Election predictions abound. We've read several. These are the ones we think might be closest to the actual results. First up is Jason Rylander on the House and Senate races.

Senate -- Democrats 51-48-1
House -- Republicans 219-215-1

Here is Jason's reasoning:

"As for the Senate, here's how I see it coming out. The Democrats will pick up Arkansas and New Hampshire, while maintaining seats in Georgia, South Dakota, Iowa, New Jersey, and Louisiana. The GOP will pick up Missouri, while maintaining South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. That would give the Dems a one seat pick-up, but there's more: The two wild card races are Minnesota and Colorado. I really think these two are too close to call. Odds are good these races will split, but the question is how. Although this may buck the conventional wisdom, I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that Minnesota will go GOP and Colorado will go to the Democrats."

Second is Matt Yglesias: "Democrats pick up New Hampshire, Colorado, and Arkansas in the Senate but lose Missouri, going up 52-47-1. When Chafee sees that the GOP's not getting it's majority back he switches, either to the Democrats or, like Jeffords, becomes an "independent." (Posted in Daily Kos' comment section to this post.

Next is Daily Kos, who lists his predictions a little further down in the comments section of the same post:

Senate: Total: 54D-45R-1I, +4D

Arkansas: Pryor (+D)
Colorado: Strickland (+D)
Georgia: Cleland
Iowa: Harkin
Minnesota: Mondale
Missouri: Talent (+R)
New Hampshire: Shaheen (+D)
New Jersey: Lautenberg
North Carolina: Bowles (+D)
South Carolina: Graham
South Dakota: Johnson
Tennessee: Alexander
Texas: Kirk (+D)

Governor Total: 32D-18R, +11D

Alabama: Riley (+R)
Alaska: Ulmer
Arizona: Napolitano (+D)
Arkansas: Fisher (+D)
California: Davis
Florida: Bush
Hawaii: Hirono
Illinois: Blagojevich (+D)
Iowa: Vilseck
Kansas: Sebelius (+D)
Maine: Baldacci (+D)
Maryland: Townsend
Massachusetts: O'Brien (+D)
Michigan: Granholm (+D)
Minnesota: Moe (+D)
New Hampshire: Benson (+R)
New Mexico: Richardson (+D)
Oklahoma: Largent
Oregon: Kulongoski
Penn: Rendell (+D)
Rhode Island: York (+D)
South Carolina: Sanford (+R)
Tennessee: Bredesen (+D)
Texas: Perry
Vermont: Racine
Wisconsin: Doyle (+D)
Wyoming: Freudenthal (+D)

As for MyDD, who ran a contest on election results, his predictions, as well as those of the contest entrants, are here:

218-216-1 DEM 53-46-1 DEM 29-21-0 DEM

His reasons are here, here and here.

For live blogger coverage of the elections, we highly recommend Atrios/Eschaton and Daily Kos who both report they will be on duty. If MyDD or Political Wire are online, we recommend them too.

Here are the key races for crime issues according to The Justice Coalition. The urls are next to or under the names rather than embedded blog style because it came via email and we don't have the time to retype it.

Please note: the candidates with bolded names are our choice. The Justice Project did not make recommendations.

Here's the email:

"Following are the candidates in some key elections from across the country, the winners of which can make significant impacts on the death penalty at both the state and federal levels. Please take a moment to research your candidates' positions on the issues and vote! This is certainly not a comprehensive list, and only those statewide candidates with web pages have been listed. Write-in candidates have also been excluded. Among the many places to get information on all the national campaigns is Politics1.com and the Moratorium Campaign's excellent compilation on their website as well.

Governor Florida

Jeb Bush (incumbent, R) http://www.myflorida.com/b_eog/owa/b_eog_www.html.main_page

Bob Kunst (I)
http://www.kunstforgov.com/

Bill McBride (D)
http://www.mcbride2002.com/

Governor Idaho

Jeff Brady (D)
http://www.bradyforidaho.com/

Dirk Kempthorne (incumbent, R)
http://www2.state.id.us/gov/index.htm

Governor Maryland

Bob Ehrlich ®
http://www.bobehrlich.org/intro.html

Spear Lancaster (L)
http://www.spear2002.com/

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend (D)
http://www.friendsofkathleen.com/

Governor, Texas

Rahul Mahanjan (G)
http://www.rahulmahajan.com/

Rick Perry (incumbent, R)
http://www.rickperry.org/

Tony Sanchez (D)
http://www.tonysanchez.com/default.php

US Senate, New Jersey

Doug Forrester ®
http://www.forrester2002.com/

Ted Glick (G)
http://www.glickforsenate.org/

Frank Lautenberg (D)
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/templ/display.cfm?id=178&dis=3

