* My sainted mother, who is an enthusiastic conspiracy theorist, is actually pissed off at Alycia Lane for "having the FBI investigate her email," thus persecuting poor Larry Mendte for (allegedly) checking her email "hundreds of times" then blabbing her business to the tabs? 
Hell, if anything, this might be the one thing that will make me actually like Lane at long last! Because if Mendte was sitting next to Lane on the anchor desk at the same time he was hacking into her email, then he's a dirtball who deserves what he gets and she goes from bimbo to woman Who. Does. Not. Play.
And if, as this morning's Inquirer reports, Mendte (allegedly) used the newsroom computer to read Lane's emails to her lawyer? That'll get you fired, friend. Still, I'm a little scared of Stensland. You don't fuck with somebody's husband, yo. She's got babies!
* Here in New Jersey, we've got more elections than you can shake a pork roll sammich at -- ask the school boards or the fire commissioners or the library trustees. This year, even one primary wasn't enough: We picked Hillary Clinton in the Democratic presidential primary on Feb. 5, and tomorrow some (OK few) of us will return to the polls to decide between Frank Lautenberg and U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination.
Including tomorrow's primary, some towns in the state will have held FIVE elections in the past four months! Yes, you read that right -- in addition to the February 5 and June 3 primaries, there were fire district elections on February 16, school elections on April 15, and non-partisan municipal contests on May 13.
Throw in November's general election, and somewhere in New Jersey, probably in Delran, there lives a voter who will have gone to the polls six times this year. Unfortunately, he or she is probably the only one. Most voters are fatigued by all these elections, and so most observers expect that tomorrow�s turnout will be even lower than usual. [Monmouth University Polling Institute Blog]
It's easy to be ambivalent about this thing, and it presents a moral conflict of sorts -- enhancing the reach and power of the Camden County/Norcross Democratic machine vs. (finally) giving South Jersey a voice in the U.S. Senate.
But look people, Lautenberg is old. And I'm not talking John McCain lion-in-winter old. This guy is Biblically elderly. Strom Thurmond old. Andrews' two commercials go there, too: One reminds voters how Lautenberg made Millicent Fenwick's age an issue back in the day, and the other is all "vote for me, I'm from South Jersey!" But OK, extreme oldness might be a reason to vote against Lautenberg, but is it reason enough to vote for Andrews -- especially when he's a product of the kind of machine that runs a guy's wife for his Congressional seat. Barf.
* Back in Manayunk, the greatest insult on the block was to tell someone "Fat Pete's your Dad! Hoagie Nose is your Mom!" Hoagie Nose being an unfortunately homely woman who lived nearby and Fat Pete, obvs., a fat guy named Pete. For whatever reason, hearing Clay Aiken had fathered a child made me think of this little nugget of Americana. Make of it what you will.
