It hasn't aired in North Carolina yet, but TPM reports that disgraced former Secretary of State American hero Colin Powell did indeed endorse Barack Obama this morning on Meet the Press. More at TPM Election Central.

UPDATE: Within a half hour, Drudge is there to pull the inevitable lever:



UPDATE 2: MSNBC has the video.



UPDATE 3: As I wrote in the comments, contrary to my expectations before watching it I found this a very eloquent and moving endorsement that among other things completely eviscerates the smear campaign McCain has run, most devastatingly the neo-McCarthyism of people like Michelle Bachmann and the really vile disparagement of Muslim-Americans from high-ranking officials in the Republican party. It's one hell of an endorsement from a figure who still matters to a lot of people, if not to lefty bloggers.

A few more while I'm feeling fiery.

* Speaking of our entrenched class of professional morons, there's been a lot of good commentary today on the strikingly poor job Brokaw did interviewing Gore last Sunday. Just for starters, here's Grist and OpenLeft.

* For some reason, The Nation now has a sex column. The subject of this and presumably every edition: How hot does Barack Obama make you?

Pretty hot, I guess.

* Inside Homeland Security Hell: Nine-Months-Pregnant Edition. More at Daily Kos.

By the time Mrs. Villegas was released from the county jail six days later, she had gone through labor with a sheriff’s officer standing guard in her hospital room, where one of her feet was cuffed to the bed most of the time. County officers barred her from seeing or speaking with her husband.

After she was discharged from the hospital, Mrs. Villegas was separated from her nursing infant for two days and barred from taking a breast pump into the jail, her lawyer and a doctor familiar with the case said. Her breasts became infected, and the newborn boy developed jaundice, they said.