Wikipedia says Sessions won his first election 53-46 (open seat: incumbent Senator Hefflin retired). But that was in 1996, so I don't know how much might have changed in Alabama in the last 21 years.

Yeah, 2014 was an unopposed election. Why? Why bother running as a (D) when you're going to get beat 2:1?

Nixon got 301 EVs, but Humphrey + Wallace handily beat Nixon TN, SC, and NC, states totalling 32 EVs, and states that Nixon got less than 40%. Nixon also lost to H+W by 10 points or more in FL, VA, and KY, states totalling another 35 EVs.

In the 2014 election that you seem so proud of, the D write in got less than 3%. As other elections showed, D support in AL is at least 12X that. Write ins simply do not get a lot of support. Ever.

Murkowski ran for and won a full term in 2004. She ran for a second term in 2010. She lost the Republican Party nomination to Tea Party candidate Joe Miller. She then ran as a write-in candidate and defeated both Miller and Democrat Scott McAdams in the General Election,[1] making her the second U.S. Senator to be elected by write-in vote and the first since Strom Thurmond in 1954.[2] Although Senator Murkowski has won three full terms to the Senate, she has never won a majority of the vote, winning pluralities each time: 48.5% in 2004, 39.5% in 2010 and 44% in 2016.

If there is a concerted write in effort, and if the write in gets more than 25% of the vote, I'll give $100 to the charity of your choice. As an added bonus, if the write in gets more than 25% and Jones does not win, I'll give another $100.

In Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O'Hara is sixteen when the men come a-court'n.

The nice thing about legalization is that, for once on a major divisive topic, we've actually tried it and we can see what the results are.

That's just an obviously pathetic fig leaf to cover up that they don't care about a little kiddie-diddling.

I think they just care more about the seat staying R at any cost.

Which would be a reasonable position to take in a seat that leaned (R), but not in Alabama, where the electoral danger in supporting a write-in vote is negligible. And, if the polling is any indication, may well be less than sticking with Moore.

“Denying Ballot Access: This Committee reserves the right to deny ballot access to a candidate for public office if in a prior election that person was a Republican office holder and either publicly participated in the primary election of another political party or publicly supported a nominee of another political party. The provisions of this Rule shall apply for a period of six years after such person so participated. (This rule does not include all of the reasons for denying ballot access.)”

This latest accuser would have more credibility if she wasn't sitting next to Gloria Allred.

Hell, I haven't smoked dope since 1979 (when that is what we called it). Talk about a Decline.

it may have been negligible in the recent past, but it is not now. Polls show the race as close, and it may get closer as more shoes drop (allegations and condemnations from party leaders). Any non-negligible support for a write in all but assures a Jones victory. What happened in 2014 and 2016 is not relevant now.

This is nuts - 2016 and 2014 are the distant past?

Probably 99% had been around marijuana and probably 99% had used it at least once

The company operating the RT website and television channel has filed paperwork registering with the Justice Department as a foreign agent — a step it had said it would be forced to take to keep operating in the United States.
...
RT disputes the accusation that it is an agent of the Russian government, saying it offers alternatives to mainstream news coverage.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the network and website push relentlessly anti-American propaganda at the behest of the Russian government.

Non-sequitur: this was mentioned somewhere upthread today, but Juliet, in Shakespeare's play, "hath not seen the change of fourteen years" – it is eleven years since she was weaned; she's definitely thirteen

I last lit up on the roof of the Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis

When I was at MIT, we would celebrate the anniversary of J. Edgar's death with a massive pot party on the Great Lawn

Jurors' struggle to reach a unanimous decision could signal a potential mistrial down the line, a fitting coda for a trial with often conflicting, muddled testimony.

The defense team had maintained throughout the case that Menendez and Melgen were longtime friends with no corrupt intent to commit a federal crime, and after hours of testimony and hundreds of exhibits, the prosecutors never produced a smoking gun in the form of a document or phone call outlining an illicit agreement between the two men.

