By an average 10 percentage-point margin since March, 45% to 35%, independent registered voters have consistently preferred the Republican to the Democrat when asked which congressional candidate they would vote for in their district. Independents’ preference for Republicans has been generally consistent over this time, with the gap in favor of Republicans increasing slightly since March, from 8 to 12 points.

Tsunami coming.

[HT: News Alert]

Eck was drunk when he brought the car back that night, he said, and Ericksen told him that rather than go home and face his parents, he could sleep it off in his spare bedroom.

That night, Eck said, Ericksen raped him.

He is Paul Eck, age 17 when he says the rape happened. The man he says did it is the Rev. Tom Ericksen, then of the Superior Wis. diocese. It happened in 1983.  Eck’s complaint, together with that of his nephew, James Eck, age 8 or 9 when he says Ericksen began touching him sexually, was settled in 1989 for $3 million.

It was the standard handling of an abuse case. But this one has arisen again. The Ecks want Ericksen, long since out of the priesthood and living outside Wisconsin, including in Minnesota — where he worked for 20 years as an AT&T customer service specialist and was a member of AT&T’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender employee association — brought to criminal trial.

“He needs to be taken off the streets because he’s a pedophile,” Paul Eck said of Ericksen. “I guarantee you that there are people before and after me that have been molested. This is not all of a sudden something you do in a short amount of time.”

The present bishop is prohibited from discussing the case. The local prosecutor is not responding to the Ecks’ request to arrest Ericksen, whose move out of the state “stops the clock” on expiration of arrestability, according to Ecks’ lawyer.

However, the Duluth News-Tribune notes that the Wisconsin Supreme Court is considering an appeal by a Jesuit priest — Donald McGuire, of Chicago — who was convicted in 2006 of assaulting two teenagers in the late 1960s.

– Chicago Reader acting publisher Alison Draper explaining why veteran editor Alison True had to go

Ah. Get out of that damn silo and stop looking (or jumping) through that damn window. We’ve got a newspaper to put out!

The campaign’s “extensive review” found 30,000-plus valid signatures (of almost 90,000 submitted, per G.), and 26,000 were needed; so Berrios, who won the early, early (Dem) primary months ago, will not engage in litigation that might go “all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court” and will concede Claypool a place on the ballot — which is more than Obama did for his state senatorial opponent in a long-ago primary when he was fairly new on the scene.

Galvan asks only that Claypool, who enters the race with far less baggage than the grizzled Berrios — traveling light, as it were — “set aside the insults and empty rhetoric and pledge to conduct a spirited, fair and clean campaign,” which is asking a lot.

Marshall McLuhan’s telling newspaper publishers,”People don’t actually read newspapers, they get into them every morning like a hot bath” never rang truer. It’s all soft, soft, soft, comfort food for a certain demographic, even the Kagan piece, which is purely a scene-setter.

No news on this front page. God forbid. We wouldn’t want to upset anyone. Not even city workers loafing on the job, as in the Col. McCormick days. Bye-bye newspapering.