Elizabeth Macron (L)
http://www.macron4senate.com/

Greg Pason (S)
http://www.votepason.org/

US Senate, South Carolina

Lindsey Graham ®
http://www.lindseygraham.com/

Victor Kocher (L)
http://www.votekocher.com/

Alex Sanders (D)
http://www.sanders2002.com/

US Senate, Minnesota

Norm Coleman ®
http://www.colemanforsenate.com/

Walter Mondale (DFL)
http://www.fritzmondale.org/

Miro Drago Kovatchevich (Constitution)
http://www.manidest.com/

Jim More (IP)
http://www.mooreforsenate.org/

Ray Tricomo (G)
http://www.raytricomo.org/

US Senate, Missouri

Jean Carnahan (incumbent, D)
http://www.jeancarnahan.com/

Tamara Millay (L)
http://www.tamaramillay.org/

Daniel "Digger" Romano (G)
http://www.mogreens.org/romano.htm

Jim Talent ®
http://www.talentforsenate.com/

You can register to vote and find out more about the candidates through an interactive map on the Justice Project's website.

We like the Moratorium Campaign's list of key races. It has snippets on the various candidates' positions.

Wayne Allard has an abysmal voting record on crime and civil liberties issues. You can check it out at Wayne Allard on the Issues. Allard

The Washington Post reports that senior officials are now saying the U.S. may let Virginia try the two sniper suspects first. A second option is letting Maryland go first. The reason is Ashcroft's "fervent" support for the death penalty.

In Virginia, both suspects are eligible for the death penalty. In Maryland and in federal courts, 17 year olds cannot be put to death.

We think deciding where to prosecute by the likelihood of the success of the death penalty is wrong and makes us look barbaric. The assignment should be made on the basis of which jurisdiction has the best evidence against the pair and was the most affected by the case. In addition, it's unseemly to be talking as if death is a foregone conclusion. Doesn't anyone remember that the two defendants have not yet had a trial or been found guilty? This is like a scene out of Alice in Wonderland: "No, No" said the Queen. "First the punishment, then the verdict."

We'll be discussing the options and likely scenarios on Fox News Monday around 2:30 p.m., ET

Update:

We noticed that a New York Times Editorial also makes an analogy to Alice in Wonderland but uses slightly different words. We looked up the original quote and found this:

"'Then the words don't fit you,' said the King looking round the court with a smile. There was a dead silence.

'It's a pun!' the King added in an angry tone, and everyone laughed. 'Let the jury consider their verdict,' the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

'No, no!' said the Queen. 'Sentence first--verdict afterwards.'

'Stuff and nonsense!' said Alice loudly. 'The idea of having the sentence first!'

'Hold your tongue!' said the Queen, turning purple.

'I won't!' said Alice.

'Off with her head!' the Queen shouted at the top of her voice. Nobody moved'".

Instapundit takes issue with our statement that deciding the place of prosecution based on where the likelihood of getting a death sentence is greatest makes us look barbaric. We respect Professor Reynold's views a great deal, but we point out that one of these defendants is 17 years old. Only the United States, Iran, Pakistan, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the Democratic Republic of Congo have reported executing juvenile offenders since 1990. Human Rights treaties do not allow for execution of juveniles. We believe the rest of the civilized world regards executing juveniles as barbaric and will view us as barbaric if we use the death penalty as the yardstick for where the juvenile should be prosecuted.

A few weeks ago, four Justices of the Supreme Court wrote in a dissenting opinion in Florida v. Foster that the practice of executing juveniles is "a relic of the past [that] is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency in a civilized society.... We should put an end to this shameful practice." The justices also noted, "like the mentally retarded, adolescents lack the impulse control of adults, and are thus neither deterred by the threat of death nor fully morally culpable for their actions. Society recognizes the immaturity of adolescents by forbidding them to vote, marry, drink or serve on juries."

Now it seems like our Attorney General is determined to choose a jurisdiction to try a 17 year old based on where he is most likely to be sentenced to death. The decision to seek the death penalty should not be made on the basis of the heinousness of the crime alone. Consider also that the Attorney-General is not supposed to make a decision to seek the death penalty until the Justice Department has given the defendant's lawyers a meeting at which they can argue against it. The Justice Department must consider factors concerning the character and history of the accused in addition to that of the severity of the crime before making a decision to seek the death penalty. That process has not even begun. For the Attorney General to call for the death penalty before being presented with this information is just plain wrong, not to mention in violation of the Justice Department's own guidelines.

