Congress passed a law ten months ago establishing the position of White House nuclear terror czar. But President Bush apparently has bigger priorities than curbing nuclear proliferation, as after nearly a year, the position is still unfilled.

Up in the Pacific Northwest, things just took a turn for the worse for Oregon Republican Mike Erickson, a pro-life candidate for the open seat in Oregon's 5th Congressional District:

Erickson, a Lake Oswego businessman, is the Republican candidate for the 5th Congressional District and is running on a "pro-life" platform. The charge that he provided money to Tawnya nearly derailed his campaign for the May 20 primary and could hobble his chances in the Nov. 4 general election against state Sen. Kurt Schrader, D-Canby.

Turns out the Republicans' spin machine doesn't extend outside our borders.

On Friday, the group, who served with Mr. Kerry in Vietnam, sent a letter to T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oilman who helped finance the 2004 attack advertisements, taking him up on a challenge he issued last November: that he would give $1 million to anyone who could disprove a single charge the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made against Mr. Kerry.

The vets are taking the challenge to him directly. The full New York Times story is here, and in it Mr. Pickens is referenced as saying he is good for the money. I suppose now we'll see if he is as good as his word.

When they're thinking about going to a four day work week out in Lubbock because of gas prices, you know things are getting bad. (And you'll know things are really, really bad when even Dallas County starts considering the same thing.)

Dallasblog has a nice writeup about the state house race in District 102 between Republican incumbent Tony Goolsby and Democratic challenger Carol Kent. Harriet Miller made some serious noise in 102 in the last two cycles, and Dallasblog describes Kent, a school board member in Richardson, as someone who is "attractive, articulate, and should make a good candidate."

The speculation over who would take over Tim Russert's chair on "Meet The Press" was rampant, in our own offices and all over America. NBC News announced today that Tom Brokaw will take over moderating duties starting next Sunday and running through the general elections later this year. This is not a permanent solution, obviously, but for public affairs journalism I feel like NBC does very well with Brokaw, one of the legends of American broadcast journalism's modern era.

Everyone's been wondering who is on Obama's list of vice presidential picks, and today we learned two names: former Georgia senator and foreign policy heavyweight Sam Nunn, and John Edwards.

Ever been concerned with whether your employer's reading your email or text messages? Good news — the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided yesterday that if your employer uses a third party service for email or text messaging (email is commonly run internally, but just about all text messaging is done by third parties), the employer cannot see your messages without your permission even if they are the ones paying for the service.

H.R. 3089, The No More Excuses Energy Act of 2007 authored by Rep. Mac Thornberry, is a Trojan horse offering the minimal amount of pleasantries to appear environmentally friendly, yet is green in terms of the color it will turn the pockets of Big Oil.