For those of you who habitually decry the mainstream media's shunning of all but the top tier presidential candidates, there is a long and respectful article in Salon today about the long-shot-iest of the long shots on the Democratic side, Mike Gravel. It's an interesting read....

While much has been said about the French elections, the thing that struck me was the fact that 85% of them turned out to vote. In our last presidential election, south of 60% exercised their franchise. Maybe it has something to do with scheduling the voting on a weekend, instead of a Tuesday? Just a thought....

In Congressional news, the Senate tried but failed to pass a bill allowing prescription drugs to be imported from Canada, and last week the House voted on a federal hate crimes bill to protect gays, and the media collectively yawned. Bush has indicated he's likely to veto either of these if they arrive on his desk, but the Democrats in Congress should be given a little credit for attempting bills that, even if vetoed, can be used as campaign fodder next year against Republicans. OK, that's a crass political analysis, but since they likely won't override a veto, I believe it's accurate.

Finally, President Bush shows off his intellect to the Queen of England by forgetting what century our bicentennial was in:

"The American people are proud to welcome Your Majesty back to the United States, a nation you've come to know very well," Bush said. "After all, you've dined with 10 U.S. presidents. You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 -- in 1976."

As the audience laughed, Bush paused and glanced at the queen, then ad-libbed, "She gave me a look that only a mother could give a child."

I've written before on the irony of the "red state/blue state" divide, and how the Republicans somehow wound up as the "red" party in America:

It looks like the equation “Democrats = blue, Republicans = red” is pretty much set in stone for the foreseeable future. Does anyone else see the irony in the Republicans being the “red” party? Does nobody else remember Joe McCarthy and the “red = communism” equation that predated this?

But last night's GOP presidential-hopefuls debate brought another bit of irony for those of us old enough to remember the Cold War.

As Salon reports:

About 15 minutes before the cameras started rolling, the candidates came out on the stage. They faced an audience of several hundred, divided into three sections, each one named for the site of a Reagan summit with the Soviets. The network executives sat in Moscow. The journalists and VIPs sat in Reykjavik. Most of the candidate families and friends sat in Geneva.

The symbolism of a Republican crowd sitting in "Geneva" is bad enough, given George W. Bush's penchance for ignoring international laws (especially those which emanated from Geneva), but am I the only one to see shades of Kafka or Orwell in GOP audience members sitting in "Moscow"?

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More Friday funnies: Toles is hilarious today.

OK, I have to say, after watching Mitt Romney on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, I am more open to his becoming president than I previously was.

Now, this doesn't mean I'm about to vote Republican or anything, but Romney raised his profile considerably (for me) when he told Jay "my sons just gave me a car as a present -- a 1962 Rambler American."

For context (for those of you who don't know me personally), here is the car I learned to drive on:

A not-so beautiful 1968 Rambler American. Man, if that car could talk....

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Fresh lies! Get your fresh lies right here! Step right up....

Actually, I have to begin with a stale lie, since I'm writing this on the four-year anniversary of President Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech. From his speech on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln:

"We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous. We're pursuing and finding leaders of the old regime, who will be held to account for their crimes. We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated. We're helping to rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools."

Now, I don't mean to be snide, but I would be willing to bet that constructing the biggest and most expensive American Embassy in the entire world in Iraq (although "fortress" might be a better word, but certainly not "palace"...) will be built up to specification and without serious flaws. The rest of the Iraqi reconstruction effort, however (those "hospitals and schools"), does not seem to be going so swimmingly.

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To: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
RE: Iraq War Appropriations Bill

Madam Speaker and Leader Reid,

First of all, congratulations on your success in getting an Iraq bill onto President Bush's desk. While the news media keep trotting out the "Democrats in disarray" stories, you have debunked this myth by holding your party together on the most important bill you have faced so far. Delivering it to him on the four-year anniversary of "Mission Accomplished" was a nice touch, too.

Unfortunately, for both the country and for the troops in Iraq, you don't have the 290 House votes and 67 Senate votes you need to override the upcoming veto of the bill. So you are now faced with three choices:

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...but first... the Bush Scandal-fest news...

I have to preface today's column with a rundown of all the scandals recently besieging (or about to besiege) the White House. Admittedly, there are so many of them, it's getting hard to keep track.

For those of you keeping score at home, the AP recently ran an excellent list of Bush appointees who have left under a dark cloud... or are about to.

Henry Waxman's House Oversight Committee has been busy. Yesterday, they were blowing holes in the Pentagon for using soldiers such as Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch to propagandize the war. Today, they may be issuing subpoenas left and right concerning a handful of various Bush scandals.The chief of the General Services Administration may soon step down amid charges that she abused her position by violating the Hatch Act. Twenty-five senators recently wrote the White House with a list of pointed questions about her activities, which concludes with the line: "The Executive Branch is not an extension of the Republican National Committee, nor of any political party. Those who treat it as such must be held accountable."

But the most shocking news comes from within the administration itself. The Los Angeles Times reports that the Office of Special Counsel is opening an unprecedented and wide-ranging investigation centered on Karl Rove, which may tie together several aspects of many of these scandals -- most notably, the inability of the Bush Administration to ever separate politics from anything it does.

Mind you -- this is just one week's worth of scandals from the Bush White House. And still, all of them put together don't even touch the biggest scandal of the week; truly the center ring in this circus of sleaze: the fact that last week Attorney General Alberto Gonzales proved to everyone (except the president) -- without a shadow of a doubt -- that either; (1) Gonzales is a complete moron who can't remember last week or, for that matter, what he had for breakfast; or (2) Gonzales is lying his face off to Congress and the public. Either one would seem to disqualify him for high office. In a reality-based administration, that is.

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Gather 'round kiddies, and let Uncle Chris tell you a story. Truth be told, it's kind of a scary story -- but it does have a happy ending.

Once upon a time, there was an Attorney General of the United States.

He worked in a big white building in Washington, D.C.

But all was not well in his big white building, and he was not a happy camper.

This Attorney General was under a lot of political pressure and caused controversy to bloom no matter what he did, or so it seemed.

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Yet another odds-and-ends Friday column, in the proud Herb Caen tradition of three-dot journalism. Happy Friday the 13th to all!

. . . I have no way to verify this story, but if it's true it's horrifying. A respected Princeton professor had some trouble getting permission to fly on a commercial plane recently. The whole blog post is worth reading, but here's the heart of the matter, in the professor's own words:

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The state of New York has just officially moved their presidential primary up to February 5, 2008; jumping on the bandwagon of several other states to create what pundits are now calling "Super-Duper Tuesday" (I refuse to use this silly term, so I will henceforth refer to it as "SDT"). Ten states are now set to vote on February 5, and as many as 20 others are considering doing the same.

While the mainstream media will doubtlessly obsess over which candidates this will help and which it will hurt, there's a bigger question to be asked: is this a good thing or a bad thing for the American presidential election process? And if it does turn out to be a trend for the worse, how can we do better?

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A continued look at the underdogs of the Democratic presidential field.

[Part 1 of this article ran yesterday and examined Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, and Mike Gravel.]

Inadvertently omitted from yesterday's article were statistics for the frontrunners, for your comparison. Money: Hillary Clinton, $26 million; John Edwards, $14 million; Barack Obama, $25 million. Washington Post mentions: Hillary Clinton, 139; John Edwards, 56; Barack Obama, 101.

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