Edwards/Obama online, Clinton/Obama off

-- The Kossacks still like John Edwards and Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton not at all. The Direct Democracy-ites choose Obama by a nose in an allocated tally (go there for the explanation). The traditional polling favors the Senator from New York.

Hillary will be here in Houston tomorrow.

The Republicans are currently being led by the cross-dressing Rudy Giuliani, followed by John McCain, who seems to be fading fast. Romney, Gingrich (who still hasn't declared) and Brownback trail them in single digits.

-- A topic which has received much attention in the blogosphere has been the erupting scandal at the Texas Youth Commission. Incarcerated young people were routinely sexually abused, the entire board of directors has resigned, and now the US Department of Justice is threatening legal action against the state of Texas. Kuffner and Leibowitz have been updating this regularly.

-- Valerie Plame is testifying today on Capitol Hill.

-- Karl Rove and Harriet Myers are also implicated in the firing of federal prosecutors for political purposes. They will likely be subpoenaed by Sen. Patrick Leahy to testify before a Senate committee. The right-wing talking point on this scandal is: "Clinton did it, too!" Not only is it typically disingenuous, it's just pathetic that six years into the Bush Maladministration the conservatives are still bleating about the Big Dog.

Find a new whine, goonbats.

Gone-zales

Rumors are leaking that he and the Prezdent are no longer BFF.

This surprises me. After reading Booman's take that Abu Attorney General would never resign, I was in complete agreement until reading the account from ThinkProgress, and also the paragraph at the bottom of Dana Milbank's report -- that even Senator Box Turtle has taken out the long knife. That's probably so that he can be first in line to replace him.

And that would create a free-for-all for the vacant Senate seat on both sides. In other Senate news, Rick Noriega was outed by the lads at Texas Blue. Bad move by them, in my opinion. That sort of thing engenders enmity among his House colleagues at a time when he is advancing important legislation.

Lots more to come on several fronts, and I hope I have time to write about it.

Thank you all

... for your kind words here. We appreciate them very much.

Sue's mother was transported to the hospital early Saturday morning (as Sue prepared to depart for Miami and her father's funeral) and remains in ICU with congestive heart failure and possibly pneumonia. Sue's sister -- undergoing her own chemotherapy for lymphoma -- collapsed yesterday in the hospital and was taken a few steps over to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with dehydration and a fever (she went home last night).

This is all the family she has left, and they are having a rough go of it right now. Please keep a warm thought for them in your heart.