The Associated Press reports that Muslims could prove key in choosing our next president:

Muslims in New Jersey and across the country say they support the president on moral issues like abortion and gay marriage, but strongly favor Kerry because they oppose the war in Iraq and feel he'll end it sooner than Bush will. They also support Kerry because they think he has a stronger commitment to civil rights in the United States.

In an election that could once again be razor-close, the support of Muslims - whose estimated numbers nationwide range from 1.2 million to 7 million - could be crucial. The Bush and Kerry campaigns have courted Muslim voters, particularly in swing states like Ohio and Florida, as well as Michigan, which has the nation's largest Arab-American population.

"I can't see how any self-respecting American - forget about Arab-American or Muslim - can vote for President Bush, unless you're a total kook," said Hani Awadallah, president of the Arab-American Civic Organization.

Of all people who may not vote for Bush, former Congressman Bob Barr? Check out his latest article:

Now we have the election of 2004. For the first time in my voting life, the choice in the race for president isn't so clear And, among true conservatives, I'm not alone.

...the concerns for many conservative voters -- concerns that may cause them not to vote for Mr. Bush on Nov. 2 -- fall generally into three categories: fiscal, physical (as in the physical security of our nation) and freedom (as in protecting our civil liberties).

Link via Matthew Gross.

Judith Miller and Eric Lipton detail the Duelfer report that shows how American oil companies and a Texas invester profited under the U.N.'s oil for food program while Saddam was in power.The 918 page report was prepared by Charles Duelfer, the chief arms inspector for the Central Intelligence Agency.

Judith Miller, by the way, is the NY Times reporter who was held in contempt last week for refusing to reveal her sources in the Valerie Plame investigation. I've seen a lot of oblique references on the web as to who her source might be, but no names. Is anyone willing to take an educated guess?

Back to oil...For those starting on this subject from scratch (as I am), here's Miller and Lipton's decription of the Food for Oil program:

From Saturday's New York Times editorial :

And the president was utterly incoherent when asked about whom he might name to the Supreme Court in a second term. His comment about how he didn't want to offend any judges because he wanted "them all voting for me" was a joke - but an unfortunate one, given the fact that the president owes his job to a Supreme Court vote.

Mr. Kerry demonstrated, at the very minimum, a stature that was equal to the president's. If Mr. Bush was hoping to recover all the ground he lost last week, he failed in his mission.

The president seemed to fall back frequently on name-calling, denouncing his opponent as a liberal and a tool of the trial lawyers. "The president's just trying to scare," Mr. Kerry said. It will be another few weeks before we see how well that works.

Going back to the first debate, Frank Rich, writing in Sunday's New York Times, sees the first Bush-Kerry debate as rupturing Bush's hold--and he blames James Baker.

The U.S. Civil Rights Commission has completed a report on civil rights under the Bush Administration. It is unflattering to Bush. The Commission has voted to delay release of the report until after the election. But, it's up on their website. From the Times article:

The report says Mr. Bush "has neither exhibited leadership on pressing civil rights issues, nor taken actions that matched his words" on the subject. It finds fault with Mr. Bush's funding requests for civil rights enforcement; his positions on voting rights, educational opportunity and affirmative action; and his actions against hate crimes.

It did have one nice thing to say about him:

Mr. Bush is committed to help people with disabilities and praised him for "a commendably diverse cabinet and moderately diverse judiciary."

Diverse judiciary? Guess they don't mean diversity in judicial philosophy.

The full report is here (pdf).

Karzai's Opponents are claiming fraud in today's Afghan elections.

Afghans packed polling stations on Saturday for a historic presidential election that was blemished when all 15 candidates opposing U.S.-backed interim President Hamid Karzai withdrew, charging the government and the U.N. with fraud and incompetence.

In the end, faulty ink - not Taliban bombs and bullets - threatened three years of painstaking progress toward democracy. The opposition candidates claimed the ink used to mark people's thumbs rubbed off too easily, allowing for mass deception.

Electoral officials rejected opposition demands that voting be stopped at midday, saying it would rob millions of people of their first chance to directly decide their leader, and the joint U.N.-Afghan panel overseeing the election would rule later on the vote's legitimacy.

