NY Times:
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Mr. Bennet, appointed to a fill a Senate vacancy last year, and former Lt. Gov. Norton were blessed early on by the party hierarchy. They were to breeze to their respective nominations by virtue of the fundraising help and stature the White House could provide Mr. Bennet, 45, and the standing and credibility lent to Ms. Norton, 55, by the imprimatur of leading Republicans and the Chamber of Commerce.
But Mr. Romanoff, a 43-year-old former state House speaker, and Mr. Buck, a 51-year-old veteran prosecutor, could not be dissuaded from challenging the favored choices. Now they find themselves with a chance to win.
Should they triumph, it would represent a stinging repudiation of the Obama administration, which has put serious presidential muscle behind Mr. Bennet, as well as the Washington Republicans who coalesced around Ms. Norton.
"It would be a huge slam in both cases on the respective establishments," said Floyd Ciruli, a veteran independent pollster based in Denver.
It always comes down to the candidates, and the establishment picks in CO are as flawed as their challengers. But of the four of them, Ken Buck's a real nutcase and he's going to be a constant source of entertainment. In this environment, alas, that doesn't mean he'll lose.
WSJ:
Scientists studying one of the biggest oil spills 31 years ago watched with alarm as funds to research the environmental damage evaporated shortly after the well was plugged.
As BP PLC appears to have sealed its own troubled well, some of the same people who researched the effect of oil and chemical dispersants on wildlife after the Ixtoc I well exploded in 1979 off the Mexican Gulf Coast are mobilizing to make sure the situation is different this time.
Mary Tillman:
Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal was forced to retire because of remarks he made to a Rolling Stone reporter. Having read the article that led to his departure, I feel strangely validated. "The Runaway General" described by journalist Michael Hastings is exactly the arrogant individual I believed him to be.
That would be Pat Tillman's mom.
Paul Krugman:
We’re told that we have no choice, that basic government functions — essential services that have been provided for generations — are no longer affordable. And it’s true that state and local governments, hit hard by the recession, are cash-strapped. But they wouldn’t be quite as cash-strapped if their politicians were willing to consider at least some tax increases.
And the federal government, which can sell inflation-protected long-term bonds at an interest rate of only 1.04 percent, isn’t cash-strapped at all. It could and should be offering aid to local governments, to protect the future of our infrastructure and our children.
But Washington is providing only a trickle of help, and even that grudgingly. We must place priority on reducing the deficit, say Republicans and "centrist" Democrats. And then, virtually in the next breath, they declare that we must preserve tax cuts for the very affluent, at a budget cost of $700 billion over the next decade.
Al Hunt:
When Gordon Goldstein sees Afghanistan as "déjà vu," a mission that’s "unraveling," it isn’t the ramblings of another armchair critic.
Goldstein is the author of an acclaimed biography of McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson who became haunted by the misadventure he helped devise in Vietnam. The book, "Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam," was on President Barack Obama’s nightstand as he was setting Afghanistan policy last year; it got a rave review from Richard Holbrooke, now in charge of the Afghanistan-Pakistan policy.
EJ Dionne:
When it comes to the role and functioning of the U.S. Senate, my rather dyspeptic views could not be more at odds with those of Chris Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who is retiring at the end of the year.
Where did Dodd go wrong?
By the way, the Yanks are pounding the Red Sox. At least some things are going right.