A new West Virginia poll shows Kerry leading there, 47% to 44%. This is potentially quite significant, as West Virginia went for Bush by more than 6% in 2000.

Another poll by the same company, released last week, showed a 46% to 46% tie in New Hampshire, site of Bush’s second-closest win in 2000 (after Florida, of course).

If West Virginia and New Hampshire both flip into the Kerry column, and everything else stays the same as 2000, the result will be a 269-269 Electoral College tie. :)

According to America’s Line, Dick Gephardt is the 5-1 favorite to be Kerry’s veep. John Edwards and Bill Richardson are at 6-1. Bob Graham and my guy Bayh are at 8-1.

Meanwhile, Wonkette points out that Dick’s lesbian daughter, Chrissy Gephardt, is running for fake president on Showtime’s lame reality-TV show, American Candidate. Heh. (More here.)

You can run, but you can’t hide, Governor Rowland:

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Friday that Gov. John G. Rowland must testify before a legislative committee considering his impeachment, making him the first sitting chief executive in U.S. history ordered to appear before a legislative body. …

The decision marked the first time in the nation’s history that a sitting chief executive has been ordered to testify before a legislative body, said Ross Garber, legal counsel for the governor’s office.

The word “must” in “must testify” doesn’t really mean what it says, though. If Rowland ignores the legally binding subpoena, the committee members have said “they will not compel him to appear,” according to the AP. (Perhaps they would find “compelling” him difficult because the state police works for the governor?) The committee’s co-chairman is quoted as saying, “I am hoping the governor will choose to cooperate with the committee.”

Oh, well. The legal issues are still interesting:

“The subpoena is not inconsistent with the separation of powers provision of the state Constitution,” the [5-2] majority said. …

Rowland claimed the demand for him to testify was unconstitutional because it violated the separation of powers between the executive and legislative branches of government. …

The committee’s subpoena, Garber argued, “treats the governor as a subservient officer.” Rowland, he said, would be “hauled in” to testify for an unknown amount of time about an unknown number of subjects - a move that could encourage future lawmakers to demand a governor testify at their whim on more mundane issues such as the budget.

Cynthia Arato, a private attorney hired by the inquiry committee, said Rowland is claiming he has absolute immunity against being compelled to testify - a special immunity she said does not exist. Arato pointed out how the courts have ruled that the judicial branch of government can subpoena a governor to testify, and said the legislature should receive the same treatment.

“We’re all co-equal branches. If a court’s compelling of testimony does not violate the separation of powers, the compelling of testimony by the impeachment committee doesn’t,” she argued.

Here’s more on the impeachment inquiry.

In an e-mail advertisement for a movie/music/software download site, the following text appears, presumably in an attempt (successful, in my case at least) to get past the spam-filters by confusing the heck out of them:

scarlet programmable jugoslavia bloody intangible almanac ellipsis whimsey dilute repeater affluent baku cut embroider christopher bluff beatify skyrocket blaze amtrak fir whitaker baden damsel rawboned cartographic ethic

washburn mccann story burgher over upstart acetone chairperson chalcedony tuskegee colloq absorbent gaiety malocclusion fascist invocate alton strobe santo hayward precedent lenten message cautious diacritic behead arsenate abominate …

tart afresh moiseyev fish pampa shipboard snip aphrodite anagram char fig tubule clarify cytology moyer lykes treasonous built birgit phagocyte aryl

car downfall partook washy cavort walden demarcate countrywide connecticut mud reef congeal with celanese baird bathrobe valedictory company carport decolletage parliamentary penultimate faulkner biddy chip bach congo augustine despotic thrifty cocktail fortuitous katmandu scription attestation columbine edwina bantu adam slur

I think my favorite phrase is “bloody intangible almanac ellipsis whimsey.” Either that, or “story burgher over upstart acetone chairperson.” Oh, and let’s not forget “countrywide connecticut mud reef congeal with celanese baird bathrobe.”

Okay, so maybe I’m the only person amused by this, but I find it hilarious. And really, isn’t that enough? :)

The Washington Post has an update on Kerry’s veep deliberations, including the following tidbit of very good news:

Two Democrats close to Kerry said retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark’s stock plummeted after the former Democratic presidential candidate received lackluster reviews from some former colleagues.

Beyond that, it’s all tea-leaf-reading at this point, but the main contenders are said to be Gephardt, Edwards, Tom Vilsack and Bob Graham.

