Until a few short months ago it was the wet dream of virtually every politics junkie - now, as it is becoming more likely by the day to happen this year, the dream is turning into a nightmare. Below the flip: why a brokered convention is becoming increasingly probable; why this is bad news especially for us Obama supporters; and what can be done to avoid it and win outright.  

With h/t to RobertInWisconsin, Rasmussen's daily Presidential Tracking Poll now has Mike Huackabee at 20% to Giuliani's 17% in the race for the Republican nomination. Choice quotes and comments below the fold.

I'll keep this short. Let's suppose Turkey "invades" Iraqi Kurdistan tomorrow. What do you think will happen? If you've recommended this diary or any of a fair number of like minded that have been posted during the last 12-18 months, chances are it's not what you think will happen. I'll explain below the flip.

Seems simple enough. How does your stance on the two most controversial policy issues discussed on dKos, immediate withdrawal from Iraq and impeachment, predict who you support for Prez? Take the damn poll! But first read the damn instructions :-)

I can’t believe I’m posting a frikking horse race diary! What is the world coming to? Anyway, so the NYT and CBS NEWS have a massive (pdf!!!) new poll out. There’s all sorts of stuff; some good (Dems liked lots better than Repubs), some not so hot (Bush’s approval numbers ticking up 5 points in the last two weeks, WTF?). What I thought interesting: favorability ratings for some of the declared and undeclared presidential contenders of both parties. Pretty good news for us Gore supporters: Al now has the second-highest favs among the Dems, losing only narrowly to Obama, and the latter of course has many more DK responses. He’s also beating the ‘pubs except for Giuliani who has higher net-favs.

What do you do when you believe you have been robbed of victory in a presidential election, and have exhausted all avenues of legal recourse, only to see most of your evidence ignored and your demand for a full recount turned down? We know what Al Gore did in 2000. We also know what Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas did in 1988 - the same as Gore in 2000. Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) is taking a different route. He isn't giving up, he isn't going away. Yesterday, the National Democratic Convention (CDN) organized by his supporters elected him Mexico's legitimate president.

Those who who have been following the Mexico News Roundups here on dKos will be used to the steady drumbeat of major U.S. newspaper editorials calling on the candidate of the center-left Por El Bien de Todos ("for the good of all") coalition, Adrés Manuel López Obrador (or AMLO), to suck it up and go away already. It's good to know, I think, that there are still real journalists out there who at least don't presume to know or understand more about the situation  on the ground than those silly locals. Follow me beyond the flip to a surprisingly even-handed post-mortem analysis of the electoral process by the NYT's James McKinley Jr.

Well, we already knew that the Bush administration and congressional republicans have been working feverishly ever since Hamdan to change the War Crimes Act of 1996, so as to immunize themselves against future prosecution for war crimes,  and probably so as to generally protect their policies and their legacy. Been diaried here, here, and most recently here - among a slew of other diaries actually. A report today on NPR's All Things Considered confirms all this, but adds a new twist: apparently Bushco is trying to make sure that nobody will be able to litigate on the basis of the Geneva Conventions in the U.S. court system. More below the flip.

The special federal election tribunal (Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación (TEPJF)) has rejected the demand of Andrés Manuel López Obrador's Coalición Por el Bien de Todos for a complete recount of the ballots of the July 2 presidential election. Instead, it has ordered a recount in nearly 50% of the Republic's electoral districts, but without requiring all ballot boxes to be counted in these districts. It's too early to say (at least for me) whether this recount could overturn the official election tally.

More below the flip. [Update]: Okay, they're only going to recount 9% of the ballot boxes. That will make it difficult for AMLO to overcome Calderón´s lead.

With a hat tip to Political Wire:

"After signing the state's timeliest budget in six years and running $12 million in post-primary campaign ads," California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) now leads Phil Angelides (D) by eight points in his re-election bid, 45% to 37%, according to a new Field Poll.

