Howard Dean has replaced Joe Trippi in a shake up of his senior campaign staff. Looks like desperation time in Dean-land. It says a lot that they couldn’t do this behind the scenes, quietly. At the same time, maybe he feels that the campaign needs to send a message to more traditional party folks that they’re ready to play ball – and he did that by getting rid of the maverick in mid-course.

goes tomorrow night and should prove to be extremely interesting, particularly since the results in Iowa. I wasn’t arround to comment on all of that news, but Steven Johnson has done a pretty good job of summing it up.

on a significant change in procedures for obtaining financial records from banks and other financial institutions in the US: Bush Grabs New Power for FBI. Yet another hit for civil liberties for our neighbours to the South.

General Wesley Clark’s testimony in the trial against Milosevic is now available online.

has the Gore endorsement of Dean story covered on his blog. For my part, I think it’s a key shoring-up element for Dean to distance himself from accusations that he’s still a fringe candidate notwithstanding his popularity. In terms of Gore’s motivations, it may seem naive to say so, but I think Gore has, in the post-2000 period, had a sort of a rebirth experience in which he has turned his back on the super-centrist “New Democrat” formulation that people like Lieberman still hold. I think his endorsement of Dean has a lot to do with him trying to point the way to a Democratic Party that isn’t radically leftist (which is impossible in the US anyhow) but is nevertheless distinguishable from moderate Republicanism.