October 8, 2022

Late Morning Update:

Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "Conservatives have sacrificed any claim to principle. In an unholy transaction, they stuck with Trump because there was a Supreme Court seat and they were willing to tolerate his moral void in order to hijack the court. They didn't care how he treated women as long as he gave them the opportunity to rip away rights from women. They wanted to impose their warped morality, a 'Handmaid's Tale' world, on the rest of us.... Now, in Georgia, conservatives are turning a blind eye to sordid stories coming out about Herschel Walker, who demonstrates no qualifications for serving in the Senate. Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans should be ashamed to promote this troubled person for their own benefit. Privately, some Republicans are mortified by the Walker spiral, but they're going to brazen it out for the win."

Maggie Haberman & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: Donald "Trump spent a year and a half deflecting, delaying and sometimes leading aides to dissemble when it came to demands from the National Archives and ultimately the Justice Department to return the material he had taken, interviews and documents show. That pattern was strikingly similar to how Mr. Trump confronted inquiries into his conduct while in office: entertain or promote outlandish ideas, eschew the advice of lawyers and mislead them, then push lawyers and aides to impede investigators.... In the closing weeks of his presidency, the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone, flagged the need for Mr. Trump to return documents that had piled up in boxes in the White House residence, according to archives officials." MB: Mostly a review of what you already know, but entertaining/maddening.

Danny Hakim & Richard Fausset of the New York Times: "Witnesses called to testify in a Georgia criminal investigation into ... Donald J. Trump and his allies have not always come willingly. A number of them have fought their subpoenas in their home-state courts, only to have local judges order them to cooperate.... But the state of Texas is proving to be an outlier, creating serious headaches for Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, who is leading the investigation into efforts by Mr. Trump and others to overturn his 2020 election loss in Georgia. Last month, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest criminal court, thwarted Ms. Willis's effort to force Jacki L. Pick, a Republican lawyer and pundit, to testify in Atlanta, saying that her subpoena had essentially expired. But in a pair of opinions, a majority of the judges on the all-Republican court went further, indicating that they believed the Georgia special grand jury conducting the inquiry may not have the legal standing to compel testimony from Texas witnesses.... It looks to some Georgia observers like a pattern of Texas Republicans meddling with Georgia when it comes to the fate of Mr. Trump."

Today in Fake Heiress News

Emily Palmer of the New York Times: "Anna Sorokin, who bilked banks and tricked New York's elite into believing she was a German heiress named Anna Delvey, was released from an immigration detention facility in Goshen, N.Y., on Friday and sent back to Manhattan. In May 2019, Ms. Sorokin was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison for financial crimes including grand larceny and stealing a private jet. After serving nearly four years, she spent 18 months behind bars in immigration detention for overstaying her visa, after a judge determined she was unrepentant. (Ms. Sorokin, 31, who was born in what was then the Soviet Union, has German citizenship.)... While in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, Ms. Sorokin accrued one million Instagram followers when her exploits were dramatized this year in a series on Netflix about her time, in her mid-20s, as Anna Delvey, the heiress persona she fabricated." ~~~

~~~ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "A close associate of a woman who posed as a member of a famous banking family and spent days at ... Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago home was shot Friday in a brazen attack outside a lakeside resort northwest of Montreal, the Canadian paper LaPresse reported. Quebec provincial police have launched a search for the shooter and other accomplices behind the midday attack on Valeriy Tarasenko, 44, in the upscale community of Esterel, according to LaPresse. Police said he suffered 'significant injuries' but was expected to survive. Mr. Tarasenko was a former business partner of Inna Yashchyshyn, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian immigrant who gained recent notoriety after an investigation by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in August revealed that she masqueraded as a member of the Rothschild family and went to Mar-a-Lago, where she made inroads in the former president's inner circle."

New York. Hurubie Meko of the New York Times: "Columbia University and its affiliated hospitals on Friday announced a $165 million settlement with 147 patients of a former gynecologist accused of sexual abuse by dozens of women. Among the people who have accused him of abuse was Evelyn Yang, the wife of the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang. Robert A. Hadden, who according to the hospitals has not worked as a doctor since 2012, pleaded guilty in 2016 to abusing 19 women, but was spared prison time. Now, Mr. Hadden is awaiting trial on federal charges of enticing and inducing women, including a minor, to travel from outside New York State to his Manhattan offices to engage in illegal sex acts." MB: It's amazing how long it takes to catch some of these creeps. Why, it almost makes you think the institutions where they work don't care.

Missy Ryan, et al., of the Washington Post with more on the explosion on the Russia-Crimea bridge: "A giant explosion ripped across the Crimean Bridge, a strategic link between mainland Russia and Crimea, in what appeared to be a stunning blow early Saturday morning to a symbol of President Vladimir Putin's ambitions to control Ukraine.... The Ukrainian government provided no immediate official statement on the cause of the blast. But in a taunt, the government's official Twitter account posted: 'sick burn.' A Ukrainian government official told The Washington Post on Saturday that Ukrainian special services were behind the bridge attack."

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Secrecy. Shame. Silence. Danger. Even death. That's what defined that time for so many women. -- Dr. Jill Biden, on life before Roe ~~~

