Welcome back once again to our ongoing pigeonholing exercise for this year's midterm Senate races. The big question, of course, is whether Republicans will pick up the six seats they need to wrest control of the chamber from the dastardly (according to them) Harry Reid and his Democratic minions. The answer to this pressing question is still not clear, and it actually may not be definitively answered until long after election night (for various interesting and wonky reasons).

Still, that doesn't stop the punditocracy ("wonkocracy," perhaps?) from making our predictions, so let's just dive in and make some rash and reckless prognostications, shall we? As always, in making these determinations I use the criteria of: news I've read about each race, all polling data available, and a good dose of common sense. That last one could also be read as "what my gut is telling me about each race," I fully admit.

The public is increasingly paying attention to each individual race, and in many states public debates have been held in the past week or so. Some races have firmed up as a result, and some are more chaotic than ever.

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Yesterday's announcement that the Supreme Court would not review the marriage equality cases before it was a solid victory for marriage egalitarians (a term I just made up in the hopes everyone will immediately start using it). It was a solid defeat for the anti-egalitarians. Marriage equality will soon be reality in at least 30 out of 50 states. The others are likely to quickly follow, one way or another (as I sat down to write this I noted that yet another ruling from an appeals court was just announced, striking down anti-egalitarian laws in two more states -- something that has become so common, it is barely considered newsworthy any more). The only real question now is whether it'll take another Supreme Court case or just happen organically among the various federal appellate courts.

America has come a long way to get to this point. The past two years, the issue has moved forward at lightspeed in both the world of politics and the arena of public opinion. Social change is always a big rock that must be slowly and painfully pushed up a hill, but when you get to the top the rock starts rolling faster and faster by itself, gaining speed and momentum all the while.

Today I am taking a victory lap of sorts, because while the term "tipping point" is now in a lot of headlines, I actually predicted this chain of events a year and a half ago, in the column below. That doesn't sound like a whole lot of time, but consider that when I wrote this the following was true:

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A Slow War

President Obama announced a new American war this month, but it didn't resonate in his polling much, if at all. Overall, his poll numbers dropped, but the net result was rather flat. But the (so far) very slow nature of this new war may lead to Obama's numbers ticking up in the future. To put this slightly differently, Obama's poll numbers may very well reflect the direction of the war for the next few months (although the midterm election will also have a big influence). But before we look to the future, though, let's start with the new chart showing September's numbers.

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

September, 2014

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Since we devoted last week's column to Eric Holder's record, we've got two weeks worth of stuff to cover today, so we're going to have to whip through things in a whirlwind fashion. But we have included not just one... not just two... but three reader-participation contests in this week's edition, for those who want to join in the fun in the comments. Ready for all that? Buckle up, then, here we go.

We got some good economic news, as it was revealed that the American economy grew a whopping 4.6 percent in the last quarter, and the unemployment rate went down to 5.9 percent. This probably won't make much of an impact in the midterms, but both represent continuing good news on the economic front.

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No column today, sorry. I was going to do the monthly "Obama Poll Watch" column today, but had to deal with unexpected automotive problems all day instead. OPW will run early next week, and my apologies for the interruption in service.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

The chances of Greg Orman defeating Senator Pat Roberts in Kansas just got a whole lot better. A lawsuit which tried to force the Kansas Democratic Party to field a candidate in the race just essentially got laughed out of court, which means there will be no Democrat on the ballot at all. Roberts will be on the ballot as the incumbent Republican, Orman will appear as an Independent, and there will also be a third candidate, Libertarian Randall Batson. But no Democrat will appear.

Democrats are actually cheering this outcome, because it increases the chances that a non-Republican will win the seat, ousting a senator whom few expected would even be vulnerable in 2014. This makes the path for Republicans gaining control of the Senate a little harder, which is why Democrats are happy with the court ruling. However, this joy can only be seen as a mark of how desperate Democrats currently are, in the battle for control of the Senate.

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As you can tell from that title, today's column is going to be nothing short of nit-pickery. But then my original plan (due to lots of offline stuff that needed doing today) was just to re-run an old column, so at least this way you get to read something new, even if it is nothing more than an extended tangential semantic complaint. But I feel the complaint is a valid one, or to put it another way, I feel this nit needs picking.

