Space Shuttle Discovery takes off at 2:38 p.m. ET, on its way to the international space station. Visit CNN for the latest.

We're in Klamath Falls, Oregon… and I finally have a cell phone signal. :) Here's a photo from earlier this morning of Mount Shasta in northern California.

The space shuttle countdown is going very smoothly today. Launch is scheduled for 2:38 pm EDT. Weather is very favorable, skies are clear here at the Kennedy Space Center, and there are no technical problems. Weather forecasters are watching crosswinds at the runway at KSC that the shuttle could use in certain kinds of launch aborts, and rainshowers offshore, but neither issue is expected to present a problem. The countdown has just picked up from a planned hold at T-20 minutes. One more planned hold remains in the countdown, at T-9 minutes. In the photo I took at T-20, the launch pad is on the left side of the image.

First of all… HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!!

Now then… for any InstaPundit readers who are stopping by this morning, a quick refresher. My wife Becky and I are in the midst of a train trip on Amtrak’s lovely Coast Starlight from L.A. to Seattle, as explained here. I’ll be liveblogging via cell phone throughout the day today. Just scroll down for older posts, and keep visiting my homepage for the latest photos and updates. In addition, you may be able to catch our train on some webcams (all times MST/PDT):

• Dunsmuir, CA, ~6:00 AM or later
• Portland, OR, ~4:30 PM or later
• Olympia, WA (see also here), ~7:00 PM or later
• Seattle, WA (?), ~9:30 PM or later

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, guestblogger Sean Sullivan is at Cape Canaveral, and will be blogging about today’s planned Space Shuttle launch, scheduled for 2:38 PM EDT (that’s 11:38 AM out here on the West Coast). So, stay tuned for that.

Last but not least, if you’re just looking for my Lieberman post, click here.

As promised, Andrew and Bea met us at the Sacramento train station just before 1:00 AM this morning. We only had about 10 minutes to hang out before we had to get back on the train, but it was still very nice to see them — and they made us a Jamba Juice thermos full of sangría for breakfast! LOL! Thanks, A & B. :)

It seems fitting that we ended the two-year anniversary of our engagement by seeing the happy couple for the first time since they got engaged. Speaking of which, we got to see Bea’s ring! Woohoo!

Andrew and Bea are the second pair of friends who have come out to a train station in the dead of night to say hello when my train was just passing through. The first? Vikki and Bridget, on a fateful night in 2003. And by “fateful night,” I mean, “Aaron Boone sucks.”

Anyway… time for bed. See you in the morning.

We left Oakland at 10:56 PM, and just stopped in Martinez as I write this at 11:46 PM, which should put us in Sacramento around 1:00 AM. I don’t know whether Andrew and Bea are still planning to come out to the station and say hi. Either way, I’ll most likely go to sleep after we leave Sacto. (Becky is already sound asleep, though of course I’ll wake her if Andrew and Bea come out to greet us.) [UPDATE, 12:24 AM: I just heard from Andrew by cell phone; they’re on their way to the station. Woohoo!]

If the current schedule holds — never a safe bet with Amtrak — we’ll have a spectacular view of the 14,160-foot Mount Shasta out our window when the sun rises tomorrow. We should be past Redding and Shasta Lake by then, and nearing Dunsmuir, which, at 2,300 feet, is a little less than halfway up to the train’s highest elevation, 5,050 feet. (Hat tip: Lee Groth’s The Milepost and John Pitt’s USA by Rail, our indispensible travel guides for this trip.)

Anyway, here are a few low-light pictures that I took (with my real digital camera, not my camera-phone like all the ones in previous posts) during our stop in Oakland:

The front cars of the train, seen from above.

The Oakland train station.

The front of our train.

More, higher-resolution photos to follow eventually, of course.

UPDATE: Here are a few more pictures that I took (again with my real camera) earlier today:

Becky in the Sightseeing Lounge Car.

The coast of California.

Our train winds along the curves north of San Luis Obispo.

I feel like this picture should be on a poster for Al Gore’s movie. :)

A beautiful sunset over a swampy inlet of Monterey Bay in Elkhorn, California. As of our stop in Salinas, we were officially listed as 2:27 behind schedule -- typical Amtrak. :) We're now due in
Sacramento, where Andrew & Bea may come say hi, at 12:04 AM.

Welcome, InstaPundit readers! I'm liveblogging my train trip from L.A. to Seattle; we're in central California, not quite to Salinas yet, as sunset nears. Tis a beautiful ride. Stay tuned for more train posts; scroll down for my Lieberman post. :)

Joe Lieberman, facing a stiff primary challenge from antiwar liberal Ned Lamont in the August 8 Democratic primary — and the stiff procedural hurdle of an August 9 deadline to petition his way onto the ballot as an independent if he loses — will begin his petition drive now, preserving the option of running as “a petitioning Democratic candidate” if Lamont beats him. In his words:

I’ve been a proud, loyal and progressive Democrat since John F. Kennedy inspired my generation of Americans into public service and I will stay a Democrat, whether I am the Democratic party’s nominee or a petitioning Democratic candidate on the November ballot.

Strategically, this is obviously the right move for Lieberman, given that a loss to Lamont in the low-turnout summer primary is entirely possible, whereas a general-election loss in November is far less likely. Polls have indicated that Lieberman would win easily in a three-way race, which is unsurprising, as he is still very popular among mainstream Connecticut voters. But, well, party primaries are not generally dominated by mainstream voters.

