Far fetched? You decide. This from today's Dallas Morning News:

Retired National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett said Tuesday that in 1997, then-Gov. Bush's chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, told the National Guard chief to get the Bush file and make certain "there's not anything there that will embarrass the governor."

Col. Burkett said that a few days later at Camp Mabry in Austin, he saw Mr. Bush's file and documents from it discarded in a trash can. He said he recognized the documents as retirement point summaries and pay forms.

Bush aides denied any destruction of records in Mr. Bush's personnel file. "The charges are just flat-out not true," said Dan Bartlett, White House communications director. He said the president has been forthright in producing all documents relevant to his stint in the Texas Air National Guard, from 1968 to 1973. He dismissed Col. Burkett as a disgruntled former officer of the Texas Guard. Mr. Allbaugh, now a Washington lobbyist, called Col. Burkett's assertions "hogwash."

The Dems are not buying the White House version that the released records show Bush served as required:

The Democrats' Mr. McAuliffe said he still has questions. "The fact remains that there is still no evidence that George W. Bush showed up for duty as ordered while in Alabama," he said. "We also still do not know why the president's superiors filed a report saying they were unable to evaluate his performance for that year because he had not been present to be evaluated."

The 11 pages are pay records and summaries reflecting how many points Mr. Bush accumulated toward fulfillment of his Guard obligation. The records don't document any service dates between April 16, 1972, and Oct. 28, 1972 – periods during which Mr. Bush was in Alabama.

[link via Atrios]

The release of the documents seems only to have fueled the fire.

Update: Calpundit analyzes the Burkett claim.

The New York Times gets it right in this editorial on yesterday's release by the White House of President Bush's National Guard records. In a nutshell, the payroll records are so at odds with statements by his superiors that further elaboration is essential:

If President Bush thought that his release of selected payroll and service records would quell the growing controversy over whether he ducked some of his required service in the Air National Guard three decades ago, he is clearly mistaken. The payroll records released yesterday document that he performed no guard duties at all for more than half a year in 1972 and raise questions about how he could be credited with at least 14 days of duty during subsequent periods when his superior officers in two units said they had not seen him.

Investigative reporting by The Boston Globe, our sibling newspaper, revealed in 2000 that Mr. Bush had reported for duty and flown regularly in his first four Texas Guard years but dropped off the Guard's radar screen when he went to Alabama to work on a senatorial campaign. The payroll records show that he was paid for many days of duty in the first four months of 1972, when he was in Texas, but then went more than six months without being paid, virtually the entire time he was working on the Senate campaign in Alabama. That presumably means he never reported for duty during that period.

According to Wolf Blitzer on CNN, the Associated Press reports that Wesley Clark will announce his withdrawal from the Presidential race tomorrow in his home state of Arkansas. Clark aides are confirming the report.

Would it have made a difference if Clark had run in Iowa? Will Kerry consider him as a VP candidate? We'd far prefer Clark to Gephardt, who is rumored to be under consideration for a Kerry VP slot. It will be hard to get excited about a Kerry-Gephardt ticket. No innovation, no one beyond the beltway, same old, same old. Gephardt is so "your father's Oldsmobile."

NBC News projects John Kerry as the winner of the Virginia primary. He is expected to take Tennessee as well. The Teamsters will endorse Kerry tomorrow.

Update: Kerry has fired his Wisconsin phone company for routing calls through Canada.

The White House released some military pay records for President Bush today, claiming they support his contention that he fully completed his military duty. Do they? Calpundit is all over this story.

Update: Here's an AP timeline of Bush's military service

Update: Reuters reports Bush's military record shows gaps.

Check out this flattering profile of Teresa Heinz Kerry . She's definitely not from the cookie-cutter mold. She's unconventional and says what's on her mind.

On the trail, she alludes to her background, raised under a repressive dictatorship in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique and schooled in racially segregated South Africa.

Mrs. Kerry, 65, admits she is hardly the stereotypical political wife, but said if voters couldn't accept her, she would have heard about it by now. She can be outspoken, disclosing her Botox injections, her prenuptial agreement with Kerry and the fact that he was in the bathroom when he got word of his wins in Iowa and New Hampshire.

