Congressional news: Yet another open seat for Republicans to defend

Republicans must be freaking out at this point. Only a few days after Rep. Ramstad of Minnesota unexpectedly announced he would not run for re-election in a very competitive district, a new Republican-held swing seat has opened up: Rep. Weller (IL-11), surrounded by questions about possible ethical misconduct, has decided to call its quits.

This seat is more Republican than Ramstad's is, and Bush won the district in 2004 with 53% of the vote. But there are plenty of seats held by Democrats that tilt even more towards the GOP, so this is another huge opening for Democrats. At the very least, Republicans will have to spend considerable amounts of energy, time and money playing defense here (and in Illinois in general, as this is the third GOP-held open seat in the state, and a fourth is on top of the Democrats' target list)

In other House news, Rep. King of NY made news yesterday by declaring in an interview that, "There are too many mosques in this country." King justified that by explaining that mosque represent a law-enforcement challenge. King was blasted by the DNC and various groups, and this quickly made the rounds of the blogosphere today, leading many to talk about the need to mount an effective challenge against King in 2008. King represents parts of Long Island, so his district is a historically Republican area that has been rapidly trending Democratic. King won by 12% in 2006, but the Democrats then picked up three seats in New York and are now coming back for the kill, seeking to eliminate the last pockets of Republicanism in the state.

Finally, Rasmussen polled the Texas Senate race, pitting Incumbent John Cornyn against his two Democratic challengers. This is very early in this race, since both Democrats are unknowns with low name-ID as is evident by the huge number of undecideds in the poll. Cornyn beats Watts 52% to 28% and beats Rick Noriega 53% to 30%. Clearly huge leads, but Cornyn is pretty close to that dangerous 50% threshold for incumbents. The odds that the Texas race truly becomes competitive is very low in the first place. Democrats are at least content that they got real candidates in the race who would be able to take advantage of sudden vulnerabilities or gaffes from the incumbent.