NYTimes: Democratic Minnesota Senator Wellstone Is Among 8 Dead in Plane Crash

USNewsWR: Bush whacked
Democrats think they can beat the president's brother in Florida
The governor finds himself holding on to just a 3- to 6-point lead against a relatively unknown Tampa lawyer two weeks before Election Day, primarily because Florida is being transformed from Republican-leaner to bona fide swing state. Democrats lead Republicans in voter registration by 43 percent to 39 percent


UPI: Texas early voting setting records

Early voting in 15 of Texas' most populous counties is double the rate it was four years ago in the last off-year election and a political observer said Thursday it may favor Democrats if they can maintain the momentum through Election Day.


Reuters: Democrat Senator Wellstone Finds Anti-War Vote Does Not Hurt

The latest polls show Wellstone ahead of Coleman by around 6 percentage points, a week and a half before the election. If anything, his lead has widened slightly since the vote. The battle may play a crucial part in deciding whether Democrats can retain control of the Senate.


NYTimes: U.S. May Ask Court to Dismiss a $1 Trillion Suit Linking Saudis to Al Qaeda and 9/11

The suit seeks $1 trillion in damages and is being pursued here by nearly 3,000 of the relatives.

American officials insist they know of no evidence to support the suit's principle accusations, including its charge that Prince Sultan "publicly supported and funded several Islamic charities that were sponsoring Osama bin Laden."

Nor, the Americans say, do they know of any support for the suit's charge that Prince Turki negotiated a deal with Al Qaeda in 1998 in which the terror network agreed to end its efforts to subvert the Saudi monarchy in exchange for a Saudi promise not to demand the extradition of Qaeda leaders.


NYTimes: Dead Parrot Society By PAUL KRUGMAN

I was reminded of Monty Python's parrot: he's pushing up the daisies, his metabolic processes are history, he's joined the choir invisible. That is, he's dead. And the Bush administration lies a lot.

Let me hasten to say that I don't blame reporters for not quite putting it that way. Mr. Milbank is a brave man, and is paying the usual price for his courage: he is now the target of a White House smear campaign.

That standard response may help you understand how Mr. Bush retains a public image as a plain-spoken man, when in fact he is as slippery and evasive as any politician in memory.

Mr. Bush ran as a moderate, a "uniter, not a divider." The Economist endorsed him back in 2000 because it saw him as the candidate better able to transcend partisanship; now the magazine describes him as the "partisan-in-chief."

For the Bush administration is an extremely elitist clique trying to maintain a populist facade. Its domestic policies are designed to benefit a very small number of people — basically those who earn at least $300,000 a year, and really don't care about either the environment or their less fortunate compatriots. True, this base is augmented by some powerful special-interest groups, notably the Christian right and the gun lobby. But while this coalition can raise vast sums, and can mobilize operatives to stage bourgeois riots when needed, the policies themselves are inherently unpopular. Hence the need to reshape those malleable facts.


NYTimes: One Seat Shy of Control, Lott Battles for Senate

Democrats say Mr. Lott's pitch to have Republicans consolidate control of government can help them energize their voters as well.
"That frightens people," said Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, adding that Americans like divided government.

Referring to the prospect of Republican control of Congress, Tovah Ravitz-Meehan, spokeswoman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said, "Nothing makes our base get out and work harder and longer." She said much of Mr. Lott's campaigning lately had been confined to the Southern tier of states because his style of conservatism might not play so well elsewhere.