She was a registered Republican and voted for former President George Bush, but not his son, the current president.

One of her frequent comments:

'I want to know why it is when men express an opinion its fine. When women express an opinion they are considered to be opinionated."'

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.....Joe Trippi is now discussing what went wrong with the Dean campaign--he lays much of the blame on the Internet campaign.

Internet activism that thrust up the Howard Dean U.S. election campaign later hobbled the organization's ability to respond to criticism in the weeks before the primaries, Dean's former campaign manager said on Monday.

Joe Trippi, who resigned after defeats in Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary, said the direct involvement of so many Internet supporters deprived the campaign of the traditional weapon of political surprise.

Some of what Trippi says makes sense. So, it just may be that the Internet is a great vehicle for raising campaign funds but not for spreading the word about the candidate's message or planning strategy. Can it be that simple?

Update: Dean now says he will stay in the race even if he loses Wisconsin.

Joel Rogers argues in The Nation that Wisconsin's progressive voters should vote for John Edwards:

Where Edwards diverges from Kerry is in addressing a series of issues of distinctive concern to progressives--inequalities of race and class, abusive corporate power, neoliberal globalization, ghetto poverty and prison, and the importance of worker and community organization outside the state. And what makes him distinctive is not just that he regularly touches these third-rail issues but is effectively running on them.

He is unabashedly pro-union. He regularly challenges white audiences to confront "the white problem" of continued racial injustice. His "two Americas" stump speech is all about class. He appreciates and notes the sheer pervasiveness of corporate crime--from tax evasion to union avoidance, predatory lending to environmental degradation, unsafe working conditions to subsidy abuse. He is sharply critical of the "Washington Consensus" on international trade and finance. He talks about the growth of poverty and dead-end jobs. And he's the only candidate who does this in engaging language ordinary voters understand.

Vincent Jones, writing for US Liberals, argues that the Dems should nominate an African-American in the veep slot in 2004. On the Bush side, he talks about Colin Powell possibly taking Dick Cheney's place, but he doesn't list any names for the Democratic ticket. We wonder who he had in mind?

The White House has been too white for too long. It's time for a change, no doubt about it. We'd welcome some diversity on the ticket.

Jeanne at Body and Soul has many insightful comments on Bush's performance on Meet the Press today. Our favorite:

The funniest moment was Bush saying that what troubled him about Vietnam was that "we had politicians making military decisions." Gosh, glad that didn't happen this time around.

Calpundit:

On Meet the Press this morning President Bush said he'd be delighted to turn over all his service records from his time in the Texas Air National Guard. Good news! But just as Russert was moving on to the next question, he added, "We did so in 2000, by the way." So the bottom line is: he doesn't plan to release anything he hasn't already released.

The transcript is here.

Dennis Kucinich on the drug war--this is definitely worth watching. Pass it on.

by TChris

Demonstrating the political savvy that comes from a successful career in Washington, John Kerry has "gingerly opened the way to debating a one-year gap in the public record of Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard."

"I don't know what the facts are with respect to the president's service," the decorated veteran said on a Tucson tarmac. "I know issues were raised previously. It's not up to me to talk about them or question them at this point. . . . It's up to the president and the military to answer those questions."

At first glance, this statement might seem bland and evasive. But notice how he drives the story forward without risking a backlash. He makes no accusations, but in the end he puts the ball squarely in Bush's court, saying it is "up to the president" to resolve the matter.

Bush claims that he satisfied his service requirement, but has not produced the documents that would settle the question. Other Democrats have revived the issue, including DNC Chairman Terence McAuliffe, who accused Bush of being "AWOL." But Kerry, whose own war record is a strength, "is uniquely positioned to make this issue stick." The issue could prove to be yet another embarrassment to the President. In any event, the issue invites attention to the respective war records of Bush and Kerry -- a comparison the Bush camp would prefer not to invite.

Update: On Sunday, President Bush defended his military record, criticized Democrats for making an issue of his National Guard service, and promised to release his service records -- "if we still have them." When asked why no evidence supported his claim that he reported to duty in Alabama during the summer and fall of 1972, Bush said: "There may be no evidence, but I did report."