† Is Hillary Clinton Campaigning For President?:  Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn thinks that “Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden should switch jobs. Really.":

Clinton has done an incredible job as secretary of state. … She is the ambassador of the United States to the world, maintaining her credibility while playing the bad guy to President Obama's good guy, such as with North Korea, Iran and Israel, and still looking good. …

It would not be out of the question for Clinton and Biden to switch jobs sometime after the midterm elections. After the president announced the switch, majorities in both houses of Congress would have to confirm Clinton to her new position, following the rules laid out in the 25th Amendment. She could then immediately begin campaigning for Obama for 2012, and she would also have at least two years in the White House as vice president to give her unassailable experience, clout and credibility. For his part, Biden would simply need Senate confirmation to get to work in Foggy Bottom.

Another scenario is that Obama could wait and choose Hillary as his running mate for 2012 and then have her step down as secretary of state so she could start campaigning. The catch with that plan, however, is that it would make Biden a lame duck and Obama would probably have to appoint an interim secretary of state.

Here’s a third scenario: The Dems take such a shellacking in the mid-term elections that it will be years before they can hope to approach parity in either house of Congress, and sit on their hands while Repubs find some Blago-like reason to bring articles of impeachment against President Barack Hussein Obama. Then Sen. Chuck Schumer(D-NY) will play the Barry Goldwater role. Really.

† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: In what The Washington Times calls “a resounding defeat for President Obama and Democratic leaders,” the Senate rejected a $140 spending bill “just a few days after Mr. Obama made an unusual plea in a late-night Saturday letter for Congress to pass the measure,” and then even after “chastened” Dems trimmed the package down, The Washington Post reports that “[o]n a vote of 56 to 40, the Senate failed to muster the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster threat and proceed to an up-or-down vote on the approximately $120 billion package” because “it still would have contributed $55 billion to budget deficits over the next decade while raising taxes on investment partnerships and certain businesses, both large and small.”

† A Tale Of Two Candidates: SC Democratic Party officials have rejected a protest by Vic Rawl, declined to nullify the primary election results that will pit Alvin Greene, an unemployed 32-year-old who lives with his father and waged no visible campaign against a former lawmaker, against Repub Sen. Jim DeMint in the general election, reports The Associated Press:

The party's executive committee decided there was not enough evidence of impropriety to nullify the June 8 [election results]. ...

[M]embers of the committee said they hadn't been presented with enough concrete evidence and could not overturn an election, no matter how much they wanted Rawl, a former lawmaker and judge, to win.

So now, some Dems are going to Plan B: fielding an independent candidate to vie for the Senate seat against Greene and DeMint, reports CNN:

Allies of former congressional candidate Linda Ketner, who came within four points of unseating Rep. Henry Brown in 2008, are seeking 10,000 signatures by July 15 to get Ketner's name on the ballot along with Greene and the Republican incumbent, Sen. Jim DeMint.

Ketner confidante Tasha Gandy announced the "all volunteer viral and field organizing effort" in an e-mail to former Ketner staffers Wednesday. "Long shot?," she wrote. "Yes. Have crazier things happened in SC? Yes. Can you help?"

As RedStateNews’ Erick Erickson points out, in conservative SC Ketner may be even more unelectable than an unemployed guy who does not appear to be the sharpest knife in the drawer. Just shows how much respect Dems have for voters.

Meanwhile, a Rasmussen Reports survey of SC voters finds that Greene does, in fact, have a constituency, as he has claimed all along:

DeMint, who is seeking a second six-year term, earns support from 58% of Likely Voters in South Carolina, while Democratic nominee Alvin Greene picks up 21% of the vote. Nine percent (9%) like some other candidate, and 13% are undecided.

In a state that leans strongly Republican, Democrats have invested most of their attention this year in the race to succeed embattled GOP Governor Mark Sanford. No major Democrat opted to run against DeMint, a highly popular conservative who is seen as very difficult to beat.

The Rasmussen survey found that Greene is supported by 51 percent of black voters, and Ketner’s entry into the race may only pull away some of the 74 percent of whites who supported DeMint in a two-man race.

† What It's Like To Be Sheriff Joe: Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (AKA "America's Toughest Sheriff") is a softie when it comes to puppies and kittens – and has gone above and beyond the call of duty in defense of helpless animals that have been abused, reports The Washington Times:

Honored for his humanitarian efforts by the Humane Society of the United States, he also received the lifetime achievement award from the nonprofit group In Defense of Animals for his work encouraging police agencies nationwide to take more seriously the crimes of animal cruelty.

He puts animal abusers in jail instead of giving them citations.

The sheriff even has dedicated an air-conditioned jail solely as a sanctuary for dogs, cats and other animals that have been removed by his deputies from abusive and neglectful homes. He began a training program for some of his female inmates to learn how to care for, groom and train those very animals.

