Monday's news and links

In today's Wall Street Journal, Kimberley Strassel tells the Tale of Two GOP's. In the article she compares the governors races in Ohio and Florida. In Ohio the Republican, Ken Blackwood is trailing in the polls by double digits and in Florida the Republican candidate, Charlie Crist leading by a similar margin. Her assessment (which I agree with) is Blackwell is running on a similar platform to Crist but is not succeeding because Gov. Taft (and Voinovich before him) did not live up to their campaign rhetoric.

It has taken far too long to send her away and the sentence is far too short, otherwise it is nice to see justice play out and this woman finally held accountable for aiding terrorists in planning attacks against our country.

Lynne Stewart was sentenced Monday to 28 months in prison on a terrorism charge for helping a client who plotted to blow up New York City landmarks communicate with his followers, a sentence far less than 30 years prosecutors wanted. Stewart, 67, smiled as the judge announced he would send her to prison for less than 2 1/2 years. "If you send her to prison, she's going to die. It's as simple as that," defense lawyer Elizabeth Fink had told the judge before the sentence was pronounced.

Actually, she is going to die whether she is sent to prison or not. This sentence, while too short, sends a message to other lawyers that providing adequate representation to crooks or terrorists does not mean joining their team. On a related note, Don Surber take the AP to task for trying to paint a sympathetic picture of this convicted criminal.

Fred Barnes takes a look at the November elections in a column titled How Bad Will It Be? Obviously, he isn't all that optimistic.

There was an ugly brawl this weekend between the football players of Miami University and Florida International University. However, as bad as the behavior of those players was it paled in comparison to the commentary of the local announcer. Lamar Thomas was cheering on the fighting players as the brawl was taking place. Tim Chapman has a link to the YouTube video of Thomas' outrageous remarks.