(more…)

Dick Cheney declares war on the New York Times:

GLORIA BORGER, CAPITAL REPORT CO-HOST: [O]bviously first the news of the week is the 9-11 Commission report. And as you know, the report found, quote, “No credible evidence that al-Qaida collaborated with Iraq or Saddam Hussein.” Do you disagree with its findings?

CHENEY: I disagree with the way their findings have been portrayed. This has been enormous confusion over the Iraq-al-Qaida connection, Gloria. First of all, on the question of whether or not there was any kind of a relationship, there clearly was a relationship. It’s been testified to. The evidence is overwhelming. It goes back to the early ’90s. It involves a whole series of contacts, high-level contacts between Osama bin Laden and Iraqi intelligence officials. It involves a senior official, a brigadier general in the Iraqi intelligence service going to the Sudan before bin Laden ever went to Afghanistan to train them in bomb-making, helping teach them how to forge documents. Mr. Zarqawi, who’s in Baghdad today, is an al-Qaida associate who took refuge in Baghdad, found sanctuary and safe harbor there before we ever launched into Iraq. There’s a Mr. Yasin, who was a World Trade Center bomber in ‘93, who fled to Iraq after that and we found since when we got into Baghdad, documents showing that he was put on the payroll and given housing by Saddam Hussein after the ‘93 attack; in other words, provided safe harbor and sanctuary. There’s clearly been a relationship. There’s a separate question. The separate question is: Was Iraq involved with al-Qaida in the attack on 9/11?

BORGER: Was Iraq involved?

CHENEY: We don’t know. You know, what the commission says is that they can’t find any evidence of that. We had one report which is a famous report on the Czech intelligence service and we’ve never been able to confirm or to knock it down. But it’s very important that people understand these two differences. What The New York Times did today was outrageous. They do a lot of outrageous things but the headline, “Panel Finds No Qaida-Iraq Tie” — the press wants to run out and say there’s a fundamental split here now between what the president said and what the commission said. Jim Thompson is a member of the commission who’s since been on the air. I saw him with my own eyes. And there’s no conflict. What they were addressing was whether or not they were involved in 9/11. And there they found no evidence to support that proposition. They did not address the broader question of a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida in other areas, in other ways.

Well, at least we know somebody in the Bush Administration reads the paper.

Ten years ago today, the white Ford Bronco became a cultural icon, and America’s most famous Trojan became, for a few hours, its most infamous fugitive:

For me, the most memorable moment came at the very end of the chase, in O.J.’s Brentwood driveway, when the Bronco’s driver, Al Cowlings, stepped out of the car (leaving Simpson inside) and approached police, at which point Dan Rather, seeing live helicopter footage of a black man standing with the cops, solemnly intoned, “O.J. Simpson — Arrested.”

The Associated Press reports:

The number of refugees worldwide has fallen to 9.7 million, the lowest level in at least a decade because of increased international efforts to help uprooted people, the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday.

“The statistics are very encouraging,” said Ruud Lubbers, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

A key reason for the drop was the continued return of refugees to Afghanistan. More than half of the 1.1 million refugees repatriated last year returned to Afghanistan; large numbers of refugees also returned home to Angola, Burundi and Iraq.

Um, I hate to play the “liberal media bias” card again, but honestly, if the majority of the repatriated refugees are Afghans and Iraqis, wouldn’t the lede be more accurate if it read:

The number of refugees worldwide has fallen to 9.7 million, the lowest level in at least a decade primarily because of the United States military’s liberations of Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as increased international efforts to help uprooted people, the U.N. refugee agency said Thursday.

But I guess that particular spin (which also happens to be the truth) wouldn’t fit in quite as nicely with the agendas of either the refugee agency or the reporters covering it.

Todd “Let’s Roll” Beamer, gay San Francisco rugby player Mark Bingham, and the rest of the United Airlines Flight 93 passengers who fought off the hijackers on September 11 — eventually crashing the plane into a Pennsylvania field — really did save the Capitol (or perhaps the White House) from destruction, according to the 9/11 Commission’s latest findings. The New York Times reports:

The heroism of the passengers was vital because — contrary to some earlier official statements and impressions — the pilots of F-16 fighters that had been scrambled to protect Washington did not have the authority to shoot down a hijacked aircraft, the report said. …

Had Flight 93 not crashed in Pennsylvania [at 10:03 a.m.], it would have arrived in the Washington area 10 to 20 minutes later, the staff report said.