~~~ Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "Jill Biden, the first lady, said on Friday that she had once helped a friend recover from an abortion before there was a constitutional right to the procedure, evoking the issue in deeply personal terms at a political fund-raiser as she warned of further restrictions from 'extremist Republicans.' Dr. Biden, who was introduced by Speaker Nancy Pelosi before speaking to a group of donors in San Francisco, said that in the late 1960s -- years before the Supreme Court-s decision in Roe v. Wade established a right to abortion -- a friend got pregnant. At that time, abortion was outlawed in Pennsylvania, where Dr. Biden grew up.... 'I went to see her in the hospital and then cried the whole drive home,' said Dr. Biden, who said she was 17 at the time. 'When she was discharged from the hospital, she couldn't go back to her house, so I gathered my courage and asked my mom, "Can she come stay with us?"' Dr. Biden, now 71, said that her mother, Bonny Jean Jacobs, allowed her friend to visit and that the two kept it a secret."

Timothy Shenk in a New York Times op-ed, based on an excerpt from a book Shenk is writing: Barack "Obama left Harvard with a blueprint for remaking American democracy. Written with Robert Fisher, a friend and former economics professor, the 250-page manuscript had the working title of 'Transformative Politics.'" Shenk outlines the Obama/Fisher thesis and how it fit into, you know, real life. Interesting. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Bob Brigham of the Raw Story: "Agents for the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been questioning witnesses about whether Donald Trump may still be in possession of classified documents at Trump Tower or other properties. 'The FBI, according to these sources, had also asked in recent months whether the ex-president had a habit of transporting classified documents from his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago to the other Trump properties. The feds specifically discussed both the New York City and Bedminster locations with certain witnesses,' Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Ransley reported for Rolling Stone magazine." ~~~

~~~ Trump Confuses "Privileged" with "Evidence." Hugo Lowell of the Guardian: "Donald Trump is seeking to withhold from the justice department two folders marked as containing correspondence with the National Archives and signing sheets that the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago resort, according to court filings in the special master review of the confiscated documents. The former US president s privilege assertions over the folders, which appear to have direct relevance to the criminal investigation into whether he retained national defense information and obstructed justice, are significant as they represent an effort to exclude the items from the inquiry and keep them confidential." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I can't quite think of any legitimate reason that correspondence between Trump & the Archives would be privileged, but I suppose it's possible that there are Trumpy handwritten notes to his lawyers on some of the letters that says something like, "Tell those NARA deep-state liberals they'll never get their hands on MY papers!!!! They belong to ME, ME. ME!!!!" ~~~

