It looks likely that Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) will have to face the music this Tuesday. That's when there will be a secret vote amongst Republican senators, led by Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina), to decide if Stevens should be kicked out of the Republican caucus, effectively making him a man without a party while stripping him of all committee assignments and party votes.

Such a vote would also signal party willingness to eject Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator in history and patriarch of Alaska politics who was convicted last month on seven felony charges for making false statements, from the Senate altogether.

Stevens' only salvation from this humiliation would be to lose the race to his Democratic opponent, which would make those votes moot and thus less likely to happen. Stevens is currently losing by 1,022 votes but more remain to be counted.

We should know by the end of Tuesday. It looks increasingly likely that Stevens is done, one way or the other. If so, Begich would bring the number of Democratic senators to 58, very close to the magic number of 60 required to overturn Republican filibusters.

Louis, by the grace of God, King of France and Navarre, to all US citizens, greeting from the year 1708:



You might wonder why I am writing this article - I, the Sun King, symbol of absolute royal power, and certainly anything but an advocate of democracy. But my position, as well as my long experience as a statesman, may give me a somewhat outside view of how you handle democracy in the States. And let me tell me you, you’re doing it wrong. Not all of you, but one third of you US citizens.

Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not questioning democracy itself. Personally I’m not a big fan of giving the power to the people, but that’s not the question here. You wanted the power, you got it, and you are proud of it. You call it “freedom,” but please, those of you who are not sure whether you will vote on November 4, tell me one thing:

Did you really think that power comes without duty?

In my kingdom, all power is concentrated on my person. I didn’t ask for it; I was born into this job. But I have the power, and with the power comes the duty to use it. And believe me, absolute power is hard work. All evening I sit at my desk reading documents, folders, reports, maps, history books, acts, letters, legislative proposals, and I make decisions – sometimes hard decisions, difficult decisions, cruel decisions. Do you think revoking the Edict of Nantes was an easy decision? Do you think making France a European superpower was easy?

I often have to decide between a bad thing and another bad thing. Take the War of the Spanish Succession: In 1701, I had to choose between loosing Spain and going to war. I didn’t like either of these options, but a decision had to be made. I decided to go to war. Was it a good decision? I don’t know. But I had to decide.

Sometimes I’m tired of making decisions. Sometimes I would like to abandon this job. But I can’t. It’s my duty, the duty God gave me, my duty for France. The duty that comes with power.

What do you think would happen if I neglected this duty? If I did nothing? There is no need to speculate over this question – all you have to do is to open a French history book at a chapter on Louis XVI, my grand-grand-grand-grandson. He did nothing. He waited for history to happen without his intervention.

And history did happen – it steamrolled him. You all know what begun in 1789: The French Revolution, the end of the monarchy and the prelude to the reign of terror of Robespierre. Whereas I personally regret the end of the Ancient Régime, I don’t really feel bad about the fact that Louis XVI was beheaded – he deserved it. The only thing I regret is that he wasn’t beheaded in a slower, more painful way. When I meet him in afterlife, the first question I will ask him will be:

Did you really think that power comes without duty?

Of course, absolute monarchy is certainly not the only way to rule a country. Look at my kingdom’s neighbour, the Holy Roman Empire – what later will be known as Germany. Ever since the Peace of Westphalia, the Emperor has been bound to the decisions of the Council of Princes (Reichstag). Furthermore, he is not crowned by the grace of god, but elected by prince-electors. (At least in theory, as in fact the House of Habsburg has secured succession since the 15th century.) What would happen if a new Emperor needed to be elected if most of the prince-electors were too lazy to vote? It would be a mess. The Emperor would be elected by two or three random electors – no, not exactly random electors, but the most fanatical or ambitious prince-electors. You can imagine what kind of Emperor they would elect. And the other prince-electors who didn’t use their power to elect a wise and reasonable Emperor would then have to consider that same question:

Did you really think that power comes without duty?