“There was only one set of fighters orbiting Washington, D.C., during this time frame,” the report said, referring to a pair of F-16’s from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. “They were armed and under Norad’s control.”

But they had not been told that they were authorized to shoot down an aircraft, contrary to what Vice President Dick Cheney thought at that time. In fact, the report noted, “the Langley pilots were never briefed about the reason they were scrambled” and did not know that the vice president had ordered that a Washington-bound hijacked jet be shot down.

The F-16 pilots understood their mission as “to identify and divert aircraft flying within a certain radius of Washington, but did not know that the threat came from hijacked commercial airliners,” the report noted.

As the lead pilot F-16 recalled later, “I reverted to the Russian threat…I’m thinking cruise missile threat from the sea.”

As has been noted before, the Battle of Flight 93 was the first victory in the war on terrorism. And now we know that, had it not been won in the skies over Pennsylvania, it almost certainly would have been lost.

(more…)

Andrew Sullivan, who endorsed Bush in 2000 and was once a fervent supporter of his war-on-terror policies, notes that the president “has not governed as a conservative in critical ways - and hasn’t even governed competently in others”:

Let’s list a few: the WMD intelligence debacle - the worst blow to the credibility of the U.S. in a generation; Abu Ghraib - a devastating wound to to America’s moral standing in the world; the post-war chaos and incompetence in Iraq; an explosion in federal spending with no end in sight; no entitlement reform; a huge addition to fiscal insolvency with the Medicare drug entitlement; support for a constitutional amendment, shredding states’ rights; crusades against victimless crimes, like smoking pot and watching porn; the creeping fusion of religion and politics; the erosion of some critical civil liberties in the Patriot Act. I could go on.

“Look, I am far from being persuaded that Kerry can do any better in the war,” he adds. “But I cannot support this president on the war as enthusiastically as I once did - because the mounting evidence suggests a much more mixed record.”

He also has some good thoughts on the gay-marriage issue. Defending himself from a Jonah Goldberg onslaught, Sullivan says, “If you had spent much of your life arguing a) that gay people deserve civil equality and b) that civil marriage is the fundamental mark of that equality, it would require Herculean masochism to endorse a president who wants to enshrine the denial of marriage to gays in the very Constitution itself. I could live with disagreement on the issue of marriage - but not the amendment. … Has this caused me heart-ache? No end. I do indeed feel betrayed, as do many other gay people who trusted this president and paid a price in many ways for supporting him.”

Bottom line: “My only dilemma now is whether to support Kerry or sit this one out.”

Of course, if the Democrats had had the good sense to nominate Edwards — or, better yet, Lieberman — Sullivan wouldn’t have a dilemma at all. And Bush would be down by double-digits in the polls. But I digress.

I can’t possibly improve on Fark’s headline for this story: “French electrical workers cut power to Eiffel Tower, Champs-Elysees. France surrenders.”

And now, cell-phone viruses. Oh, goody.

Is Dick Gephardt becoming the presumptive vice presidential nominee? It seems to be moving in that direction…

Democratic White House candidate John Kerry spent more than an hour meeting privately with Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt on Wednesday, adding fuel to the vice presidential guessing game.

The presumptive presidential nominee and his former rival met for between 60 and 90 minutes in Kerry’s Capitol Hill office, a Democratic official said.

Mum’s the word in the Kerry camp, though. [Who is this Mum, anyway? And is he a Southerner? -ed.]

“I don’t talk about the veep thing, you know that,” Kerry told reporters. “I’ve been very disciplined.” …

Keeping his vice presidential selection almost as private as the choice of a new pope, Kerry and his staff have refused to speculate on names or even discuss the process that veteran Democratic operative Jim Johnson is overseeing.

The candidate’s stock response is that he will choose a running mate “before the convention,” which begins in Boston on July 26.

Among others in Congress who have been mentioned as possible running mates are North Carolina Sen. John Edwards and Florida Sen. Bob Graham, also former rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sens. Evan Bayh of Indiana [Yay!!! -ed.], Bill Nelson of Florida and John Breaux of Louisiana.

John Breaux?!? Isn’t he, like, practically a Republican?

P.S. Gotta love the journalistic passive voice. “Have been mentioned.” Mentioned by whom? (”By us!!! The media!!!”)

Newington High School Class of 1999 grad Joe Serfass has signed with the New York Mets organization, and will be playing for their Rookie League team, the St. Lucie Mets. He departs Connecticut for Florida today. His goal, of course, is to eventually make it to the big-leagues. Way to go, Joe! And good luck!