Instead, the case rested largely on circumstantial evidence. Emails and testimony revealed the senator's efforts to encourage State Department officials to favorably resolve a contract dispute Melgen had with the Dominican Republic over cargo scanning equipment, but also showed he was genuinely interested in port security issues. Similarly, witnesses told jurors that Menendez wanted officials in the Obama administration to change Medicare billing policies to help Melgen resolve a multimillion-dollar overbilling dispute, but also learned that he was concerned the drug companies were enjoying a windfall from the current policies.

When WikiLeaks first reached out to Trump Jr. about putintrump.org, for instance, Trump Jr. followed up on his promise to “ask around.” According to a source familiar with the congressional investigations into Russian interference with the 2016 campaign, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, on the same day that Trump Jr. received the first message from WikiLeaks, he emailed other senior officials with the Trump campaign, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, telling them WikiLeaks had made contact. Kushner then forwarded the email to campaign communications staffer Hope Hicks. At no point during the 10-month correspondence does Trump Jr. rebuff WikiLeaks, which had published stolen documents and was already observed to be releasing information that benefited Russian interests.

Great (Killian) Court, not Lawn

Moore supposedly signed her high school yearbook.

There's not that much meat to the article, Vlad.

“Strongly suggest your dad tweets this link if he mentions us,” WikiLeaks went on, pointing Trump Jr. to the link wlsearch.tk, which it said would help Trump’s followers dig through the trove of stolen documents and find stories. “There’s many great stories the press are missing and we’re sure some of your follows [sic] will find it,” WikiLeaks went on. “Btw we just released Podesta Emails Part 4.

To this day, I've never seen anyone I know smoke pot or use any other illegal drugs.

Walk down the street in the Bay Area and you're more likely to smell marijuana than tobacco smoke. No exaggeration.

I was in high school in the late 90's and I smoked pot before I ever drank alcohol because it was much easier to get. I haven't since I was 16, though.

This is Andy Cuomo you're talking about. The next time he cracks a real smile will be his first.

True, but since he's only 59, Trump beats him on that score for career value.

Seems at least reasonably meaty to me. You've got Bannon, Conway, Parscale, Kushner, and Hicks having undeclared knowledge of campaign contact with a known Russian cutout, as well as Donald Sr. tweeting about the release of a new batch of Clinton e-mails ("“Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!”) fifteen minutes after the following exchange between Donald Jr. and Wikileaks:

“Strongly suggest your dad tweets this link if he mentions us,” WikiLeaks went on, pointing Trump Jr. to the link wlsearch.tk, which it said would help Trump’s followers dig through the trove of stolen documents and find stories. “There’s many great stories the press are missing and we’re sure some of your follows [sic] will find it,” WikiLeaks went on. “Btw we just released Podesta Emails Part 4.

And the latest non-denial denial would have more credibility if was actually a denial, rather than all about Allred.

Assume Moore is innocent. How could he defend himself from such allegations in the press?

Gadsden’s current law-enforcement community could not confirm the existence of a mall ban on Moore. But two officers I spoke to this weekend, both of whom asked to remain unnamed, told me that they have long heard stories about Moore and the mall. “The general knowledge at the time when I moved here was that this guy is a lawyer cruising the mall for high-school dates,” one of the officers said. The legal age of consent in Alabama is sixteen, so it would not be illegal there for a man in his early thirties to date a girl who was, say, a senior in high school. But these officers, along with the other people I spoke to, said that Moore’s presence at the mall was regarded as a problem. “I was told by a girl who worked at the mall that he’d been run off from there, from a number of stores. Maybe not legally banned, but run off,” one officer told me. He also said, “I heard from one girl who had to tell the manager of a store at the mall to get Moore to leave her alone.”

a basic \"#### you".

This story is almost exclusively anonymous sources

Ended up getting a bid a few grand above that & accepeted it, but at least I felt ethically in the clear.

I was in high school in the late 90's and I smoked pot before I ever drank alcohol because it was much easier to get. I haven't since I was 16, though.

It's not like Trump doesn't try to smile. It's just that his face is only capable of Lovecraftian expressions of unspeakable horror.

