Daily Political Wire 8-21-2010

George Wenschhof

Yesterday, the Democratic National Committee voted on the 2012 presidential primary calendar - Iowa will keep it's first in the nation date as they can set their caucus to February 6. The next three states in February will be New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. The rest of the states can set their primaries no earlier than March 1. You can read more here.

The broader problematic issues of Superdelgates and the awarding of delegates to candidates by state highlighted during the 2008 Democratic primary went largely unaddressed.

Vice President Joe Biden also spoke yesterday at the DNC convention meeting in St. Louis firing up the crowd by saying Democrats will still control Congress after the mid term elections this fall. The NY Times has more here.

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Republican National Committee Short on Cash - embattled chair Michael Steele has the misfortune of reporting only 5 million cash on hand prior to the mid term elections while also reporting a debt of 2 million. Politico.com has more here.

The DNC reported having 10.8 million cash on hand with a debt of 3.5 million.

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Talks with Taliban in Afghanistan Underway - without giving specifics, said Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) who is chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is back from a trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan. You can read more here.

Presumably, the agreement would be for Taliban reintegration into Afghanistan society. This will be a difficult negotiation as the Taliban is a group of independent tribes across Afghanistan and into Pakistan who control various territory across those countries.

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Iran announces fueling of first nuclear power plant - designed for peaceful purposes and to produce electricity. It will take several months before the plant is operational. Iran has received UN sanctions for not being open with it's nuclear development programs. Reuters.com has more here.

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Arrest Warrant for Rape/Molestation issued for WikiLeaks.org founder Julian Assange - a Swedish tabloid is reporting the warrant has been issued and Assange is denying the charges on his "Twitter" page. MSNBC.com has more here.

Wikileaks.or recently released thousand of U.S. documents online pertaining to the Afghanistan conflict. They had announced plans to release another 15,000 documents within the next few weeks.

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