Below The Beltway

John McCain continues to show surprising strength in head-to-head matchups against both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but now there’s evidence that he may be able to do something no Republican Presidential candidate has done in 20 years, win in traditionally Democratic states:
John McCain holds statistically insignificant leads over both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama […]

A year from now, all the excitement will be about the first game at the new ballpark, but, today, there’s some bit of melancholy over the fact that today marks the last opening day at one of baseball’s great ballparks:
NEW YORK — The Yankees opened their new stadium in the Bronx on April 18, 1923, […]

Susan Estrich deconstructs Joe Klein’s ridiculous scenario:
First of all, there are no “elders” in the Democratic Party, at least none who control 100 or more votes. Nancy Pelosi doesn’t control that many votes, not on a vote for the Democratic nomination for president. Neither does Harry Reid. Certainly not Howard Dean. There are no machines, […]

Prompted apparently by a pair of articles in the Bristol Herald-Courier, here and here, several of my fellow Virginia bloggers have posts today about the pros and cons of the way that state-level, and especially trial court, judges are selected and appointed in Virginia.
Virginia is virtually unique in the United States in that is judicial […]

Just in case we’ve forgotten about them, the North Koreans are back to making insane threats again:
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea continued Sunday to lash out at the new conservative government in Seoul, threatening to reduce the South to “ashes” if the South Korean government made the “slightest move” to attack.
The warning, one of […]

The Washington Nationals couldn’t have asked for a better way to open the new stadium:
No grass was ever greener than the Kentucky blue that spread out across the field at dazzling new Nationals Park last night. No popcorn ever smelled so delicious. No beer ever tasted so refreshing, no hot dog so juicy. The senses […]

Hillary Clinton, who yesterday vowed to stay in the race for the Democratic nomination until the bitter end, is apparently engaging in a deliberate strategy of not paying her bills:
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s cash-strapped presidential campaign has been putting off paying hundreds of bills for months — freeing up cash for critical media buys, but also […]

Germany’s Prime Minister became the first world leader to announce a boycott of the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics:
The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, yesterday became the first world leader to decide not to attend the Olympics in Beijing.
As pressure built for concerted western protests to China over the crackdown in Tibet, EU leaders prepared […]

James Carville writes about the reaction to his comparison of Bill Richardson to Judas Iscariot:
When asked on Good Friday about Richardson’s rejection of the Clintons, the metaphor was too good to pass by. I compared Richardson to Judas Iscariot. (And Matthew Dowd is right: Had it been the Fourth of July, I probably would have […]

Two mathematicians have calculated the odds behind Joe DiMaggio’s still-unbeaten after 66 years 56 game hitting streak:
WITH the baseball season under way and the memory of scandal in the sport so fresh, many fans yearn for an earlier era, a time when mythology mingled with baseball. The sport’s most mythic achievement is Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game […]