Michael Burke has some point, it's virtually certain that some voters did indeed choose not to vote for either Jennings or Buchanan. The problem with his hypothesis is that the number of undervotes would mean that the proportion of voters deciding not to vote in that particular race in Sarasota is approximately five times that of the like proportion in neighboring areas in the district.

Now, I'm not a statistician, so I can't give you the odds on this happening, but I would guess it's pretty unlikely (on the same order of unlikely as my as hitting the lottery in each of the 52 weeks in a year in a row). I do, however, have almost 20 years experience in developing software, much of it in the area of human interfaces, and I have no difficulty believing that a software error could cause this problem. This doesn't require any grand, partisan conspiracy, normal errors would be sufficient. That doesn't rule out the conspiracy, of course, but I try not to attribute evil design to something stupidity is sufficient to explain.

Here we have another example of the Bushites creating their own "reality". Unfortunately, the only person I can think of who could do justice to the Bush "reality" is the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, with illustrations by Hieronymus Bosch.

From the American Heritage Dictionary:

civil war

n.

1. A war between factions or regions of the same country.

Seems to have the situation covered.

Of course Sonny and crew will use incredible verbal gymnastics and will not ever refer to this as a "civil war" until the two sides actually wear blue and grey.

I'll bet every time Gingrich opens his mouth somebody, somewhere goes over the edge and joins a terrorist organization (defined by Newt and his cronies as any political organization that uses a donkey as its symbol). So, as I'm willing to be accommodating, I suggest legislation be passed banning Gingrich from flapping his lips, except to ask somebody to pass the salt.

The truly scary thing is that if Gingrich is willing to say this in public, you know it's more than just a trial balloon. He is nothing, if not an astute politician. OK, so he had to fall on his sword back in '98, but I imagine he learned from it.

He's pretty mainstream Republican, so what are they planning for after their '08 comeback that they aren't willing to speak so openly about? I'm not usually one to be paranoid, but having tasted power, just how far are these guys willing to go to hang on to what they've got left and to get the rest back? I won't hold my breath waiting for other leading lights of the GOP, or their mouthpieces at FOX to set Gingrich straight.

I'm not Christian, I'm not Jewish, I'm not Moslem, Zoroastrian, Baha'i, Hindu, Jain, or anything else that Donovan may have sung about. I'm not even an atheist for that matter, and I try to pretty much ignore Christmas. Not the easiest thing to do. And I do manage not to piss and moan about it. If someone says "Merry Christmas" to me I smile and accept it in the spirit that it was offered. I mean if Christians want to pretend for a few weeks a year that they actually believe what they preach, I'm OK with it. It would probably be a nicer world if the pretended that they believed it for a bit longer. But, as a buy-buy holiday it wears a bit thin after awhile. If Keillor thinks that cash has nothing to do with Christmas, he's delusional.

Being told to "get a life" is just insulting. So Garrison, please take your Currier and Ives fantasy into some quiet corner and play with it by yourself for awhile, will you?

No BS, I just read that Gingrich made his comments

"at the annual Nackey S. Loeb First Amendment award dinner, which fetes people and organizations that stand up for freedom of speech."

The late Nackey and her equally defunct hubby used to own the Manchester Union Leader. For those of you who aren't familiar, they made William Buckley look like a screamin' socialist by comparison.

Who says irony is dead? You can't make this sort of stuff up!

Lordy Connonym, I certainly hope not, because that would imply the Junior could run again, as he was only elected once. I shudder to think.

I so hope that Sen. Clinton decides to sit this one out. I expect that if she decides to run, she will suck all the money out of any room she enters and will be the nominee-by-acclamation, the one anointed by the Dem powers that be. And I would so much rather vote for Al Gore, or a Dem to be named later than have to vote against the Republican - again.