In your time, prince-electors and Sun Kings are history. In many countries, the power is in the hands of the people – in your hands. You asked for it, you got it, and you are proud of it. But what do you do with it? Use it and go vote? Or throw it away, stay on your chaise longue, drink chocolate and watch your television apparatus too see who is elected by some random people? Your opinion is not required for every political decision – that would be a mess – and I’m sure you often are not happy with the decisions. But once in a while, on Election Day, you are asked for your opinion. Do you answer? Did you on last election?

In 2004, the voter turnout in the US was only 64%. That means, one out of three US Citizens was too lazy to vote! Seriously, people! Can you imagine one out of three prince electors not voting? Can you imagine me leaving one out of three decisions to random? That’s ridiculous! A state led by such lazy people would turn into a mess before long – as France did in 1789.

If you don’t give your opinion when you are asked for it, you can’t blame politicians for not doing what you would like them to do later on. If I don’t care who conducts the royal string orchestra, I can’t complain about the music. If I don’t care who's appointed court chef, I can’t complain about the food. If I don’t care who gets the Superintendent of Finance gig, I can’t complain if the treasury is empty. It’s the same with politics: If you don’t care who rules your country, you can’t complain if they do a bad job. In other words: Either you get your ass off the chaise longue, put your wig on and go vote – or you shut up and don’t complain about politics for the next four years!

If you wait for history to happen without your intervention, it may steamroll you and your family, as it steamrolled Louis XVI and his family – and you won’t have the right to complain, because it will be you who will not have stopped it. It will be your fault.

Maybe you don’t like any of the candidates. Maybe it’s like losing Spain or starting a war. But a decision has to be made – and there's no king to decide for you. The king is gone - you chased him off in 1776. Now it’s your turn to decide.

So it’s not only your right to vote – it’s your duty. And don’t complain! The whole voting thing wasn’t my idea – certainly not! It was yours. You asked for power. You got it. Now you have to live with it.

Did you really think that power comes without duty?

Given at Versailles in the month of October, in the year of grace 1708, and of our reign the sixty sixth.

He's a lumberjack and it's OK,
Seems anyone can run for office – as long as they're not gay!

If you think the election's not quite silly enough yet, sign up and show your support for Michael Palin's presidential candidacy, and get a free fuzzy thing.

What do you do if your sixteen-year old daughter is pregnant with a baby that's going to have Down's Syndrome? Tell her to have the baby, then pretend it's yours forever. This, at least, would appear to be the only option if you're a governor who got elected on an anti-choice/abstinence-only-education platform and are currently hoping to be elected to the second-most powerful office in the world. There are reasons to suspect that Sarah Palin, Republican presidential nominee John McCain's choice for Vice-President, did just that.

Let me stress here that this is, as of right now, a rumor on the Internet. SuicideGirls news is not a credible news source, and neither are any of the other places on the internet which allege Sarah Palin's youngest son actually belongs to her daughter Bristol. So why report it? Because unless a large number of non-credible sources makes some noise on this point, no credible news source will use its expense account to send a reporter to Alaska and go through hospital records and find out whether or not it's true. So what's the evidence so far?

The strangest piece of evidence, according to (credible and pro-Palin news source) The Wall Street Journal is that she allegedly started having contractions, then, against the advice of her doctor, made a speech in Dallas, and then flew to Anchorage -- a flight that could not have taken less than six hours -- to have the baby.

Not only did they not notice she was pregnant, but neither did anyone else during her pregnancy--at least not until she mentioned it, seven months in, according to The Anchorage Daily News.

There are dozens of photos of the Governor during the late stages of her pregnancy, she doesn't look especially pregnant--but it's pretty hard to say either way. I will not sully SuicideGirls with fully-clothed MIDNLF photos.

