Gruesome new details just out from the AP on the crash that killed Ted Stevens:
A doctor and two EMTs hiked to the scene Monday evening and tended to the survivors’ broken bones, cuts and bruises during a cold and frightening night on the mountain with the pungent odor of jet fuel wafting through the air.
A 13-year-old boy survived but had to spend the night near his dead father and the senator. A mother and her 16-year-old daughter died. Former NASA chief Sean O’Keefe survived along with his teenage son.
Former Rep. Nathan Deal has a lead of fewer than 2,500 votes over Karen Handel in that GOP runoff for governor in Georgia. That’s with 99% of precincts reporting. Deal has 50.2% to Handel’s 49.8%.
Late Update: TPM Reader KE reports in from the field:
Handel’s closing in on Deal because she’s stronger in the big suburban and urban counties, mainly Fulton (Atlanta), which is where she was the county commission chairwoman. And those counties returns tend to come in later, here in Ga.
But, if Deal does hang on, I’d add his victory to your good-night-for-Dems narrative. Deal’s saddled with ethical issues, and likely not to be as popular in the ‘burbs — a much better candidate for former Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes to face off against in his comeback attempt.
Later Update: This one will go to tomorrow at least. Deal isn’t declaring victory, and Handel isn’t conceding defeat. Remember, this is the runoff, so it’s already the second time they’ve had at it.
Tea Party favorite Ken Buck has won the Republican Senate nomination in Colorado. He’ll face Sen. Michael Bennet in November. The TPM Poll Average gives Buck a lead of 45.6%-43.2% over Bennet.
Newt’s second wife kisses and tells Esquire. If you needed more evidence that he’s a cad …
We’ll have more on this later today, but the takeaway from the GOP primaries last night in Colorado is that The Crazy is alive and well and on the loose.
In the gubernatorial primary, tea party fave Dan Maes — the guy who thinks a Denver bicycle program is a UN conspiracy — barely edged out establishment GOPer Scott McInnis, who had his own set of problems. (In the end it may not matter who won, since former Rep. Tom Tancredo’s third party run appears likely to throw the race to the Democrat, Denver Major John Hickenlooper.)
In the Senate race, the Republicans went with another tea partier as their nominee to take on vulnerable Democrat Michael Bennet. Ken Buck knocked off Jane Norton, the more mainstream GOPer.
Let the general election begin!
The Democratic primary for governor is unresolved still this morning. Former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton has a 1 percentage point lead — about 5,000 votes — over party-endorsed state House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher. He’s not declaring victory, and she’s not conceding. At least not yet.
It’s looking more and more like both parties are heading toward a test-case showdown in November that neither side particularly wants. Begin with the near-universally conceded premise that November is going to be a very bad month for Dems — dispirit and poor motivation on the Democratic side, matched with intense motivation on the Republican side. And, even if the motivation factor is removed from the equation, public opinion is just in a very different place than it was in the Fall of 2008. Republicans seem intent in every case on putting to the test just how good an environment this is going to be. Is it going to be so good that candidates who in virtually any other cycle would be unelectable can still get elected this year? Read More
Maddow, on theory-of-relativity-debunking, global-warming-denying, evolution-refusing conservatives: “The war on brains is still being waged every day.” Watch.
See also, Tom Tomorrow (via Krugman).
Jon Stewart reviews Muslim plans to desecrate Ground Zero with ubiquitous Halal falafel carts. Watch it.
TPM Reader PB finds the The Crazy “profoundly disturbing”:
I understand there is a strong temptation to look at primary victories by extreme candidates like Dan Maes as “good for Democrats.” As a strong Democratic partisan I also see them that way. And with Tancredo (another crazy person) in the race, I understand Maes’ chances of winning the gubernatorial are slim to none. On the other hand, I find it disturbing that someone like Maes was able to win the primary of a major political party. As a Democrat, I want to say “see look the Republicans have gone crazy.” But as an American I find the trend toward conspiracy theories and paranoia (on both the right and the left) profoundly disturbing.