But that track record wasn’t good enough for Becky Barnes, president of Guide Dog Users Inc. (GDUI), who has withdrawn an invitation for Arpaio to be the keynote speaker at its national convention in Phoenix on July 14^th:

She said the invitation to the sheriff "was not political in nature at all, and it is too bad that politics were injected into the situation with the outcome we have now." …

Several national conventions scheduled to be held in Arizona have pulled the plug since Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed the legislation. In the case of GDUI's national convention, instead of boycotting Arizona, the group singled out Sheriff Arpaio personally because of his local and national reputation for enforcing immigration laws.

† Boobs And Brains Not Mutually Exclusive: Yet another example of "boobism" - the last acceptable form of anti-woman bias - interfering with a woman's career. When she tried to visit a client at the Miami Federal Detention Center, the underwire in attorney Brittney Horstman’s bra set off a metal detector, so she took the offending undergarment off in the ladies’ room so she could pass through the checkpoints. This time, the guards wouldn’t let her in because her bralessness violated the prison dress code, reports ABAJournal.com:

Apparently, the guards who kept her out of the jail weren’t aware of an arrangement worked out a few years ago in which women lawyers who set off the metal detector are allowed entry if an inspection with a wand shows their bras are the source of the problem.

† Couple Lifted Luggage: Cops: Stacy Legg-King, 39, has pleaded guilty to two counts of theft, trafficking stolen property and drug violations for her part in stealing up to a thousand pieces of luggage from Sky Harbor International Airport, reports The Arizona Republic:

Legg-King's sentencing date is set for July 19.

Legg-King's alleged accomplice, 61-year-old Keith King, has been charged with 44 counts of theft, burglary and drug violations, according to records. King has not been convicted or pleaded guilty to any of the counts. His next court date is set for July 13.

† Updates To Previous Posts (ninth item, Why We Need Gitmo): Brushing aside his attorneys’ preposterous claims of post-traumatic stress caused by CIA torture, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, the first Gitmo detainee to be tried in a U.S. civilian court, must submit to strip searches, reports The Associated Press:

Ghailani had asked Kaplan to force the Bureau of Prisons to spare him from a 1997 policy that requires all inmates entering or leaving the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan to submit to a visual inspection of "all body surfaces and body cavities."

A psychologist, Katherine Porterfield, had testified at a hearing several weeks ago that Ghailani did not object to the strip search so much as the requirement that he bend over or squat briefly to display his rectum to an officer conducting the search.

The judge sided with the government, which had argued that the prison regulation was reasonable and serves important governmental interests such as the protection of guards, court personnel and other inmates.

Kaplan noted that the policy was adopted nationally after it was realized that inmates will hide weapons or other illegal items in body cavities.

Responding to the claim by Ghailani's lawyers that their client cannot assist in his defense if he is traumatized by strip searches, Kaplan suggested that he could be found incompetent to stand trial – meaning, a stint in a mental asylum will cure is PTSD so the trial can resume.

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Terrorist Mouthpiece Disbarred): When Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman’s defense attorney Lynne Stewart is resentenced on July 15^th the length of her prison term hinges on whether she perjured herself at her 2005 trial for providing material support to a terrorist conspiracy, reports New York Law Journal:

Both sides have filed extensive sentencing materials with [Southern District of New York Judge John J. Koeltl], whose decision to give Stewart, 70, only 28 months in prison for helping her imprisoned client, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, communicate with the outlaw Islamic Group in Egypt, was vacated last year as too light by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. …

Stewart's sentence caused turmoil at the circuit, as a two-judge majority of Judges Robert D. Sack and Guido Calabresi held they could not determine whether the sentence was substantively reasonable because Koeltl had declined to make a finding on perjury. The court nonetheless ordered Stewart to begin serving her sentence immediately. …

Stewart was convicted on Feb. 10, 2005, of conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to provide and conceal the provision of material support to a conspiracy to kill persons in a foreign country; providing and concealing the provision of material support to the conspiracy to kill persons in a foreign country; and making false statements to the U.S. Department of Justice and the Bureau of Prisons. …

Koeltl pronounced sentence in 2006 and Stewart afterwards crowed outside the courthouse that she could do the 28 months "standing" on her "head."

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, There Are No Good Guys In This Story): After being convicted of theft-related charges for trying to use the legal system to shake down two of four men who had sex with his then-wife in 2001 and 2002, San Antonio, attorney Ted Roberts has served his time. One month in state prison. Texas Lawyer reports:

Judge Sid Harle of the 226^th District Court in San Antonio granted Roberts' motion for shock probation and placed him on probation for 10 years, according to a news release from Bexar County Criminal District Attorney Susan Reed.

San Antonio solo Robert L. Mays Jr., who represents Roberts, says shock probation "is used to give someone convicted of a crime a taste of prison" to convince him not to reoffend.

In December 2007, another jury convicted Mary Roberts, now Mary Schorlemer, of five counts of theft for her part in the scheme.