Last and possibly least, the controversial and quite possibly unreliable DailyKos -- who started the story/rumor -- reports that Sarah Palin's daughter, Bristol Palin, was reportedly out of school for four months with "mono". Mononucleosis usually lasts a month at most, though symptoms can linger for up to three months. To be fair: in the "against" category, there is the fact that the child in question has Down's Syndrome. Down's is much more likely in older women, but is nonetheless a possibility for all mothers. Most babies born with Down's are born to younger mothers, following the pattern for fertility in general.

None of this evidence is conclusive at all, but considering that the possible future Vice-President may have forced her daughter to have a child in order to further her own political carrier and anti-choice policies, this non-reporter feels this is certainly an important enough issue to encourage real reporters to check this story out some time very soon. Maybe it's all a baseless lefty rumor, but if the real press doesn't do its job, we'll never know.

Huh. And I thought that Rudy wouldn’t want to mess up his mojo. After all, he was doing pretty well in the early stages of the Republican primary elections. He’s polling well, and he’s doing a decent job of raising money. In addition, you may not have been aware of this, but he was also the mayor of New York City on 9/11. It’s true, you can look it up. Anyway, you wouldn’t think he would want to go out of his way to alienate his base on an emotional social issue.

Yet, that’s just what Giuliani’s decided to do.

Well, that’s a principled stand, Rudy. Not necessarily principled enough to get me to forgive you for saying that a vote for a Democrat is a vote for terrorism, but it’s principled nonetheless. Especially after he fumbled the abortion question so badly in the recent candidate debate. Bottom line is that you have to give the guy credit for bucking the party line on something that he cares deeply about.

Or do you? After all, couldn’t there be a broader political reason for this disclosure at this time?

This is presidential politics, baby. Of course there could.

Ah ha! So it's not that he's trying to tank the primary, it's that he's trying to win it in a different way. Interesting.

See, normally, primaries are won by "centrist" candidates moving to position themselves as a solid partisan for the primary voters of more traditionally rural states where they are less likely inclined to support social liberalism. Here, Giuliani is trying to make himself out as a candidate with nuanced enough positions to appeal broadly to party moderates and swing voters in the larger more urbanite states. This shift is a result of the move by states like California and New York to bump up their primary date in an effort to gain a greater voice in the process. And while I could give two shits about Giuliani and think he’ll likely get pounded by any of the three major current Democratic candidates, I’m really quite excited that the Big State strategy seems to be working.

Gone are the days when a candidate looks to sew up his or her party’s nomination by trumpeting solutions to issues that Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina are concerned with to the exclusion of anyone else. In the past, if a candidate didn’t do well in those states, their nomination was doomed. That system also meant we were often left with two candidates who had moved so far away from the center (usually to the right) to capture the nomination that when it came time to appeal to swing voters on the general there was no way to get back to them.

Now that the huge number of votes cast in California, New York and Florida will have a more direct impact on the nomination, candidates are now forced to appeal to those coastal voters. As a result, we may be entering an era where the race to the center is the only race throughout the campaign. Maybe it's because I'm a member of the snobbishly coastal intellectual elite, but I see an emphasis on more "big state values" as a good thing. It means issues like environmental protection and reproductive rights will not continuously get the short shrift.

This still leaves the question of whether this particular strategy will work for this particular candidate. Giuliani does still have to convince Republicans that he’s not just a New York RINO in chicken-hawk’s clothing. In addition to disapproval from his GOP rivals, Republican strategists are highly skeptical that this will work out for him.

I doubt I’ve ever agreed with Phyllis Schlafly, and I certainly am not going to start now. I think Giuliani’s move here is a rather shrewd one and could pay dividends once the big state “mega primary” takes place. And while I don’t believe the difference between Iowa Republicans and California Republicans is really that great, if there’s one issue that may separate them from each other, it could be this one. Especially once the public begins to understand the broad social ramifications of the Gonzales v. Carhart decision a few weeks ago. Hopefully then they'll see the dire need for a pro-choice president this next time around.