~~~ The TrumpDocs Story Gets Weirder & Weirder. Mike Levine & Katherine Faulders of ABC News: "At the end of Donald Trump's presidency, his team returned a large batch of classified FBI documents and other government records to the Justice Department in such disarray that a year later -- in a letter to lawmakers -- the department said it still couldn't tell which of the documents were the classified ones. The documents came from the FBI's controversial probe in 2016 looking at alleged links between Russia and Trump's presidential campaign. Trump tried to make the documents public the night before he left office, issuing a 'declassification' memo and secretly meeting with conservative writer John Solomon, who was allowed to review the documents, Solomon told ABC News this past week." The story goes on. And on. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "In December 2020, hours after the Electoral College cast its votes for Joseph R. Biden Jr., Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers militia, posted a letter on his website urging ... Donald J. Trump to undertake a series of unprecedented -- and possibly illegal -- moves to stay in office. Telling Mr. Trump the country was at war with 'Communist China' and a secret army of 'willing American agents,' Mr. Rhodes beseeched the president to invoke the Insurrection Act, a more than two centuries-old law that he believed would give Mr. Trump the power to call up the National Guard and militias like his own to suppress the 'coup' that was seeking to unseat him. The open letter, which was shown on Friday to the jury at the trial of Mr. Rhodes and four of his subordinates on seditious conspiracy charges, demanded that Mr. Trump take more wild steps to maintain his grip on power.... All of this was followed by a threat of violence against Mr. Biden and Kamala Harris, his vice president-elect. 'If you fail to act while you are still in office,' Mr. Rhodes told Mr. Trump, 'We the People will have to fight a bloody war against these two illegitimate Chinese puppets.'"

Martin Pengelly of the Guardian: "Republican senator and Trump ally Lindsey Graham told a police officer badly beaten during the Capitol attack that law enforcement should have shot rioting Trump supporters in the head, according to a new book. 'You guys should have shot them all in the head,' the now ex-cop, Michael Fanone, says the South Carolina Republican told him at a meeting in May 2021, four months after the deadly attack on Congress. 'We gave you guys guns, and you should have used them. I don't understand why that didn't happen.'"

Tom Hamburger of the Washington Post: "The Georgia prosecutor investigating whether Donald Trump improperly interfered in the 2020 presidential election filed court papers Friday to obtain testimony from Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, and former House speaker Newt Gingrich. Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis also requested testimony from other potential witnesses including former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann. The requests to compel testimony were filed on a day that marked the beginning of a 'quiet' period for Willis's investigation in advance of the midterm elections." The AP's report is here.

Dan Diamond, et al., of the Washington Post: "Federal officials have spent the past year urging Americans to get [Covid] booster shots to bolster their protection against the coronavirus, which wanes over time. In early September, they rushed out the first new shots -- reformulated to target the still-dominant omicron variants -- to give people time to get inoculated before a likely cold weather surge, when respiratory infections increase as people head indoors, and recommended that all Americans 12 and older receive a third and fourth dose of vaccine. But the campaigns have lagged badly. Only about 105 million U.S. adults -- roughly 40 percent -- have received the third shot of vaccine initially offered a year ago, according to federal data, a far lower rate than countries like the United Kingdom, where more than 70 percent of adults have gotten a third dose." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Jacqueline Alemany of the Washington Post: "House Democrats are again seeking to censure Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) over "Joe Biden is Hitler" social media posts. Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.) introduced a resolution on Thursday. The move comes after Greene posted on Twitter that 'Joe Biden is Hitler' and subsequently tweeted a doctored video of the president with a small mustache standing at a lectern with swastikas in the background dubbed with audio of the Nazi leader."

November Elections

Georgia Senate. Maya King, et al., of the New York Times: "A woman who has said Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate nominee in Georgia, paid for her abortion in 2009 told The New York Times that he urged her to terminate a second pregnancy two years later. They ended their relationship after she refused. In a series of interviews, the woman said Mr. Walker had barely been involved in their now 10-year-old son's life, offering little more than court-ordered child support and occasional gifts.... [Mr. Walker] called her 'some alleged woman' in a radio interview on Thursday.... Mr. Walker has repeatedly denied her account, calling it a 'flat-out' lie and the work of Democrats and the hostile news media. He has disputed that he signed [a get-well] card [the woman produced].... The interviews and documents provided to The Times together corroborate and expand upon an account about her abortion first published on Monday in The Daily Beast. The Times also independently confirmed details with custody records filed in family court in New York and interviewed a friend of the woman...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Marie's Note to Walker: Maybe the fact that you're sending child support payments to "some alleged woman" will help you recall who she is. You could consult your bank statement. ~~~