They do help discredit Wikileaks (even more than it already is), but not the Trump campaign.

Plus The New Yorker. Which is now largely the flip side of The American Spectator....

Seems at least reasonably meaty to me. You've got Bannon, Conway, Parscale, Kushner, and Hicks having undeclared knowledge of campaign contact with a known Russian cutout, as well as Donald Sr. tweeting about the release of a new batch of Clinton e-mails ("“Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!”) fifteen minutes after the following exchange between Donald Jr. and Wikileaks:

“Strongly suggest your dad tweets this link if he mentions us,” WikiLeaks went on, pointing Trump Jr. to the link wlsearch.tk, which it said would help Trump’s followers dig through the trove of stolen documents and find stories. “There’s many great stories the press are missing and we’re sure some of your follows [sic] will find it,” WikiLeaks went on. “Btw we just released Podesta Emails Part 4.

You know, I think I'll take Assange as the next guy to get the Weinstein treatment.

The Atlantic just published an interesting piece by Julia Ioffe about communications between Donald Jr. and Wikileaks. One particularly eyebrow-raising quote:

When WikiLeaks first reached out to Trump Jr. about putintrump.org, for instance, Trump Jr. followed up on his promise to “ask around.” According to a source familiar with the congressional investigations into Russian interference with the 2016 campaign, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, on the same day that Trump Jr. received the first message from WikiLeaks, he emailed other senior officials with the Trump campaign, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, telling them WikiLeaks had made contact. Kushner then forwarded the email to campaign communications staffer Hope Hicks. At no point during the 10-month correspondence does Trump Jr. rebuff WikiLeaks, which had published stolen documents and was already observed to be releasing information that benefited Russian interests.

I'm willing to believe the guy was a creep. To this day, he looks like a creep and acts like one, too. But I hate a politcal smear job. Always have. Publicly defended Clinton against impeachment in an op-ed.

Lol. This story is absolves Trump more than it implicates him. All of this reaching out from WikiLeaks produced almost no back and forth.

Lol. This story is absolves Trump more than it implicates him. All of this reaching out from WikiLeaks produced almost no back and forth.

It smells like a setup, actually.

Apparently you have trouble reading. I'll type slower.

The fundies always claimed that allowing gay people to marry would normalize pedophilia. Well, it seems like they were right!

It smells like a setup, actually.

If a 32 year old molested you when you were 14 you'd remember it vividly until your dying day.

Sheet, little Putin Puppet Assange has been on blast for rape charges far before this latest news cycle.

That piece was shite. I question not your literacy, but that people bother to read the links posted here at all. Twitter is so much quicker.

This really does not speak well of Alabama's press.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) said Monday that he will still back GOP candidate Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate special election because Moore will “vote right” in the Senate.

“There are major issues facing the United States of America, deficit and debt that can lead to insolvency and bankruptcy, funding for national security, border security, abortion, appointment of Supreme Court justices — Doug Jones will vote wrong on each of those issues, Roy Moore will vote right on each of those issues,” Brooks said in a statement Monday.

“That’s why I am voting for Roy Moore.”

When we first moved here we found a great house. I offered to pay the list and they said no. I was livid and actually talked to a lawyer who kindly informed me that this is A) not illegal and B) standard in these parts, and he didn't even bill me for the conversation. I've been here 17 years so I'm used to it by now but I still dislike it. When we sold our first house here I insisted on listing at a price we would accept. The agent thought I was naive but I wouldn't budge. Ended up getting a bid a few grand above that & accepeted it, but at least I felt ethically in the clear.

Yes, I'm guessing those two charges are just the beginning. The times have changed, and Ecuador may start to question their decision.

I don't understand. What did you think would be illegal, or unethical, about it?

Last week my wife asked me if I'd want to smoke if/when pot is legalized and I said no. A few years back she had, after an abstinence of about 30 years, decided to get some weed. The next summer we finally got around to using it. And I found that it still made the muscles in my neck and upper back tense up in a really uncomfortable fashion. So whatever the rest of you do, I likely won't be re-enacting my misspent youth once the reefer is legally available.