Subrosa thinks Giuliani is a twat and would never consider voting for him under any circumstances, but the political science geek in him is really quite charged up about all of this.

Well, for all of you who are from the UK, the Scottish National Party has set out to make history and has finally won the most seats in the Scottish Parliament election, marking the Labour Party's first defeat in 50 years.

The SNP won 47 of the 129 seats compared to a extremely close 46 for the Labour Party. The rest went to the Conservatives with 17, the Liberal Democrats with 16, and the last to Independent-small-time Parties.

Tony Blair is planning on announcing his “step down” next week, as the Labour Party was butchered in the rest of the UK as well, after being hounded for its support in the unpopular war in Iraq.

But enough with that... the big question is, what the hell is going to happen next? This change in authority suggests that there’s a strong chance that Scotland could succeed. It does seem like the opportune time, as the SNP is strongly pushing for Scotland’s independence. But we'll have to wait and see. As for me, having ancestry from Scotland, I’m very excited by this news...now where the hell is my Braveheart DVD and fucking kilt?

Or so say the first quarter fundraising reports, at least. Not only did he report over 66% more individual donors than Senator Hillary Clinton, he actually managed to convince a fair number of ex-Clinton loyalists to drop some coin in his bucket instead of hers.

Oh snap! Those two-timing S.O.B’s!

The numbers detailing Obama’s surprising showing don’t end there.

So, to sum up: Senator Obama had 40,000 more donors donating almost $6 million more than Senator Clinton for the first quarter of 2007 in fundraising for next year’s presidential Primary. He also out-earned her $6.9 million to $4.2 million in internet donations. That’s a pretty thorough butt-kicking… sort of.

The caveat to all of those numbers is that Clinton still has by far the biggest war chest with over $30 million in available funds. Obama is second with $19 million (Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani are distant runners-up with around $11 million each. Actually outside of Romney’s impressive $20 million haul, the Republicans got their asses handed to them, but that’s another story.) It is conceivable that some of Clinton’s former donors decided to give to Obama because they felt she didn’t need the money and Obama did. I suppose some might have considered it a way to even the playing field.

As a Democratic voter myself, I am both surprised at the fundraising strength of Senator Obama and a bit wary of the bitter political battle that could erupt between he and Senator Clinton. If the Republicans get their shit together and stand united behind a candidate, the big money GOP donors will follow. Especially if a tussle at the Democratic top leaves blood in the water for the sharks to smell.

The question then, is whether this dual-barreled Democratic fundraising monster is actually good for the Democratic party. If you’re just looking at pure numbers, Clinton and Obama seem like the strongest candidates (yes, I’m aware that McCain and Giuliani tend to beat Clinton and Obama in head-to-head polls, but such polls this far out are notoriously unreliable not to mention that the gap between them is shrinking rapidly,) but if the Big Blue Two are forced to unleash their arsenal on each other, will the damage be too much to overcome in the general election for whoever is left standing? Moreover, for all their differences a McCain-Giuliani superticket is not entirely out of the question. Can we say the same for a Clinton-Obama slate? I don’t know, but for some reason it feels less likely.

Of course, we’re a long way off. But if fundraising numbers are any indication (and they usually are), Barack Obama is going to be in the thick of this thing for quite a while. Full records of all the candidates’ financial statements can be found here.

Tom Vilsack was the first Democrat to officially declare his candidacy for the 2008 presidential election. As former governor of Iowa he showed impressive credentials in leading a state that in some ways is considered a microcosm of America; Iowa just barely went Republican in the 2004 election, and has a history of both rural conservatism as well as union-related progressivism, with illegal immigration an issue of ever-increasing importance, as meat processing and farming industries become more reliant on migrant labor forces (both legal and illegal) to remain economically competitive. Being a Democrat from the Midwest also has its appeal from a national political standpoint, as critics of the party love to characterize it as being represented only by California and the Northeast (despite huge party gains in the "Mountain West" in the 2006 election cycle) so politicians like Vilsack, clearly capable of doing well in a solidly Midwestern state like Iowa could serve as a testament to the fact that there's more to the party than just the coasts.

