Tales from the Trail

The hazards of the Twitter age became quite apparent for one senator today.

“U love torturing me w this shit” was tweeted on Senator Christopher Dodd’s Twitter account @SenChrisDodd. 

Then came the tweet ”From Dodd Staff – Apologies to Dodd’s followers, last tweet was not from Chris Dodd.”

The first tweet has vanished into twitterair with a little help from the delete button, but some followers who were on their toes took screenshots.

The Democratic chairman of the Senate Banking Committee who did not run for re-election will be leaving Congress after year-end.

But looks like that tweet gained him some followers. Dodd now has 12,780 compared with 12,690 when the tweet went out.

President Barack Obama may have hoped to limit the political fallout from last month’s attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner by admitting there was a “screw up.” Will firings follow? Some think Obama’s unusually sharp rhetoric raises the odds that heads will roll.

One such observer is U.S. Rep. Peter King, an influential New York Republican.

“If the situation is as bad as the president says it was, as far as so many dots not being connected, so many obvious mistakes being made … I would think once the president set that stage, that to show that he’s serious, someone will have to go now,” King told ABC’s Good Morning America.

But the top Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee says he can’t tell which official should pay because the Obama administration hasn’t let Congress know who did (or didn’t) do what, when.

Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs are two guys who think President Barack Obama better embrace new structural reforms if he wants a growing economy that isn’t hard-wired to go bust.

Dodd, a Democrat fighting for his political life at home, proposed sweeping regulatory legislation this week that would curb the Federal Reserve’s bank oversight powers, strengthen consumer protection and keep a sharp eye out for systemic problems like housing or stock market bubbles.

The 1,136-page measure reflects Obama’s policies in some ways — for example, it supports the White House call for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency — but it also charts new regulatory waters.

“What we have (now) is a hodgepodge that has grown over the last 80 years, some of it dating to the 19th century and early 20th century regulatory structures,” Dodd told MSNBC.

President Barack Obama, on a campaigning blitz for fellow Democrats facing tough fights to stay in office, or get there, is trying to tie the state races to national issues to convince voters their ballot will have a broader impact.

“People on Capitol Hill, they watch the news,” he said.

On Wednesday, the president flew to New Jersey for a rally backing Governor Jon Corzine, who only just climbed into a tie with his Republican opponent, according to opinion polls.

Corzine is struggling in his bid for re-election Nov. 3, although New Jersey is a heavily Democratic state.