     ~~~ OR, Herschel could have just asked his wife, Julie Blanchard Walker, who apparently reached out to the woman in a Friday morning text message to address the brouhaha. ~~~

     ~~~ Update. Marc Caputo of NBC News: "Herschel Walker ... claimed he confirmed for the first time Friday the identity of the woman who has claimed he paid for her abortion 13 years ago when she leveled the allegation in a text message to his wife. In a brief interview with NBC News, Walker said this was also the first time the woman ... mentioned to him or his wife that she had had an abortion. 'Did you know Herschel paid for my abortion the first time? Or that he told me it wasn't the "right time" to have [her current child]?' the woman wrote in a 9:54 a.m. text message sent Friday to Herschel Walker's wife, Julie Walker, who initiated the conversation.... The messages [Herschel Walker's] campaign provided between the woman and Julie Walker dated back to May 2022.... According to the text messages, the woman ... expressed early support for Herschel Walker's campaign, especially in the run-up to the May 24 GOP primary, when Walker first began running as an anti-abortion conservative."

~~~ Gabby Orr & Michael Warren of CNN: "Herschel Walker's Senate campaign cut ties with its political director on Wednesday, CNN has learned, the move coming just days after The Daily Beast reported that the Georgia Republican paid for a woman's abortion more than a decade ago. The departure of Taylor Crowe, who previously held the same role on ex-GOP Sen. David Perdue's failed bid for Georgia governor this year, comes just weeks before Election Day in the crucial Senate contest against Democratic incumbent Raphael Warnock.... Two people familiar with the matter said Crowe was fired after suspected leaking to members of the media." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Quin Hillyer of the right-wing Washington Examiner: "Here's what Walker should do: Announce that he will stay on the ballot because it is legally too late to replace him. He should say if he wins, he will indeed be sworn in, in January, to make things official. He should pledge, though, that within two days of being sworn in, he will resign -- under one huge condition. Whomever the governor is (it is likely to be Republican Brian Kemp), of either party, they must agree to appoint a person chosen by the Georgia Republican Executive Committee to replace him until a new election can be held. The committee should name its choice before the Nov. 8 election so voters will know exactly for whom Walker is essentially standing as a proxy." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Maryland. Karina Elwood of the Washington Post: "The Maryland Court of Appeals will allow early counting of mail-in ballots in November's general election, over objections from Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox. The ruling comes after an expedited legal battle between Cox and the State Board of Elections over a petition to suspend an outdated law that prohibits election officials from canvassing mail-in ballots until two days after the election -- the only law of its kind in the country. A Montgomery County Circuit Court judge sided with the state board and suspended the law, allowing counting to begin on Oct. 1. A panel of judges on Friday upheld that decision, which Cox had appealed, arguing among other things that the state legislature and not the judiciary should control changes to election rules."

North Carolina Senate. Jazmine Ulloa of the New York Times: "For much of the 2022 campaign, the race between Cheri Beasley, a Democratic former chief justice of the State Supreme Court, and Representative Ted Budd, a three-term Republican congressman, has been a sleepy one. The two contenders are polished and low key. They don't tend to use incendiary rhetoric. But with the polls showing them in a dead heat, Mr. Budd and Ms. Beasley on Friday turned up the volume in their first (and likely only) debate: Mr. Budd tried to make the race a referendum on President Biden, while Ms. Beasley sought to cast it as chance to vote against election denialism and extremism."

Wisconsin Senate. Jonathan Weisman & Katie Glueck of the New York Times: "The first debate between Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a Republican, and his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, was a study in contrasts between an unapologetic, older conservative and a younger liberal who appeared unafraid of his ideological roots. Here are five takeaways."

Beyond the Beltway

Arizona & Ohio. Ava Sasani of the New York Times: "Abortion rights supporters won two temporary victories on Friday when judges in Ohio and Arizona suspended state laws banning the procedures. In Ohio, a county judge indefinitely suspended a state law prohibiting most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. A few hours later, an appeals court in Arizona temporarily blocked its pre-statehood law banning the procedure."