However, despite these advantages the Vilsack campaing lacked two factors that are already featuring more and more prominently in the 2008 presidential race; star power and money. And the lack of those has already proven enough for him to remove himself from the running.

Vilsack has had some seriously stiff competition on the fundraising front, squaring off against the likes of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who have garnered far more media attention and popularity from their celebrity status than Vilsack could hope to achieve, barring some sort of scandal or incident to raise his own political and media profile.

Vilsack's dropping out of the race already is unfortunate, as he would have otherwise been a very strong candidate, and placating his supporters would be a reason for other candidates to pay attention to issues they might not otherwise have bothered addressing. Having multiple candidates allows each to highlight issues that are most important to them and has the potential to shift the focus of national debates so that they include more than just the one or two topics of interest that the leading candidates care about. With the incredible importance of money in what is already shaping up to be a bonanza of a political campaign voters are the ones who stand to lose by narrowing the field before candidates have a chance to even introduce themselves to the country. Still, Vilsack shouldn't be entirely discounted as a strong vice presidential pick for one of the more popular candidates, as he brings a lot to the table.

The primary election system of the two major parties in the US has been a mystery to many for a long time. The result of spreading out the primaries over several months gives a disproportionate amount of power to the first few states that participate, since candidates who do well in those states end up generating more campaign contributions and media attention that can quickly snowball to the point where they're the "assumed" candidate and subsequent primaries have become meaningless. And all long before more populated states (like, I don't know, California, New York, Texas and Florida for example?) even get a crack at having their say as to who should be the candidate. So despite the fact that their aggregate populations are only slightly over 4 million people, and 94.3% and 91.7% of New Hampshire's and Iowa's citizens, respectively, self-identify as non-Hispanic white (compared with 67.4% for the rest of the country), these two states often have the most say in who gets to stay in the run for president.

But things are about to change. Starting in 2008 Nevada is set to jump in between Iowa's caucuses and New Hampshire's primaries, and will hopefully allow a more representative sample of the US population have their say in the Democratic presidential candidacy.

This also plays well with the Kos championed strategy that seemed to work in the midterm elections, pushing centrist, libertarian candidates like Jon Tester (the senator-elect for Montana) into the Democratic party. Western states like Montana, Colorado and Nevada had been Republican leaning for years, and all voted for Bush in 2004. But if recent trepidation about Bush's expanded role of govenment and infringement on civil liberties is enflaming libertarian sensibilities that are more prevalent in the West, then this should be a good chance to let those voters gain some influence in the Democratic party.

The recent factional strife in Gaza as a result of botched assassination attempts and the murder of the three children of a Fatah leader could be an indicator that the Hamas-led government there is losing some of its internal support. That at least is probably the hope of US and other Western officials, who are pleased by Mahmoud Abbas's call for early elections to try and stabilize the country. The only problem is that the current government is supposed to be in place until 2010, and early elections may not be constitutional.

Of course, the Western support is likely to hinge on the results of the election. That's the real problem with democracy, the results don't always turn out the way you want them too (a fact that American Democrats have had to deal with for the past six years) but once it's over, you're stuck with whoever was elected even if they weren't your pick. Such was the case with Hamas, who dominated elections last year, precipitating a stoppage of all economic aid from Western Europe that has put a significant strain on the functioning of the Palestinian government.

Some Palestinians aren't happy about Abbas's idea though, claiming that he and Fatah are trying to undermine the legitimacy of the Hamas government.

