Other stories of note this morning

Senator Frist is the one who prohibited a roll-call vote on the anti-lynching bill, presumably to protect some of his pro-lynching Republican colleagues who didn't want their home states to know how they voted. Atlanta Journal-Constitution continues its investigative chops with this story:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) refused repeated requests for a roll call vote that would have put senators on the record on a resolution apologizing for past failures to pass anti-lynching laws, officials involved in the negotiations said Tuesday.

And there was disagreement Tuesday over whether Saxby Chambliss, one of Georgia's two Republican senators, had supported the measure when it was approved Monday night.

Meanwhile Senator Sensenbrenner, who shut down the hearing on the Patriot Act the other day because he didn't like the direction the testimony was going, is now shutting out Representative Conyers and his Downing Street Minutes Forum. The man clearly knows what he doesn't want to know. From The Hill (via Daily Kos).

The AJC also published an interesting op-ed piece this morning by former state GOP leader Bob Irvin, an open letter to Ralph Reed, begging him to withdraw from his race for Lieutenant Governor of Georgie, because if he doesn't he could bring the party down:

In the last few weeks, I can't tell you the number of people who have come up to me and volunteered something like, "I'm a Republican, but I'm not voting for Ralph Reed." Generally, they live in the suburbs, the decisive battleground in this and future elections, but some of them are in South Georgia.

They are mostly long-time Republican activists, people I have known for 30 years or more in the finally successful effort to build a two-party system. Reed's nomination will alienate them. His defeat will alienate his naive but devoted supporters. Either way, we're left with a minority.

The only solution is for Reed to withdraw his candidacy. Please, Ralph, do it, before it's too late.