New York. Emma Fitzsimmons of the New York Times: "Mayor Eric Adams declared a state of emergency for New York City on Friday as the city struggles to respond to an influx of tens of thousands of migrants from Latin America. Mr. Adams said in a speech at City Hall that the city was preparing to spend $1 billion on its response and called for federal and state funding to help pay for housing and services for the busloads of migrants who have strained the city's homeless shelter system.... Mr. Adams, a Democrat who took office in January, said the city was moving forward with plans to build a tent intake center on Randalls Island, in the East River just off Manhattan. City officials are also negotiating with cruise ship companies to house migrants on board a ship." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Texas. Jenny Courts, et al., of ABC News: "The Uvalde, Texas, school district -- still facing withering criticism over its police department's failings both during the May 24 elementary school massacre and since -- announced the suspension of the entire district police force on Friday. Hours later, Uvalde school district Superintendent Hal Harrell announced he would be retiring. There was no timeframe given for Harrell's retirement, but the transition will be discussed in a closed session of the school board on Monday.... The length of the school district police suspension is not clear."

Way Beyond

Ireland. Ed O'Loughlin of the New York Times: "The Irish government introduced an online service this week that for the first time promises adopted people born in Ireland, wherever they now live, the right to see any information the state holds about them -- including the names of their birth mothers. It also offers a free tracing service for anyone, including birth mothers, trying to find relatives lost to them through Ireland's adoption system.... [The service] has the potential to be a significant step in reckoning with a painful national legacy of mistreatment of unmarried mothers and their children. Over decades, ending as recently as 1998, thousands of pregnant and unmarried women and girls in Ireland were confined to church-run 'mother and baby homes,' where they were expected and often pressured to give up their babies after birth. An official inquiry published last year acknowledged poor conditions, high death rates and abuses at the institutions." (Also linked yesterday.)

Ukraine, et al.

The Washington Post's live briefings of developments Saturday in Russia's war on Ukraine are here: "Parts of a key bridge linking Russia to the annexed Crimean peninsula appeared to be on fire Saturday morning, Russian and Ukrainian media reported. The Kerch strait bridge is vital to Russia's ability to supply its invading forces in southern Ukraine, where Kyiv's troops have made recent gains. Ukraine took back nearly 300 square miles in the east this week, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky. Facing Ukrainian advances there and in the south, Russian forces are intensifying missile attacks on civilian areas in key regions across the country, including Donbas, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia. On Thursday alone, at least 22 civilians were killed and 32 others were wounded in the southeast.... Russian shelling forced the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant to rely again on its emergency diesel generators to sustain operations, Ukraine's state nuclear operator said early Saturday....

Captured Russian equipment now makes up a large portion of Ukraine's military hardware, according to Britain's Defense Ministry.... At least eight Russian generals have been fired, reassigned or otherwise sidelined since the invasion in Ukraine began, and western governments have said that at least 10 others were killed in battle, a remarkably high number that military analysts say is evidence of grievous strategic errors."

     ~~~ The Guardian's live updates for Saturday are here. The New York Times' live updates for Saturday are here. ~~~

     ~~~ From the NYT live updates: "An explosion tore through the sole bridge linking the Russian-occupied Crimean Peninsula to Russia, collapsing a part of the span into the sea and imperiling a primary supply route for Russian troops fighting in the south of Ukraine. The 12-mile-long Kerch Strait Bridge is a cherished political project of President Vladimir V. Putin and had become a potent symbol of the claims that Mr. Putin makes to the peninsula, which his forces illegally seized from Ukraine in 2014. Mr. Putin presided over the opening of the bridge in 2018, personally driving a truck across.... Without [the bridge], the Russian military will be severely limited in its ability to bring fuel, equipment and ammunition to its units fighting an increasingly intense battle for the control of southern Ukraine.... Russia's National Anti-Terrorism Committee said in a statement that a truck had exploded on the bridge, igniting seven fuel cisterns being pulled by train on a parallel railroad crossing headed in the direction of Crimea and causing two car spans to partially collapse. Preliminary information suggested that three people were killed, Russia's investigative committee said in a statement. While there were no immediate claims of responsibility, Russian and Ukrainian officials indicated that the fire was no accident."