Maybe it will. But how would that be any different from what's currently going on in Palestine? Still, elections that deviate from prescribed constitutional procedures can be a dangerous, double-edged sword. Just because they could help Fatah this time around and hurt Hamas's chance of keeping control of the government doesn't mean that a swing in popularity back towards Hamas couldn't do the exact same thing to Fatah a year from now.

Former Wisconsin governor and secretary of the department of health and human services Tommy Thompson will be joining in the fun over the next two years as he began fundraising for his bid to get the Republican nomination for president.

Thompson is best known for having one of the stupidest monikers in politics. Honestly, if CNN can discount Barack Obama because his name sounds like a foreign terrorist, then I can rule out Thompson because his makes him sound like the cross-eyed kid who ate paste in kindergarten.

Names aside for the moment, what does Thompson bring to the table? His political record is fairly impressive; he is the only person to ever be elected to four consecutive terms as governor of Wisconsin, itself an interesting political animal. Wisconsin is one of those rare midwestern states that typically votes Democratic for presidents and senators (including Russ Feingold, a high-profile target for conservatives as one of the more liberal members of the senate), so the fact that Thompson could maintain such popularity there for such a long time means that he's able to please both liberals and conservatives, at least to an extent. Governors have considerably better luck getting elected president than senators or congressional representatives, probably because being president requires knowing how to actually govern and build a consensus, and reputation and efficacy in the senate are often judged by how partisan one can be.

Thompson's terms as governor were marked by his championing of welfare reform, which angered some on the left who accused it of being too harsh a system, and increasing problems like homelessness as people stopping qualifying for state assistance. His other key issue was school choice, which he was supposed to bring to Washington as director of HHS, though that issue fell on the back burner after Iraq and terrorism became the main foci of the Bush administration. Vouchers have definitely not been accepted nationwide as a viable alternative to regular school funding, and their remaning a contentious issue could be a political liability for Thompson.

Thompson's two biggest weakness are likely to be foreign policy and name recognition. With virtually no political experience in dealing with anything but domestic issues, he's going to be facing stiff competition from John McCain, and with McCain and Giuliani's near constant, fawning attention from the media he's already way behind in name recognition. Still, early polling predictions are rarely reflective of the way things actually work out, and if Thompson manages to get the media to consider him to be an actual candidate rather than one on the fringe he could be a serious contender.

Bush's approval rating has been sitting in the toilet for most of this year, and the obvious failures in Iraq are making it tough to buy into his rhetoric. Yet he won the 2004 election with an electoral and popular majority. All of which raises the question: if conservatives are disenchanted with Bush, liberals obviously despise him, and centrists are going with the Democrats - who actually supports him? One researcher believes the answer is "crazy people."

Maybe the lunatics really are running the asylum?

Barack Obama (D-Ill) has had the aura of the anointed for the next presidential election ever since his impressive speech at the 2004 democratic national convention. His message resonated with many in the center who saw an increasingly religious country feeling alienated by the perceived secular platform of the Democrats (at least that's how they've been branded by conservative pundits.) Obama went out of his way to show how Democrats can have the same zeal for old time religion that Republicans had been flaunting at every opportunity in an attempt to pull some of the evangelical Christian vote (evangelicals are thought to make up over 20% of the electorate and were very effective at getting voters to show up at the polls.) Even since Democrats won the midterm elections Obama has been following the same course. Unfortunately, evangelicals may not be responding.

This puts Obama in something of a bind. He wants to keep wooing evangelicals over to the Democrats, as he and many other Democratic strategists are afraid of a repeat of 2004, when the bible beaters bashed Democrats into conservative submission. But he can't do that if he continues to support a woman's right to choose, a staple position of just about everyone in the Democratic party. And there's no way in hell that he'll ever get the 2008 nomination (or even reelected to his senate seat) if he switches to an anti-choice stance.