Of course, the good senator will get all sorts of grief for the decision, from Lamont — who previously, in a move as clever as it was transparently self-serving, urged Lieberman to sign onto a mutual endorsement pledge — and from other Democrats and liberal activists. For some, it will evoke memories of his simultaneous candidacies for senator and vice president in 2000. Others will fancy themselves clever as they say things like, “Lieberman not even a DINO anymore!”

The necessity of a “fallback” independent candidacy will make it even easier for Howard Dean’s brother and others to charge that Lieberman is not part of the “Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” Which is, of course, crap. Joe Lieberman isn’t just a great senator and a fine man, he’s a good, loyal Democrat, and he’s consistently liberal on most issues. ABC News reports: “The Liberal Americans for Democratic Action gives him a 75 percent rating. NARAL Pro-Choice America rates him as voting on its side 75 percent of the time; the American Civil Liberties Union, 83 percent of the time; the NAACP, 85 percent of the time; the League of Conservation Voters, 70 percent of the time; and the Children’s Defense Fund, 89 percent of the time.” And TNR’s Peter Beinart writes:

Why are MoveOn, Daily Kos, and so many other liberal activists so keen to find a primary challenger against Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman? The more you peel the onion, the stranger the answer becomes.

The common explanation is that Lieberman is a conservative. Or, more specifically, he’s a conservative who represents a liberal state–and, therefore, has no excuse. But, according to conventional indices, Lieberman is not a conservative. His lifetime rating from the liberal group Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) is 76, six points higher than the man MoveOn and Kos have encouraged to enter the race, former Senator Lowell Weicker. In August 2003 (before turning against Lieberman), Kos himself reviewed Lieberman’s ADA and American Conservative Union ratings and called the charge that he was a closet Republican “b.s.”

So why do so many liberals think Lieberman is a conservative? The obvious answer is his steadfast support for the Iraq war. For many liberals, ADA-style vote tabulations are irrelevant; Iraq is the crucible of our age. There’s a clear historical parallel. In 1968, Hubert Humphrey’s support for Vietnam made him a liberal pariah and Eugene McCarthy’s opposition made him a liberal hero–few cared that, overall, during their years in the Senate, Humphrey had been the greater liberal champion.

This notion that anyone who supported the war is therefore a “DINO” or a “right-wing wacko” is a pathology, plain and simple. It’s an illness that is unfortunately very, very prevalant on the Left right now. Liberals are, for whatever reason, in the mood for a purge. The war is their litmus test — if you have a different opinion, you’re not a real Democrat in their eyes. So much for a “big tent.”

Look, if you want to oppose Lieberman — or to disagree with other Democrats/liberals who favored the war, like for example, me — simply on the basis of the war, because you believe it is “the crucible of our age,” fine, go right ahead. Personally I think it’s dumb to do that, but I can understand how others might disagree if they feel strongly enough about the issue. But for heaven’s sake, be honest about it. Joe Lieberman is not a DINO, he’s not a right-winger, and he’s not disloyal to the party. Far from it. Joe Lieberman is, as I said, an excellent senator, an honorable man, and a good Democrat — who happens to believe (as I do) that the war in Iraq was justified and must be won. Again, if you want to oppose him on that basis alone, go right ahead. But cut the rhetorical crap.

As regular readers know, I believe Joe Lieberman is one of the finest senators in either party, and I also believe as a general matter that it’s a terrible idea for the Democrats to purge loyal party members who are consistently liberal on most issues but who refuse to tow the line on certain individual issues when their conscience forces them to honestly disagree. So, I will support Joe whether he’s an independent, a “petitioning Democrat” or the official Democratic nominee. It makes no difference to me — so long as he pledges to cast his lot with the Democrats when it comes to choosing the majority leader and such (which he has), I have absolutely no qualms about supporting him. On the contrary, I seriously wish I was still living in Connecticut so that I could vote for him!

Speaking of which, I absolutely love this slogan: “Annoy the blogosphere, vote for Joe!“ LOL!

UPDATE: Before I posted this, my dad begin “crafting and drafting” his own post about the issue. But I scooped him, beating him to the “publish” button. In order to avoid confusion and consolidate the inevitable comment-war, I’m moving his post to the “Extended Entry” section of this post. So, herewith follows my dad’s post:

(more…)

NASA says it will try again to launch Space Shuttle Discovery on July 4, despite finding a crack in its insulation. Visit CNN for the latest.

Our train, seen from a pedestrian bridge over the tracks at the San Luis Obispo station.

We've turned away from the ocean and are heading through the Santa Maria Valley now. San Luis Obispo is about a half-hour away. Here's a photo I took earlier (when I had no cell-phone signal) along
the coastline between Santa Barbara and Vandenberg.

I guess the injured lady didn't need to go to the hospital after all, because after a longer-than-usual stop, we left with her still on board and the stretcher unused. Anyway, here's a picture I took
while outside the train at the S.B. station.

We're in Santa Barbara. Here's the stretcher that they're going to use to wheel off the injured passenger.

The train is right along the ocean. Meanwhile, an “is there a doctor on board” call just went out, and paramedics have apparently been called to our next station stop, because a blind woman fell and hurt herself. Sounds like she's going to be OK though.