According to this story, the Sunday, July 18 session of the West Virginia legislature was not able to pass the bill to establihs procedures for a special U.S. Senate election this year.  The article presumes that the Governor will now proclaim a special election and set forth the administrative details.  It will be interesting to see what he does about ballot access for independent candidates, and for the nominees of unqualified parties.  UPDATE:  the Governor has called a 3:30 pm press conference on Monday, July 19, to discuss the topic of the special election.  LATER UPDATE:  the Press Conference has been postponed until Tuesday, July 20.

Elena Kagan, President Obama’s latest nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote her senior thesis on the history of the Socialist Party in New York city.  Here is a link to that paper.  It is 130 pages long, and was submitted in April 1981.  Kagan graduated from Princeton University as a history major.  Thanks to Jack Ross for the link.

On March 31, 2009, HR 1826 was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives, to provide for public funding for candidates for Congress.  The companion bill in the U.S. Senate is S752.

It is looking as though HR 1826 will not have gained any new co-sponsors during July 2010.  This will be the first month since the bill was introduced, and in which Congress was in session, that the bill won’t have gained any new co-sponsors.

The bill has 156 co-sponsors.  It gained 12 in March 2009, 10 in April 2009, 13 in May 2009, 21 in June 2009, 21 in July 2009, 13 in September 2009, 19 in October 2009, 8 in November 2009, 7 in December 2009, 4 in January 2010, 10 in February 2010, 3 in March 2010, 8 in April 2010, 4 in May 2010, and 3 in June 2010.