At least one broadcast network and one Web site said Monday that they could foresee signaling to viewers early Tuesday evening which candidate appeared to have won the presidency, despite the unreliability of some early exit polls in the last presidential election.

A senior vice president of CBS News, Paul Friedman, said the prospects for Barack Obama or John McCain meeting the minimum threshold of electoral votes could be clear as soon as 8 p.m. ”” before polls in even New York and Rhode Island close, let alone those in Texas and California. At such a moment, determined from a combination of polling data and samples of actual votes, the network could share its preliminary projection with viewers, Mr. Friedman said.

“We could know Virginia at 7,” he said. “We could know Indiana before 8. We could know Florida at 8. We could know Pennsylvania at 8. We could know the whole story of the election with those results. We can’t be in this position of hiding our heads in the sand when the story is obvious.”

Ugh. It will be a real shame if they do. Read it all.

Obama 92.5, McCain 8

Scientists in Japan say they have successfully cloned a mouse from a body that had been frozen for 16 years, theoretically opening the door to a range of possibilities from preserving endangered animals, to resurrecting extinct animals to cloning Ted Williams.

The authors of the study made no bones about what they believe the implications of their work could be.

“It has been suggested that the ‘resurrection’ of frozen extinct species, such as the woolly mammoth, is impracticable, as no live cells are available, and the genomic material that remains is inevitably degraded,” wrote the authors in the Monday edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Voters across our community, state and nation will have their say today. The decisions that are made in the polling places, for all levels of government, will have lasting consequences. So choose wisely.

Over the past week, we’ve identified the candidates and referendums we support and the reasons for our choices. We’ve made those decisions on a race-by-race basis, picking a mix of Republicans, Democrats and Independents in the process. We suggest that you also consider each candidate on his or her own merits, regardless of party.

But if you do vote a straight-party ticket, remember that you must still make individual decisions to have your voice heard in the nonpartisan school-board elections and those referendum questions.

And regardless of whether you agree with our arguments or follow our advice, exercise your self-governing right ”” and obligation ”” by casting informed votes.

A review of our endorsements….

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Few places in Europe have prospered in recent years like this bustling crossroads city of 700,000, halfway between Barcelona and Madrid.

Factory employees here pulled overtime shifts. Companies hired temporary workers to satisfy growing consumer demand. A half dozen new bridges were built across the Ebro river and office buildings were filled as fast as they could be thrown up.

The capital of Spain’s fastest-growing region, inland Zaragoza kept booming even as the overbuilt Mediterranean coast came to symbolize how real estate excess was not just an American ill.

But just as the cold autumn wind is blowing down from the Pyrenees, Zaragoza and the surrounding region of Aragón have suddenly been hit by a sharp economic downturn. And the troubles here make clear that what had been seen as a crisis confined largely to finance and real estate is quickly spreading to more fundamental sectors of the European economy, such as manufacturing.

For the generation of young Spaniards who have known only good economic times the chill is shocking.

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Forward in Faith regrets the recent decision of the Synod of the diocese of Sydney with regard to lay and diaconal presidency at the Eucharist, both of which are clearly contrary to the foundational documents of Anglicanism. It trusts that the Archbishop of Sydney will use those powers available to him to ensure that such innovations are not set forth, in order that further division is not thereby introduced into the life of the Communion.

It has two parts: Part one is here and part two is there.

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I remember the precise moment when I became convinced that this presidential campaign was going to be the best I’d ever covered. It was Saturday afternoon, Dec. 8, 2007. I stood in the lobby of Hy-Vee Hall, the big convention center in Des Moines, watching an endless stream of men, women and children come down the escalators from the network of skywalks that link the downtown business blocks of Iowa’s capital. They were bundled in winter coats against the chilly temperatures, and the mood was festive — like a tailgate party for a football game. But the lure here was not a sporting contest; it was a political rally.

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What state did you vote in, how was the weather, how long/short were the lines, how easy was the process, and any other personal details you would like to add that you believe would be of interest to those reading.

When Sri Murtiningsi asked her third graders what they wanted to be when they grew up, the answers ranged from doctors to a pilot. One boy in the class raised his hand: Barack Obama said his dream was to be president of the United States.

Forty years later Murtiningsi – like the rest of the world – is watching closely as Americans prepare to head to the polls Tuesday.

“Barry was the only one who said he wanted to be president,” Murtiningsi said of Obama, who spent four years living in Indonesia as a child. “I hope his dream comes true.”

Many believe Obama’s international experience would go a long way in helping repair damage caused by the unpopular U.S.-led war in Iraq, with recent opinion polls from more than 70 nations favoring him a resounding three-to-one over Republican John McCain.

Newspapers across the globe came out in support of the Democratic candidate Monday.

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The networks have taken CIA-style precautions to insure Election Day runs smoothly. At 11 am Tuesday, three representatives from each of the six news organizations in the business of calling presidential elections ”” CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox News, and the Associated Press ”” quarantine themselves at an undisclosed location to start poring over exit poll data supplied by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International. “I can’t tell you any more than that it’s in the state of New York,” Gawiser says of the meeting place. (Other execs confirmed that the reps indeed meet in New York City). Blackberries and cell phones are confiscated, wireless technologies disabled, and minders accompany people to the bathroom. The protocols started after the 2004 presidential race, when early exit poll data indicating that John Kerry was ahead leaked across the Internet in the early afternoon. Now, the reps can’t talk to their newsrooms until 5 pm, when communication lines reopen so that the broadcast networks have enough time to prepare for their evening newscasts.

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A Canadian Anglican bishop signaled on Monday he would defy the wishes of the global Anglican church and start drafting a ceremony for blessing homosexual marriages.

Bishop Barry Clarke said he would be following through with the wishes of the diocese of Montreal, which he heads, and set up a commission to come up with liturgy for such blessings.

In August, the decennial Lambeth Conference of global Anglican leaders asked for a moratorium on the blessing of same-sex unions, and Canada’s bishops said on Friday a large majority of them were committed to such a moratorium.

But Clarke told Reuters he was not part of that majority, and he would be proceeding with plans he had laid out before the Canadian bishops met last week.

“I don’t want to stop the journey, because I think that would be unhealthy,” he said.

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If I ever forget that I live in the South, the last line of an obituary in our local paper, the (Mobile, Alabama) Press-Register, would have set me straight: “In lieu of flowers, please send fried chicken.”

–Jacqul Philan of Theodore, Alabama in the November 2008 Reader’s Digest, page 206

The Rt. Rev. David Colin Jones will visit St. Andrew’s Church, Highland Park, on Sunday, November 9 ”” his first Episcopal Visit to a parish since being named “Consulting” Bishop to the reorganized Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh.

Bishop Jones will preside and preach at St. Andrew’s 9 a.m. Holy Communion service and also preach at the 11 a.m. Choral Morning Prayer. He also will be the guest at a 10 a.m. “Coffee and Conversation” adult forum.

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Thank goodness for the Onion which helps us not take all this too serously. Read it all.

A number of financial experts now fear that the federal government’s $143 billion attempt to rescue troubled insurance giant American International Group may not work, and some argue that company shareholders and taxpayers would have been better served by a bankruptcy filing.

The Treasury Department leapt to keep AIG from going bankrupt on Sept. 16, and in the past seven weeks, AIG has drawn down $90 billion in federal bailout loans. But some key AIG players argue that bankruptcy would have offered more structure and greater protections during a time of intense market volatility.

AIG declined to comment on the matter.

Ugh. Read it all.