committee's special counsel resigned in protest. It doesn't help matters that Murtha was one of exactly four Democrats to vote against their own caucus' motion last month promoting a tougher ethics reform bill than a sham Republican version. Abscam may be ancient history, and no sinister confluence between Murtha's work and his brother's lobbying has been established. Still, Murtha may not be an ideal leader--symbolically, at least--for a party determined to reform a "culture of corruption."

Read it here.

That says a lot. Jack "the Sleaze" Murtha is a rotten apple. The sooner he is out of Congress, the better for all of us.

Jeez, I can't believe I actually voted for this guy -- but I was young and foolish in those days.