There is an argument -- one that has been getting a lot more attention these days -- surrounding the Washington football team. Before I go any further, I already wrote about the main issue a long while ago, and I still think my wife's idea is a brilliant one: form a corporation ("Native Americans, Inc.") which would then lease names and logos to professional sports teams. The more offensive the name or logo, the higher the yearly price to use it -- a price to be determined by the Native Americans. Use the money as a giant education fund to better the lives of Native Americans. I still think this is a very workable idea, because it hits the teams squarely in the pocketbook. So, on the main argument, my position hasn't really changed.

But this is a side argument, a tangential point that needs making. I read an interesting article today which talks about a new legal front in this battle -- attempting to convince the F.C.C. to bar radio and television stations from using the term. It's an interesting argument, but I doubt it'll get very far. In any case, my beef is not with the new reporting but with a sloppy mistake I've seen more than one media organization make (I'm just using this example as the most recent I personally noticed, but I've seen the same mistake all over the place, I should mention). The headline of the article was: "FCC Considering Move To Ban Washington Redskins Nickname."

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The United States Congress is currently abdicating one of its most solemn duties: declaring when America is at war, and with whom. This is nothing short of disgraceful, and every member of Congress who didn't actively push their leadership to hold a vote should be ashamed of themselves right now. Because by completely abdicating their constitutional warmaking power to the executive branch, they are displaying nothing short of their own "profiles in cowardice."

It matters not what their individual positions may be on the current (and escalating) conflict in Iraq and Syria, because whatever their stance it should now be clearly known by the public. Instead, they have shirked their duty to country and Constitution, and have not voted either for or against this new war. Being pro-war or anti-war doesn't make you a coward, in other words, but not publicly taking a stance either way most surely does.

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We have to pre-empt the usual Friday Talking Points column this week, because when we started writing about Eric Holder in the awards section, it just kind of grew and grew as a subject until it essentially consumed the rest of the column. We still have our notes on all the political foibles and foofaroo from the past week, and we promise we'll keep this list handy and try to review parts of it in next week's column, mostly because some of the stories were real doozies (like the Kansas governor's race, where the Republican is now basing his whole campaign on "my Democratic opponent once visited a strip club," while simultaneously presiding over a state which is about to hold a sex-toy auction because they really, really need the money after the Republican incumbent's disastrous implementation of "pure" conservative economic theory, which consisted of: "Cut all taxes! There, all done -- just sit back and wait for the boom times!"). But we digress.

The news that Attorney General Eric Holder would be stepping down sent a shockwave through Washington (even though he had admitted earlier in the year to an interviewer that he would likely step down before next January). Democrats (and pundits) immediately started whispering about who would be named to replace Holder, while Republicans -- laughably -- tried to make the case that no replacement should get a vote in the Senate during the lame-duck period (good luck with that one, guys). One thing worth remembering: Harry Reid's "nuclear option" is looking pretty good right about now, isn't it? If Republicans could filibuster Holder's replacement, then he might still be still in his job when Obama leaves office in 2017.

Holder certainly had a momentous term in office. Depending on when he is officially replaced, his will either be the fourth-longest or third-longest record as Attorney General in American history. Liberals found him lacking on civil liberties issues (especially in Obama's first term), and conservatives just despised him because he was serving a president they really, really hated (he's also the first Attorney General to be found in contempt of Congress by the House).

On the whole, was his term worth praising or condemning? We have to say that "both" is the only real answer to that question. Because it has many facets, we are going to spend the rest of the article examining his legacy. As we said, we'll return to our usual, more lighthearted fare next week, but for now let's weigh Eric Holder's leadership at the Justice Department, as seen through the eyes of this column.

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There is big news from the Justice Department today, but I'm not talking about the announcement that Eric Holder will be stepping down as Attorney General (which I'll comment on tomorrow, most likely). Instead, the news comes from the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations. James B. Comey is upset because Apple and Google have recently announced that they will be providing privacy -- via strong encryption -- as a feature in their personal computing products. Comey reached out to the companies to convince them to change their minds about their decision to, as he put it, "market something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law."

My response to Comey is simple: Tough. That's the way the cookie crumbles, when government has been so proactive in vacuuming up every electronic signal they can from American citizens. Eventually, big businesses are going to realize that privacy is indeed a marketable feature -- even (and perhaps especially) privacy from government intrusion.

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