But perhaps the dilemma is a false one. The Democrats managed to stomp on their Republican opponents in 2006, and without the support of evangelicals who mostly stayed home in disgust. So Obama's choice seems clear, and it's one that his Democratic brethren should emulate: fuck evangelicals. They're the ones who were pushing for such worthless issues as flag burning amendments and gay marriage and the fictitious war on christmas to clutter up the congressional agenda. This year actual issues like the war in Iraq, the economy and the GOP's assault on civil liberties motivated voters to put the Democrats back into power, despite Karl Rove's failed attempts to use the gay marriage "wedge issue" to distract voters. So screw them. Forget about them, and for God's sake, don't pander to them. Stick to the issues and hopefully people will continue to vote with their heads instead of their asses and support the Democrats, and Obama.

Remember how electronic voting machines were going to clear up all the issues that came up out in the 2000 election debacle? Well it seems as if Florida still hasn't figured out how to count ballots, and once again the Democrats are getting screwed because of it.

Great. So even though the Democrats managed to retake the house, they could have possible had a stronger majority. But partisan issues aside, this is really a travesty of democracy. Regardless of which candidate people decide to cast their ballot for, their ballots have to be counted in order for it to mean anything. It doesn't seem like that complicated of a thing to do - in fact, I'm guessing that any ninth grader in a computer programming class could figure how to write the software for it. So what's so hard? Why can't we get reliable voting equipment? Does voting really mean so little any more?

Election day is barely half over and the heated battle between Democratic challenger Jim Webb and incumbent George Allen for the Virginia Senate seat has already brought out some of the worst in election day shenanigans.

Ain't democracy grand?

Most people think that all corporations favor Republican political candidates because of their overt friendliness to "big business," their willingness to support "free trade" while keeping protectionist trade barriers in place to help domestic industries, and their aversion to taxes. While corporations have been much more generous in their donations to Republican political candidates in the past few years, it's not so much for their political views, but because they prefer to bet on winners. The truth is that while on some issues Democrats take a slightly harder tack on corporate excess and greed, for the most part the mantra ever since Bill Clinton was first elected was to leave business alone and just let them make money. Now that the political winds have begun to shift, like sharks smelling blood in the water, the corporate donations are following.

Fantastic. So we can all sleep soundly tonight, knowing that even if Democrats do manage the herculean feat of retaking one or both houses of Congress away from the Republicans, they'll still be happily in the pocket of corporate America.

You can almost see the sleave for yourself.

Isn't this exactly what the McCain-Feingold campaing reform bill was specifically written to address? Of course, that lasted all of about four seconds before new ways were found to funnel money to candidates running for office. While limits on donations toiindividual candidates were put into place by the bill, it still allowed for large corporations (and individuals, unions, etc.) to donate as much as they liked to Political Action Committess, also sometimes known 527 groups, which while they cannot be directly affiliated with any particular candidate, usually skirt awfully close to that line (think Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and The Club for Growth.) Not only are these donations still possible and unrestricted, but they're also tax deductible. So corporations divert money that shuold be going as taxes to pay for the government and subvert the interests of the rest of the country by contributing donations to PACs for "their" candidates.

The real kicker, however, is that so-called "grassroots" activism, that is small donations sent in by lots and lots of "regular" people, has exploded along with the internet. Netroots groups raised over three hundred thousand dollars to support Ned Lamont's primary campaign against Joe Lieberman. Hardly an insignificant number, and that's just a single candidate. It's not quite there yet, but the distinct possibility exists that in the future one may be able to win an election entirely without corporate donations. Small scale donations are helpful in that no single individual wields too much influence on the candidate in question, so the candidate is not obligated to serve any particular interest if elected. This is a powerful notion for modern politics, but as yet there do not seem to be any viable candidates who are publicly disavowing corporate donations in the hopes of running a campaign entirely from the grassroots level. That seems like the only way that the endless flood of corporate money corrupting American politics can be dried up.

Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO), the incumbent representative from Colorado who was initially expected to win big against her challenger, Angie Paccione, is probably not thrilled about her close association with the Republican party right now. Given the downward spiral of the GOP over the past few months, what used to mean a national spotlight, a bunch of money and some political power in Washington is now becoming an election year liability, with polls showing either a dead heat or Paccione with a slight edge when she was originally expected to lose big.

Musgrave has also become the target of Michael Schiavo, widower of Terry Schiavo, the woman who became the center of a national controversy when Republican Senators decided to pass a bill granting federal courts jurisdiction over a case filed by Schiavo's parents to prevent doctors from allowing her to die. Musgrave featured prominently in the politicization of the Schiavo case, speaking on the house floor about Schiavo's welfare and leading the charge to let the federal government intervene in her case.

This might explain why earlier this week Musgrave attempted to have Michael Schiavo unceremoniously removed from a debate she was having with Paccione, despite Schiavo's not having said or done anything.

This is taken from Michael Schiavo's blog, so like all first-hand accounts should be taken with a grain of salt. However, even if he was heckling Musgrave (and presumably the police really would have made him go if he had been) she was in the middle of a public debate - and had spoken out in support of the "Denver three" last year, the group of 3 antiwar individuals removed from a Bush "town hall meeting." If their being booted from a public forum was wrong, how was Schiavo's right?

However, Musgrave's hypocrisy aside, what follows in Schiavo's account is just bizarre.

She wanted him to move because she didn't want to have to look at him? This is someone that the voters trust enough to represent their interests best in Washington?

There are some rather vocal people within conservative political circles who have gone the extra mile, and elevated Hillary Clinton-bashing to a high art. For what seems like no good reason to those on the other side of the political aisle, their pure, unadulterated hatred for this woman inspires near-biblical levels of devotion (in a sort of twisted fashion) towards every aspect of her life and every action she takes. Well, biblical maybe in the old testament sort of way. The Reverand Jerry Falwell (of "gays and atheists brought 9/11 on America" fame) seems to share this unhealthy obsession with Hillary, as he indicated this weekend when he equated her with the devil.

Of course, Falwell, being the jovial guy that he is, defended his comment later on by claiming that it was all just a joke.

Of course! Hillary Clinton is a public figure, and public figures, by virtue of their being public, allow themselves to be exposed to ridiculing comparisons and satire right? It's a first amendment guarantee.

Except that Falwell himself, in a 1988 lawsuit, made the exact opposite claim when suing Hustler magazine for printing a cartoon that portrayed him as having "drunken, incestuous sex with his mother in an outhouse." Larry Flynt, Hustler's outspoken publisher, appealed the case to the Supreme Court and won in a unaninmous decision that pushed forward first amendment rights. Falwell was so distressed that this cartoon might make him look bad that he took Hustler to court. Given the context and Falwell's own background it's hard to conceive of a more striking insult from the man than a direct comparison with the devil, but this time everyone is supposed to laugh it off as Falwell having fun.

Fortunately Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, has had a considerably more subdued response.

At least one person between Clinton and Falwell can claim the moral high ground.

If the presidential fiasco of 2000 proved anything, it was that the tiniest of margins can make all the difference in an election. And with so many vulnerable variables in the voting equation (like hackable voting machines and crotchety, old poll workers), it is not inconceivable that the wrong candidate could be deemed a winner in November’s upcoming race.

Take last week’s polling disaster in Maryland’s primary. Cards required to operate the new Diebold AccuVote TS machines were unavailable in many locations, and the machines themselves continually froze up, losing voter information. By the end of the day, hundreds of people in Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties were scrawling their votes on scraps of paper.

To make matters worse for Diebold, a report was published this week by Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy detailing exactly how the newest voting machines can easily be hacked by just about anyone (especially anyone with access to the instructional video on Princeton’s site). Diebold immediately released a rebuttal to the research paper, insisting:

Tell that to Maryland’s 4th District Democratic House nominee Donna Edwards, who lost her primary by less than 3,000 votes.