*DUMP DAVIS DRIVE CLOSE TO SUCCESS: A special recall election to remove California Gov. Gray Davis (D.) from office and choose a replacement is now all but a certainty, the New York Times reported last week. "Supporters of the recall movement said they had turned in 1,088,000 petition signatures by Monday and were preparing to submit 300,000 more by the end of the week," the Times reported. The re-callers will need 897,158 of the signatures to be valid, which would lead to a special ballot later this year asking voters if Davis should be replaced. "It’s a done deal," said Jonathan Wilcox, a spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa (R.-Calif.), who has funded much of the recall drive and hopes to replace Davis. "The signature collection has stopped."
*HATED GOVERNOR MAY SUE: Meanwhile Davis, whose popularity has all but disappeared, may pull an Al Gore and sue to keep himself in office. "The governor’s supporters have compiled affidavits from people asked to sign the recall petitions and videotapes of the signature collection efforts in preparation for a legal challenge, possibly by the end of the week," the Los Angeles Times reported. If the Davis team opts for the legal route, his supporters will try to show that signers of the recall petition were somehow misled. But Davis’ advisors also fear that an unsuccessful legal challenge may only serve to anger voters even further.
*SANTORUM VINDICATED: In April, liberals vilified Sen. Rick Santorum (R.-Pa.) when he said, "If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. . . . Does that undermine the fabric of society? I would argue yes, it does."
No sooner had the Supreme Court declared in Lawrence v. Texas that there was a constitutional right to homosexual sodomy, than Newsweek ran a cover story entitled, "Is Gay Marriage Next?" In the wake of the decision, Santorum told a crowd in Scranton, Pa., "I don’t have any regrets at all about anything I said." On July 9, he USA Today ran an op-ed by Santorum echoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist’s (R.-Tenn.) support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (see story on page 3).
*NO LBJ: While interviewing Frist for the New York Times Magazine last week, David Grann pointed out that on Frist’s bookshelf was a copy of Master of the Senate, the third volume in Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson. "People ask me if I’ve read it," Frist told Grann, "and the answer is yes. But I don’t want to be like him. I want to be just the opposite. That’s the last leader I want to become."
*WHO’S AFRAID OF HOWARD DEAN? Not White House political director Karl Rove, apparently. The Washington Post reports that the President’s top political advisor was overheard rallying a dozen supporters of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean among the audience at a Fourth of July parade in Washington, D.C. "Come on, everybody," Rove shouted, trying to start a cheer of "Go, Howard Dean!" An environmental consultant, Daniel J. Weiss, overheard Rove remark to a companion, "Heh, heh, heh. Yeah, that’s the one we want."
*LIVING FICTION: The recent re-launching of Oprah Winfrey’s book club, and her recommendation of John Steinbeck’s 1952 novel East of Eden, has knocked Hillary Clinton’s Living History from its No. 2 slot on USA Today’s best-seller list, which, like Hillary’s book, does not discriminate between fiction and non-fiction. Hillary has managed to hang on to No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list as our own Ann Coulter builds momentum to overtake the former First Lady with Treason, her new book on liberal treachery.
*MORE WIND: Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Sen. John Kerry (D.-Mass.), has joined her spouse in refusing to take a position on a Nantucket Sound wind farm. The farm is favored by environmentalists, but opposed by Kerry’s rich neighbors.
"Because it’s such a touchy issue and a Massachusetts issue, she’s waiting," Heinz Kerry’s spokesman told the Boston Herald. The newspaper noted: "Heinz Kerry appeared to be following the lead of the senator, who is waiting to take a position until after the Army Corps of Engineers completes its environmental study of the Cape Wind proposal." Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council could abandon Kerry for Dean or another presidential candidate if the wealthy New Englander continues to evade the issue. That could be devastating for Kerry, who claims to be a proponent of wind energy (see HUMAN EVENTS Capital Brief, June 30 issue).