Also, thanks to Instapundit, we noticed that our original post incorrectly identified Alice In Wonderland as Alice and Wonderland and we have corrected it.

Amid Doubts About Competency, Mentally Ill Man Faces Execution in today's New York Times:

"Barring an unexpected reprieve, James Colburn will be executed on Wednesday for the 1994 strangulation and stabbing death of Peggy Murphy. He admits he committed the murder, just as prosecutors admit the other salient point in the case: that Mr. Colburn is severely mentally ill."

Mr. Colburn was given copious amounts of anti-psychotic drugs during his trial. He slept through most of it. That is the issue now before the Supreme Court--"whether it matters that he dozed through his own murder trial because he was so heavily medicated with antipsychotic drugs. His lawyers argue that the trial was unconstitutional, because his condition rendered him incompetent to stand trial. The federal appeals courts, so far, have disagreed, and the issue is now before the Supreme Court."

We recommend reading the article for the details of his mental illness, and the jurors' reactions to learning about it after the trial.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday on California's Three-Strikes laws. Sasha Abramsky, a Soros Justice Media Fellow and the author of the recently published book, "Hard Time Blues: How Politics Built a Prison Nation," has an excellent op-ed piece in Sunday's Washington Times on the topic:

The Court will be deciding whether a life sentence for shoplifting is a violation of the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Two inmate's cases are before the court: "One, a repeat-burglar named Leandro Andrade struck out for stealing $153.54 worth of videotapes from two K marts; the other, Gary Ewing, who had prior convictions for robbery and burglary struck out for stealing three golf clubs."

Sasha's opinion (with which we agree):

"Tragically, however, as more and more states moved toward the imposition of catch-all mandatory minimum sentences and Three Strikes laws, so more and more Americans, overwhelmingly from poor backgrounds, disproportionately either African-American or Latino, have been subjected to exactly the kind of double-indemnity punishments, and disproportionately severe sentences, handed down to Ewing and to Andrade. Most of the most than 7,000 men and women now serving life sentences in California prisons on Three Strikes convictions, have been convicted on nonviolent, relatively minor crimes, which in and of themselves would generally warrant at most a few years behind bars. Many of these individuals were convicted of their first two "strikes" before the Three Strikes law was even on the statute books."

"California's Three Strikes law, crafted amidst rising public hysteria about a supposed breakdown in societal mores, ought never to have been passed. That it was, and that California's political leaders have used it to prove their tough-on-crime credentials to fearful electors, is a true stain on our country's history. It is past time for that stain to be removed. The Supreme Court has that chance. Let's see if they have the guts to strike out Three Strikes."

Here are Reuters':

The President's last minute campaign stops don't provide a big boost according to the Saint Paul Pioneer Press.

"Bush's 15-state blitz in the final six days of the campaign caps a three-week stretch in which he has barnstormed the country. History suggests it's a largely empty exercise."

"Presidential visits to rallies for other candidates excite the party's core supporters, but they also energize the opposition. Any bump up in polls that a president can produce for his party's local candidate tends to be short-lived."

"If Bush hoped his message would reach beyond the auditorium — and all these rallies are produced as much for television as for the audience present — he didn't fare very well. His visit was buried on the evening newscasts of the three network affiliates in the Twin Cities, where more than half the state's population lives. The Bush story was 10th on the 10 p.m. newscast of CBS affiliate WCCO, after stories about such subjects as the arrest of former baseball player Kirby Puckett and an Air Force plane crash in California."

Thanks to Hamster for leading us to the article.

If you are thinking of voting for an incumbant, we recommend you check his or her voting record.

LA Police Chief William Bratton has launched the department's first internal probe since he assumed the top cop job.

The probe concerns possible mishandling of tips about faith healers after a man being treated for a rash went into convulsions and died.

Bratton said that he recently received information that "the department's narcotics division had received tips about suspicious injections as far back as May 2001, but failed to investigate. The tips continued over the past 18 months, he said."

"I'm concerned, very concerned, about how the tip was handled, and I have many questions," said Bratton, who was publicly sworn in Monday. "We are going to try to convince the public of our sincere interest in determining what went wrong so that those mistakes are not made again."

For more on the challenges facing the new police chief, read today's Washington Post article, LA's New Top Cop.

Daily Kos has the latest batch of Zogby polls and it shows Tom Strickland with 53 of the vote to Wayne Allard's 44 in the Colorado Senate race.

Strickland can win, so please, go to the polls Tuesday and cast your vote for him.

The official Mondale for Senate website is up and running.