California Representative Tom Lantos, who was the only holocaust survivor to serve in the US congress, died today.  He was always a strong advocate for peace, and upholding the constitution, and countless other progressive causes, and will be missed greatly by this community.  Our thoughts should go out to his family and his congressional district, which has lost a great leader.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/11/l antos.obit.ap/index.html

May God bless Representative Lantos and his family

According to Washington Wire (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/06/01 how-thompson-could-roil-field-of-republ ican-hopefuls)

<MINOR MEMOS: Democrats collected 75% of the $1.1 million in presidential campaign contributions by top hedge-fund executives in first quarter, according to Absolute Returns magazine and PoliticalMoneyLine.... Senate Banking chairman Dodd led with $347,000 received.... Most generous fund was Fortress Investment Group, which gave ex-employee Edwards $226,000.>

What this says about Dodd:  First of all, lets be honest, he was never a serious contender for the presidency.  However, this says quite a lot about his ethics as senate banking committee chair.  The job of this senate committee is to regulate things like Hedge funds, not suit their interests, so any reasonable democrat should be highly skeptical of a hedge fund that wants to give him money, especially when he has that much power over their regulation.  Shame on Chris Dodd.  He's been taking bad money like he's a Republican.

What it says about Edwards:  Well, it pretty clearly shows that the "It was primarily to learn" statement was a--what's that thing called?--O right, a lie.  Now, I've been skeptical of the man for a while--between the $400 hair-cut, the sudden transformation from a conservative southern dem to a hardcore progressive, his vote for the Iraq war, the things Bob Shrum has said (which cannot be 100% confirmed), etc.  To judge his role on the hedge-fund, or pretty much any other action that a democrat takes, the question I usually ask is some form or another of "Would Paul Wellstone have approved of that?"  And to answer that, we are led to the question, "Do hedge-funds and the democratic party share any values?"  Well, I don't really know the answer to that last question--I think it depends on whose democratic party we're dealing with.

(In the interest of full disclosure I currently support Obama 08, with strong feelings as well for Richardson 08.  I have donated $20 so far to the Obama for president campaign, as well as purchased one T-shirt.  None of that money came from a hedge-fund.