November 6, 2006 [LINK / comment]

Stark raving idiots harrass Allen

I wasn't able to attend Allen's brief visit at the Shenandoah Valley Regional Airport on Saturday, and it seems I missed quite a circus instigated by Michael Stark. He is the U.Va. law student and ex-Marine who was manhandled by Allen supporters after pushing people out of the way to shout an impertinent question at George Allen during a campaign stop in Charlottesville last week. I found it laughable that he thought the First Amendment's right to petition the government applied to his rude queries about Allen's first marriage. Chris Green has a confusing video clip of yesterday's close encounter, during which Stark was arrested by sheriff's deputies. Stark was purportedly working as a reporter for The Young Turks, an affiliate of Al Franken's (bankrupt) Air America radio network. He also runs a blog with the ironic name Calling all wingnuts. It is basically a "how-to" manual for all the "seminar callers" who call Rush Limbaugh and other conservative talk radio hosts. He does, however, provide a useful link to a list of live talk-radio Webcasts: streamingradioguide.com

UPDATE: Steve Kijak was at the airport rally as well, and has a thorough first-hand account of Michael Stark's rude, provocative behavior, along with some photos.

At a campaign stop at the Vienna Metro station this morning, meanwhile, George Allen was trying to talk to a Channel 9 TV reporter, but his words were drowned out by rude and noisy pro-Webb protesters. How typical.

As the campaign closes, most polls seem to indicate the Dems' apparent edge over the Republicans is narrowing, for whatever that's worth. One big exception is WUSA TV-9 in Washington, which released a poll showing that Jim Webb has a 52-44 percent lead over George Allen. That's called going out on a limb! In the Maryland Senate race, Michael Steele is within a hair's breadth of overtaking Ben Cardin, which would be tremendously gratifying. I'll be crossing my finger hoping that former Pittsburgh Steeler Lynn Swann gets elected as Pennsylvania's next governor.

Allen blacked out

I was getting ready to watch George Allen's final televised message at 7:58 this evening, but the only station it was on in this area was blacked out because of some kind of FCC regulation aimed at protecting small TV stations. Several months ago, Harrisonburg's WHSV-TV3 managed to have rival ABC affiliate WRIC-TV8 in Richmond blacked out from the Adelphia cable service whenever their programming is duplicated. (We get three NBC stations, two CBS stations, and supposedly two ABC stations.) Basically, the only time we get Channel 8 is during the local news programs. Someone's head should roll for this omission.

Count every vote! (over and over)

As we might expect, some Democrats have already launched a preemptive attack on the validity of the 2006 elections. Michelle Malkin provides a quick summary of some of the shenanigans being cooked up. Hat tip to Michael Oliver, a.k.a. : Dogwood Pundit." For you folks in Rio Linda, the Dogwood is our state tree ! Michael commented favorably on George Will's piece on the 2008 GOP presidential race which I discussed on Wednesday.

Malkin's piece reminds me of the massive demonstrations by immigrants rights groups last summer, one of the main purposes of which was to get people to register to vote. The problem, of course, is that many if not most of those people are not even here legally. Are voter registrars bothering to scrutinize drivers' licenses, or are they afraid of being tagged as "racists"? We already know there are many thousands of counterfeit ID cards in use across the country. I think casting a vote using fraudulent identification should be grounds for immediate deportation. gopusa.com reports that Republicans plan to aggressively monitor voting in Maryland, but that does not seem to be the case here in Virginia. I should know, I asked...

Unity Petition

High school students will be passing a "Unity Petition" at voting places all across the country (hat tip to Connie):

To the Congress of the United States: As We the People vote today, we are asking you to do your part and end the blame-game politics of Washington. Partisan bickering cannot solve the crucial issues we face. America deserves better.

It's a nice sentiment, but it's too vague of a commitment to uphold or be enforced.