They got CAUGHT???!!!! Two days before the election??!!!  Wow.  Who are these guys?  How dumb do you have to be?  Now this is going to hit the news, making Lieberman look worse than he already does and the last of the undecideds will either swing Lamont's way or not vote.  All this for a stupid prank that wasn't going to win you votes anyway.  Don't get me wrong, sign wars are fun and they help office morale and everything, but it is illegal, and will make news.  In my experience, the campaign that gets caught loses.  Wow. . .

Lorenzo made me do it.

Oh, please let it be:

1.) a hired college republican

or 2.) Goodstein hizzelf

or 3.)This guy identified as one Alex Hoffman of Boston, in the linked picture he has just taken a Lamont sign from a small child.

at any rate, I suppose it is nothing to lose focus over, just another signifier of the principles notably lacking in the Lieberman campaign.

I interned for the Clark campaign in Manchester, New Hampshire in January, '04.  It was a great experience all around, but I'd have to say the following story was the highlight of my trip.  

It was around midnight the night of the Iowa caucuses, and I was in a van full of Clark interns to put signs up on the main streets in Manchester.  Thanks to the hour and the bitter cold, the streets were mostly deserted.  So it wasn't too hard to spot the guy on the other side of the street with two armloads of signs, lumbering clumsily through the snow to an idling rusted out Buick.  

The driver of our van pulled an emergency U-turn on the icy road and pulled up behind the perpetrators, who were very obvious in their affiliations with a large "JOE" sign in the back window of the getaway car.  Unfortunately, the trunk was closed, and we couldn't make them open it back up, despite outnumbering them 4-to-1.  We assumed though, that now that they knew they were being watched, there wouldn't be anymore sign stealing going on.  

On driving back toward headquarters, we noticed that the signs we had just put up minutes before were missing.  All of them.  Another emergency U-turn.  Knowing what direction the perpetrators were heading helped, because the missing signs were like little footprints in the snow.  There was no outrunning us.  

We caught up with them at a major intersection next to an auto dealership.  The same Joetern was out in the median, a clump of Edwards signs under his arm.  This guy had apparently never heard of playing it cool either, because when he saw us he booked it as fast as somebody in cold-weather gear can book it, straight back to the car.  

The car was strategically hidden in an auto dealership that was lit up about as well as Kevin Costner's baseball field at the end of Field of Dreams.  By the time the Joetern reached the car, our van had pulled up behind them in an attempt to block their escape.  We got out of the van en masse, and it's possible things might have gotten out of hand if it wasn't for the intervention of Manchester's finest.  

I don't mean the police either.  This was a big auto dealership, and it had security on site.  A private security guard who must have weighed 300 pounds and wasn't very tall had emerged from the building and, with authority, demanded to know what was going on in his auto dealership.  We all blurted out, mostly at the same time, that the Joeterns had stolen our signs.    As any wise officer of the law would, our man realized that he was outnumbered, and he needed back up.  

Officer Friendly was on his way back to the showroom to radio for help when, unexpectedly, the  Joeterns made their move.  They made a break for it, peeling out of the auto dealership with a deft maneuver that left us stunned and surprised!  

Fortunately, they messed with the wrong car-lot security guy.  

Waddling as fast as his 300-pound frame could move, our man hopped into an early 90s Chevy Astro van, rolled down his window, and stuck a yellow portable flasher on his roof.  With the squeal of his tires the chase was on!  

I don't know if we held much hope that the thieving Joeterns would be brought to justice, so we were surprised when less than a minute later they came straight back into the car lot, with our man hot on their tail!  

Shortly thereafter the police came, and the Joeterns sheepishly opened their trunk and revealed the mother lode of stolen signs - several hundred Clark, Edwards, Kerry, and Dean signs, and even a few Kucinich signs.  (Who steals Kucinich signs?  Seriously!)  

Now it's true that we went on to finish a disappointing third on primary night, but I can look back on my experiences in New Hampshire and remember the thrill of campaign victory.  It came in the middle of the night thanks to a hard-working and vigilant car lot security guard.  

Give 'em hell, Ned.  

kind of a marginal topic, but whom did McGovern endorse in '04? It'd be pretty ironic if it were Lieberman (and disappointing, McGovern's a hero of mine), considering how all the DLC NeoCons are waving his name like a bloody shirt at Lamont supporters?