Friday Afternoon Miscellany

Happy Friday:

Maine: While Rep. Tom Allen offers decisive leadership, Susan Collins offers political posturing and continued waffling:

Democratic Rep. Tom Allen supports a House resolution to remove U.S. troops from Iraq by year's end, while support is growing in the Senate for a resolution sponsored by Republican Sen. Susan Collins that opposes a surge of troops but does not set a timetable for their withdrawal from Iraq.

Allen wants to do something while Collins wants to look like she's doing something. There is a difference, and Mainers will see that. (Not to mention that Collins is supporting for President the field's most vocal pro-escalation candidate in John McCain...)

South Dakota: Tim Johnson continues to improve:

Sen. Tim Johnson, the South Dakota Democrat who was rushed speechless to a hospital after suffering a brain injury in December, now is initiating conversations with friends and family. He's also reading letters and cards, a sign that his mental sharpness is steadily improving, his doctors say.

"Simply put, he is reading. The test showed that he is comprehending written material and successfully following written commands," Dr. Philip Marion said.

Love to hear the good news!

This doesn't have anything directly to do with the Senate races, but this is the most disgusting thing I've heard from the right-wing Bush allies in a while, and that says something:

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

There's a special section of Hell reserved for these people.