Ted Stevens' conviction on all charges has the salutary effect of putting us one seat closer to filibuster-proof control of the Senate.

Harris County saw nearly 40,000 registered voters vote on the first day of early voting — and then saw that number go up for both Tuesday and Wednesday. Dallas County saw the early voting numbers hit 10% of all registered voters by the end of Wednesday. Which is apparently typical — the Secretary of State reports that over 10% of registered voters in the state of Texas had voted in person or by mail by Wednesday evening. At this rate, we'll have hit 40% turnout by the time early voting ends.

I know, I know, that's not particularly likely — but wouldn't it be nice?

Sarah Palin isn't the only one making rash, insulting claims about the patriotism of her fellow Americans. Some of her fellow Republicans have followed her lead, blatantly vilifying their Democratic opponents and any American who supports them.

In a blow to McCain's attempts to capture the moderate center — attempts which were made largely futile by the selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate — General Colin Powell announced that he would be endorsing Senator Barack Obama this morning on Meet The Press.

Senator McCain spent a lot of time in yesterday's debate talking about Joe the Plumber when it came to his economic plan. It took the online community less than a day to figure out the Joe the Plumber's not a plumber — among many other things.

In yesterday's presidential debate, McCain expressed offense at statements by Congressman John Lewis, who has accused the McCain campaign of "sowing the seeds of hatred and division" in their campaign rallies where supporters have yelled out things like "Terrorist!" and "Kill him!" and various racial epithets which we won't repeat here without so much as a comment of their impropriety from McCain and Palin. In voicing his offense, McCain had the hubris to ignore his silence in these occasions and state that he has repudiated all such slanders against Senator Obama.

New York Times columnist Frank Rich writes a scathing column illuminating the soft racism that McCain's campaign has been quietly encouraging.

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! This is your friendly Contributing Editor waiting to accompany you through the third and final Presidential debate of the 2008 campaign. Tonight's debate at Hofstra University in New York will set the final stage for the last two-plus weeks of the 2008 Presidential campaign.

Don't expect Senator John McCain to show up for the last debate of this year's presidential campaign, to be held tonight at 8pm Central time in Hempstead, New York, with the sort of negative attacks that we've been seeing from his campaign both in TV ads and personally from the Senator and his running mate. Recent polling has shown that McCain's attacks have backfired, hurting him far more than they have Senator Obama. Considering how much the McCain campaign has been trying to "play to the crowd" lately with gimmicky rescue plans and gimmicky vice presidential picks, it seems likely that he'll respond to the poll by scaling back those attacks.

It's a common adage in political campaigning that all other things being equal, the guy that works the hardest is going to win. With that in mind, I submit to you a story from today's Wall Street Journal noting that Obama's campaign has made nearly twice as many appearances in battleground states as McCain's has.

One of the surprises that came out of Tuesday's debate was a new plan by Arizona Senator John McCain to renegotiate all mortgages at current market value. The plan was greeted with general puzzlement, and now that puzzlement is turning into outright disapproval.