Time: Hey, Dubya Might Have Voted For Obama in '08?

Did Bush cement his RINO label by oting for Obama in 2008?

Over the past week, former President George W. Bush has been giving us little appetizers in advance of the main course that is his new book, ranging from his thoughts on former Vice President Dick Cheney to his hurt feelings over Kanye West's comments post Katrina. But now, a real kicker: Did Bush support presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008? (via Financial Times)

During the 2008 presidential campaign a group of British officials, which included then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown, visited Bush in the Oval Office, the newspaper reported. The meeting came a short time after the president had endorsed Sen. John McCain in the election. During a light chat about the upcoming vote in which they expected Bush to say something nice about his one time Republican rival, he reportedly told the group, "I probably won't even vote for the guy.”

Whoah. Full stop. Come again?

"I had to endorse him," Bush said. "But I'd have endorsed Obama if they'd asked me.

Of course, there is no way to prove that any of this actually happened. None of the principals allegedly involved in this conversation are admitting anything.

Starting during the 2000 presidential campaign, rumors have swirled saying that Bush and McCain don't have the best relationship, cantankerous at best, and Bush didn't have too many flattering things to say about McCain in his book. Even so, I couldn't see Bush endorsing or much less voting for the ultra-liberal Obama over McCain, no matter what his personal feelings toward the Arizona senator are.

This is such a non-story that I wonder why Time even bothered to post it.

Did Illegally Voting Convicted Felons Put Al Franken in the Senate?

A Minnesota conservative watchdog group has found that enough convicted felons illegally voted from heavily Democratic districts in the 2008 elections that it could have pushed Senator Stuart Smalley over the top:

The six-month election recount that turned former "Saturday Night Live" comedian Al Franken into a U.S. senator may have been decided by convicted felons who voted illegally in Minnesota's Twin Cities. 

That's the finding of an 18-month study conducted by Minnesota Majority, a conservative watchdog group, which found that at least 341 convicted felons in largely Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race between Franken, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, then-incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman. 

The final recount vote in the race, determined six months after Election Day, showed Franken beat Coleman by 312 votes -- fewer votes than the number of felons whose illegal ballots were counted, according to Minnesota Majority's newly released study, which matched publicly available conviction lists with voting records. 

Furthermore, the report charges that efforts to get state and federal authorities to act on its findings have been "stonewalled." 

"We aren't trying to change the result of the last election. That legally can't be done," said Dan McGrath, Minnesota Majority's executive director. "We are just trying to make sure the integrity of the next election isn't compromised."

This alone may not have pushed him over the top. Franken would have had to have received ~62% of the convicted felon vote to have made the difference. This is obviously possible but not a certainty. However, if they found these 341 illegally voting felons, I wonder just how many there actually are that might not have been found, yet? If there are even a couple hundred more, that would of definately been enough to put him over the top.