It would be shocking if this race DOESN'T tighten up.  It's always better to play with the lead, but you're absolutely right.  This race has to be fought like it is going to be a photo finish.

Santorum is a total nut, but he's a very dangerous and formidable nut who will wage a very competitive campaign.
   

For those who don't want to read the whole bill (it's about two pages), the nasty part says:
"SEC. 2. DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES OF NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION AND NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE.      
[...]
(b) COMPETITION WITH PRIVATE SECTOR- The Secretary of Commerce shall not provide, or assist other entities in providing, a product or service (other than a product or service described in subsection (a)(1)) that is or could be provided by the private sector unless--

            (1) the Secretary determines that the private sector is unwilling or unable to provide such product or service; or

            (2) the United States Government is obligated to provide such product or service under international aviation agreements to provide meteorological services and exchange meteorological information.

What he's trying to do with this bill is to kill http://www.weather.gov, which is far and away the most accurate and most useful weather site in the country.  The site is kind of a by-product of their primary job, storm forecasting.  But they have the data, they've crunched the numbers, and it's all available right down to point forecasts.  It almost makes commercial weather services obsolete; the one service they can still provide that the government won't is "forecast insurance" -- for a fee they'll financially insure that it won't rain on your freshly poured concrete this afternoon, for example.

The thing that bothers me most about Santorum is that this is even bad for the rest of the folks in his state.  The ONLY beneficiaries are the few employees of AccuWeather.  The rest of the country is simply screwed by a bill like this.

Let's just hope that Casey's people are willing to fight it out and be as aggressive as Santorum surely will be.  Let's not have a Kerry repeat for crying out loud.  

But what has santorum been found on?

Still got to 47%.

Look upthread, we've been waiting for this.

Desperate...

Casey is probably one of the strongest pro-labor voices in the Democratic Party today.

Abortion doesn't define whether or not one is a Republican or Democrat, as much a some would like to believe.

I think Casey will be a good ol' fashioned "New Deal" type Democrat.  By this I mean he will be "bad" on social issues, but he will be good on domestice ones.  I am pretty sure he is pro-labor, for the most part anti-corporate and thus good on taxation and budget issues.  He will be very good on trade.

He is certainly no Paul Wellstone, but to say he is another Miller is ridiculous.  He will be better then Lieberman (not saying much, granted).  My guess is that he will be with the progressives as often as someone like Feinstein, though he will vote wrong on a completely different set of issues then she does.  Again, not my ideal, but certainly better then the alternative and much better then Miller, Liberman, etc.

As for abortion rights, while I disagree with Mr. Casey on his stance, I do admire the fact that in order to curb abortions he wants to put federal funding into places that will help out those who get abortions. I mean why would the Democratic Party support someone who believes in helping out hte poor and those who can't help themselves. That's better than the GOP's anti-choice stance which is they'll make abortion illegal and that's that

As for labor rights, God forbid a Democrat is actually pro-union in a state where many voters grew up in a house where both parents belonged to labor unions to get them fair wages and helped put a roof over their heads. To say that Bob Casey favors big business over the working man is probably the dumbest statement one can make about the man.

Freedom for cults, well there's no actual statement from Casey that I could find that says you would have to join a religion or a cult or have it taught in public schools so I have no clue what the hell you mean here. Now if you're talking about Casey being religious, that's pretty much a good thing as most religions have liberal beliefs when it comes to helping others and taking care of the environment.