With over 95% of the precincts in, Democrat Steve Beshear holds a 41.2-to-21.5% lead over GOP-allied DINO Bruce Lundsford in the primary for the Kentucky governor's race.  If this result holds up, Beshear will avoid a runoff and oppose the GOP nominee in the fall.

The GOP seems poised to nominate corrupt incumbent Ernie Fletcher, who leads former GOP House member Anne Northup by a 51-35% margin.

Beshear should crush Fletcher in the general election.

UPDATED:  With 99.4% of the precincts in, it's now Beshear with 40.9% over Lundsford.  Close, but still over the 40% required to avoid a runoff.  Fletcher's lead dropped to 50.1% ... too little, too late for Northup.

Watching Jessica Lynch and Kevin Tillman testify today before Henry Waxman’s committee, I was struck once again by the administration’s obsession with iconography.  

We’ve seen it in countless ways: the positioning of buzzwords and slogans on backdrops at the President’s public appearances, the carrier landing stunt with the infamous MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner, the Thanksgiving dinner picture posed like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting, the camera angles set up so that the Presidential seal looks like a halo floating over Bush’s head, the increasing reliance on our soldiers as campaign props.  There are other examples: Condi Rice’s suggestion that the "smoking gun" of Iraqi WMD might be a mushroom cloud comes to mind.  

Over the past few weeks, we’ve become aware of the administration’s pervasive use of "unofficial" communications channels to conduct business.  The U.S. Attorney firings, for example, were plotted over email servers maintained by the Republican National Committee ...  servers not subject to the same rules as the official White House system, which archives all communications to provide a measure of accountability in the executive branch.

Naturally, the Republicans are looking for an innocent explanation for this practice.  Rather than admit the obvious – that they hid the emails because they had something to hide – the Bushistas offered up a tasty bit of spin, claiming they used two email systems to keep separate their government work from their work in the service of the Party.  But does the record of this administration – or indeed, of the GOP in general – suggest that such concerns have any bearing whatsoever on how the Republicans conduct the business of government?  

The examples set forth below show they do not.

Who can forget the Iraqi elections, hailed by George Bush as a sign that the US "strategery" in Iraq was on the road to success?  Remember how Republican members of Congress stained their fingertips purple, evoking the mark used to denote Iraqis who had cast their ballots?  Wonder how that would have played if we'd known this guy was going to be part of the ruling coalition installed and supported at the cost of so many of our soldiers' lives:  

Who is this?  

Why, none other than Jamal Jafaar Mohammed, convicted and condemned for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. and French Embassies in Kuwait.  

General Jack Keane, who retired in 2003 as the Army's #2 officer, is one of the architects of the escalation of the Iraq war presently under consideration by the Bush administration.  In a recent interview with CBS News' David Martin, he gave a remarkable insight into the overall strategic planning -- or rather, the lack of it -- that has characterized our war effort to date in Iraq:

"We have never had a strategy to defeat the insurgency."

The general did not indicate when the administration first noticed the absence of such a strategy.  Perhaps the first few thousand dead weren't enough to catch their attention.

Today, Richard Cohen renews his quest to explore the very limits of wankerdom in his latest Washington Post op-ed column.  It's valuable for its insight into how the opinion elite in Washington, and in particular the so-called "liberal hawks," can simultaneously recognize the war has gone disastrously wrong while continuing to maintain it was not wrong to have started it in the first place.

The column, entitled How the GOP Lost the North, explores the realignment apparently underway in the New England and Great Lakes states (and other places as well), away from the GOP and toward the Democratic Party, mirroring the shift of the South to the Republicans in the 60s and 70s.  

In 2002, Bush hinted that Democrats were "not interested in the security of the American people."

In 2004, Cheney warned the American people that if they voted for Kerry "the danger is that we'll get hit again."

Now, Bush has gone back to the well of treason, in a campaign stop in Georgia:  "However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses."

If, as predicted, we win enough seats to take control of one or both houses of Congress, will the GOP quietly accept the results of the election?

Blackwell is way behind in the polls, and runs the risk of losing in a blue landslide that may crush the GOP all the way down the line in the Buckeye State.  Clearly, these are desperate times for the Republicans in Ohio ... and desperate times call for desperate measures.  But would they really do something so outrageous?

To answer that question, it may be helpful to revisit the curious case of Alaska's 1998 GOP gubernatorial nominee, John Lindauer.

These figures suggest that the US invasion and the chaos that followed have visited a nightmare of carnage on the Iraqi people.  News accounts of the study's results suggest they are likely to be "controversial," because they are 20 times larger than the figures Bush administration has publicly acknowledged.

But there is reason to believe these figures are accurate, based on U.S. government data, from the First Gulf War.

You can see this remarkable ad on You Tube now.

Entitled "Facts," the ad describes Foley's e-mails as "odd, but not explicit."  Reynolds says "I reported what I'd been told to the Speaker of the House" -- effectively calling out Hastert, who claimed never to have heard about the e-mails until the end of September, as a liar.  He says he "trusted that others had investigated" ... another pretty direct slam at the Speaker.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) was notified early this year of inappropriate e-mails from former representative Mark Foley (R-Fla.) to a 16-year-old page, a top GOP House member said yesterday -- contradicting the speaker's assertions that he learned of concerns about Foley only last week.

In today's Washington Post, Lehman offers a critique of the Bush administration's so-called war on terror that, while using "GOP-friendlier" language than we typically see here, echoes much of our current criticism of George W. Bush's failed policies.  Entitled We're Not Winning This War, Lehman's column begins by attacking the very language employed by Bush to describe the conflict:  "This not a war against terror any more than World War II was a war against kamikazes."

Yet the latest Quinnipiac University poll, taken less than two weeks after the Clinton campaign swing, shows Lieberman falling far behind his opponent.  If Lamont wins on August 8th, we will no doubt see a raft of articles analyzing the race.  Most, I expect, will mention at least in passing the failure of the former president to change the electoral dynamic.

I'm not convinced those articles will be accurate.  I think it's entirely possible that Bill Clinton did make a difference in the race.  

In favor of Ned Lamont.

The list is long and painful to recall.  But it goes back farther than I knew.

The court opined that, although there would be no impediment to extending the institution of marriage to gay couples, the legislature has the authority to withhold it.  "[W]hile same-sex marriage may be the law at a future time," the majority held, "it will be because the people declare it to be, not because five members of this court have dictated it."

The majority opinion can be found here.

Sergeant Paul E. Cortez, Specialist James P. Barker, Privates First Class Jesse V. Spielman and Bryan L. Howard have, according to media reports, all been charged with murder, rape, arson, and other offenses related to the killings.  A fifth soldier, Sergeant Anthony W. Yribe, is  charged with dereliction of duty for failing to report the offense.  

Criminal proceedings under military law are similar to civilian trials, but there are a number of important differences.  In this diary, I'll try to provide a look at the road that lies ahead for these cases.

The complaint details a truly horrific event: the premeditated rape and murder of an Iraqi girl, and the murder of her family.  The government has three sworn statements from American servicemen who participated in the conspiracy, including two who were present and were eyewitnesses to the killings.

Details appear below the fold.  They're very intense.