Those are likely voters, at 15% undecided. I hate to say it, but that would make for a 12-point swing in favor of the Gropenator since the last Field Poll came out a month ago (link).

More on the flip.

Why did the president find it necessary to order the NSA to bypass a secret court set up expressly for this purpose and spy on people within the United States without a warrant? Why did this revelation upset enough Senators to help Russ Feingold uphold a filibuster against renewal of the PATRIOT Act?  Why did it upset Arlen Specter enough to immediately call hearings to investigate? And why does Bush's order constitute not only a violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution, but also a 1968 decision by the United States Supreme Court?

Answers after the jump...

We all knew if DeLay were to go down he would inevitably take vast swaths of the shady money machine that fules the Republican Noise Machine with him. The flag ship is the K-Street Project, bringing together the criminal energy of DeLay, Grover "Bathtub" Norquist, and Rick "Man-on-dog" Santorum. DeLay and Norquist are already implicated in the Abramoff scandal. Now Delay's successor as House Majority Leader, Roy Blunt, is seemingly getting tangled up in Delay's trial. Per RawStory, prosecutor Ronnie Earle has subpoenaed communications between Delay's and Blunt's PACs. Quote below the flip.

So John Dean - he of Watergate notoriety, and he who first suggested TraitorGate might be prosecutable under the Espionage Act - has a new diary up on FindLaw to discuss Fitzmas. (Yeah this has been diaried before. The diary went down the virtual drain faster than you can say Unindicted coconspirator, and people weren't picking up on what I want to discuss here.) He pretty much hedges his bets, but ends with this downer:

Fitzmas to fizzle out? Maybe. But Dean's argument just doesn't make any sense to me. Follow me...

Update [2005-8-13 17:54:24 by Armando]: From the diaries by Armando. How do you prove criminal intent? By direct and circumstantial evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. I am not a criminal lawyer, but proving intent is done in the same manner in civil cases, except the burden of proof is preponderance of the evidence. In certain civil actions, for example, proving an antitrust conspiracy, the SCOTUS has created artificial evidentiary burdens for "policy" reasons. Indeed, it is my view that it is easier to be convicted of criminal antitrust violations than be found liable for some civil antitrust violations. So the notion that it will be difficult to prove intent always rang false to me. This diary discusses this fact in detail quite effectively. Is Rove Toast? Who knows. But a good diary.

Which nail to hang Rove, Libby, and the rest of the cabal on? On the leak itself, that is, as opposed to the cover up, which is a crime unto itself (lest we forget). Elizabeth de la Vega at TomDispatch.Com and in an op-ed in the LA Times lays down the case for the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Read on... (nerd alert: I'm adding a bonus discussion - TraitorGate for philosophy nerds!)

So we've seen Dr. Hern's letter to Dr. Dean, taking him to task for, among many other things, the proposal of medical practice boards to set statewide abortion guidelines, which he brought up during his MTP appearance in May. Just tonight, Madman in the marketplace posted another diary to hit Dean over the head one more time over the same thing. So it finally dawned on me that there's a bit of a confusion going on here. Since Madman's thread has now gone stale, and I suspect that there are a few people here who care about this business, I'm devoting this diary to try and clarify the issue. Follow me...

Link This based on "senior admin officials":

More...

Polls out the wangzoo 24/7, and yet this one I haven't seen. On a political blog, of all things, I want to know what you characters think about politics! I'm not going to ask you to vote on your favorite candidate for dog catcher or your stance on this issue or that. I want to know your political world view. I'm trying to figure out how many moderates, progressives, greens, libertarians, and other kinds of critters we have here among us in this community. So take that frigging poll!

Another huge step. From Raw Story - 26 Democratic Senators call for Congressional hearings into Plame leak. Quoting their letter below. [UPDATE: Reuters is now reporting that there *will* be hearings - but this one sounds a tad fishy, like more of Sen. Pat Roberts' diversionary hearings, but this time in the House.]