Louisa Loveluck of the Washington Post: "Across at least five different provinces, Russian troops left the remnants of an archipelago of torture in their wake, often in buildings where families had lived or children had played.... Police have found torture sites across basements, living rooms and in gardens. In the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, men were abused and executed in the basement of a children's summer camp. In Izyum, the soldiers used a kindergarten and a medical clinic.... On Friday, the chief investigator of the northeastern Kharkiv province, Serhii Bolvinov, said that his forces had recovered 534 civilian bodies in the eastern province of Kharkiv, most of them from a mass grave in the town of Izyum. Many bore signs of torture. In Lyman, 100 miles to the southeast, a key transport hub for Russian forces before the Ukrainian army recaptured it last week, the local governor said another 39 'burial sites' had been uncovered."

Lara Seligman of Politico: "The Pentagon said Friday that it still has seen no indications that Vladimir Putin is planning to launch nuclear weapons after President Joe Biden warned of the risk of a nuclear 'Armageddon.' Biden's comments show how seriously the U.S. is taking Putin's threats to use nuclear weapons, Defense Department spokesperson J. Todd Breasseale said in a statement to Politico. 'However -- and to be clear: we have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor do we have indications that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons,' he said. U.S. officials told Politico that nothing has changed on the nuclear front in the past 24 hours. On Thursday, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters that the department does not have any information that would cause it to change its nuclear posture." (Also linked yesterday.)

News Lede

New York Times: "Billy Sothern, a defense lawyer renowned for taking on some of Louisiana's toughest capital cases -- including the wrongful conviction of Albert Woodfox, who spent 42 years in solitary confinement for a crime he didn't commit — died on Sept. 30 at his home in Great Barrington, Mass., where he and his family had moved during the pandemic. He was 45. His wife, Nikki Page Sothern, said he had been fighting Covid, thyroid cancer and major depressive disorder, and that he died by suicide."

Comments

[`PD Pepe]

Looks like the Herschel "Walk on by" guy is getting more press than the fool that promoted him and I'm wondering if that fool feels foolish for that maneuver which is a silly question since feelings such as those are not part of his playbook.

I understand that there are now Tees worn by Dems that say, "Roe, Roe, Roe Your Vote" and I wonder: If the abortion issue is enough to push Democrats over the edge could we then send a thank you note to that Supreme being–-Dear Sammy–– that started this whole ball of wax?
Meanwhile we have Ireland becoming more humane (the adoption and abortion issues) while we are going backwards and in that cold country that Sarah Palin can see from her front porch a madman is thinking about nukes.

[Jeanne]

Fingers, toes and eyes crossed, PD-- where Nov. 8 is concerned.

Where the lunatic running for Senate in GA is concerned, everyone is concentrating on his lies about having paid for abortion (s) in past years, and I wonder why I have seen no one musing as to whether they ARE lies. Could it be that the brain-fogged deluded religious nuttery-fogged creep that is H Walker has actually forgotten everything that happened with these events? He makes very little sense when you listen to him, and why would we assume he knows what he did and with and to whom some years ago?? Are they lies if he really has no clue what used to exist in those mashed potatoes that were brains? Maybe he is filtering everything through what his handlers tell him now, which is that he is of course a pro-life, born-again responsible citizen, instead of the grifter-wannabe. The man probably can't handle his own life, never mind all of OUR lives...which is why he has no business near the Senate. Anyhow, what a figure of pity... (If it weren't so important that he lose spectacularly on Nov. 8...)

[Whyte Owen]

Nothing wrong with a deranged candidate. Wrong is that anyone with a brain, much less a near consensus of his party, is prepared to vote for him. So many so desperate to do anything to bring down the hated government?