Things got violent after the voting:

Sinclair is a conservative broadcasting group that owns 62 television stations across the country, many in swing states. The stations reach 25 % of the American viewing public. The Los Angeles Times reports the company has ordered its stations to air an Anti-Kerry Film on the eve of the election. Regular programming will be pre-empted.

Sinclair has told its stations — many of them in political swing states such as Ohio and Florida — to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," sources said. The film, funded by Pennsylvania veterans and produced by a veteran and former Washington Times reporter, features former POWs accusing Kerry — a decorated Navy veteran turned war protester — of worsening their ordeal by prolonging the war. Sinclair will preempt regular prime-time programming from the networks to show the film, which may be classified as news programming, according to TV executives familiar with the plan.

...It's not the American way for powerful corporations to strong-arm local broadcasters to air lies promoting a political agenda," said David Wade, a spokesman for the Democratic nominee's campaign. "It's beyond yellow journalism; it's a smear bankrolled by Republican money, and I don't think Americans will stand for it."

Viewers who get Sinclair channels should lodge a protest of this attempt by Republican supporters to hijack the vote. These stations are on network tv, not cable, and their reach is huge. Republican efforts to justify the airing by pointing out plans of Michael Moore and Sundance to air parts of Fahrenheit 9/11 are inapt because Moore and Sundance are not in the same league as Sinclair, and because cable isn't subject to the same FCC rules.

In her book "Bushworld," New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd gives President Bush the name "Furious George" .

Dowd uses effortless irony in support of positive discrimination, suggests 'Furious George', as she calls Bush II, thinks social security is a dating service, and writes of the war in Iraq: 'This administration is the opposite of the movie The Sixth Sense. They don't see any dead people.'

Dowd is positively kind to Bush compared with Alexandra Wilson's portrayal of "Dangerous Dick" (Cheney) in the U.K.'s Mirror. It's about the ugliest description of a politician I've seen. The picture of the bloody child in the middle of the article is definitely over-the-top. But, she lists 20 "facts" about Cheney--does anyone know how many are true?

New York Magazine tracked down Vietnam war records of several of the state's high profile politicians.

Our favorite: Rudy Giuliani. Got a "special deferment" for clerking for a federal judge.

Others:

• Governor Pataki: 4F for poor eyesight
• Mayor Bloomberg: 4F for flat feet
• Sen. Schumer: Says he got a high draft lottery number, was never called.
• Al Sharpton: One year too young for the draft lottery.

Across the river, New Jersey Democratic Senator John Corzine served six years in the U.S. Marine Reserves.

by TChris

The City Museum of Washington decided that a nude President Bush and other works of political art were inconsistent with its mission. The exhibit, entitled "Funky Furniture," was intended to showcase the museum as "the city's livingroom." The museum's board apparently had a cozier room in mind.

Kayti Didriksen, a local artist, decided to paint President Bush and Vice President Cheney in the well-known style of Manet's "Olympia." Bush is nude and reclining on a chaise longue, and Cheney, in a suit and tie, is holding a velvet pillow with a crown topped by an oil rig.

The painting is here for those who have strong stomachs. The local artists are hoping to find a friendlier venue for their work.

by TChris

After a court rejected the Bush administration's frivolous attempts to keep information about its "no fly" list secret, the TSA and FBI released records in response to an ACLU lawsuit on behalf of peace activists who suspect that they were included on the list because they exercised their right to political expression. The documents confirm that large numbers of innocent travelers are inconvenienced because their names are similar to the ten or twenty thousand names on the list.

[T]he phonetic coding systems tend to ensnare people who have similar-sounding names, even though a human being could tell the difference. Earlier this month, for example, Rep. Donald E. Young (R-Alaska), said he was flagged on the "watch list" when the airline computer system mistook him for a man on the list named Donald Lee Young.

Senator Kennedy had the same problem. At one point, airlines were stopping thirty passengers a day who had names that were similar to a terror suspect's.

A new Reuters/Gallup poll taken just before the debate has Kerry ahead by one point:

Kerry pulled ahead of Bush 46-45 percent in the latest three-day tracking poll, which concluded before the start of Friday night's televised debate between the two contenders in St. Louis, Missouri.

The two had been in a statistical dead heat in the previous poll, with Bush leading by less than one percentage point.

I expect the post-debate polls to give him a further lead. If you see any new results from scientific polls start coming in, let us know in the comments.