Martha’s legal team has appealed her court conviction on the basis that one of the jurors lied about a past arrest on assault charges. Stewart’s lawyers also alluded to the fact that throughout the original trial, the courtroom was unnecessarily drab.

Fineman: “I’ve never thought that the Clarke-Condi battle would decide the presidential election. It’s Iraq that will matter. The fundamental question: whether the invasion and occupation of that country has made America safer — or less so.”

He’s right. But there’s more to it than the “safer” question. That is the “ends” questions. But there is also the equally important “means” question. That question is about credibility and trust. Did the Bush team mislead the public on the way to Iraq?

There are the Democratic ads. There are the Republican ads. And then there is the Bill Frist show on the Senate floor. Has the majority leader focused too much of his podium time defending the White House and attacking Kerry? According to one of his colleagues, the Senate floor could be a convention hall if only Frist was accompanied by “the balloons, the buttons and the brass band.”

I really hate it when they mix politics and the Senate…

For the last few years, there has been a movement to return to some of the old values of music. The singer-songwriter is starting to re-emerge and get props for being creator and performer. Fine. That’s a good trend. But can it go too far. Are we really going to judge Britney and Jessica Simpson according to whether or not they wrote (or co-wrote, or typed) the songs on their CD? Next you’ll be telling me that Simpson wrote that Chicken of the Sea bit all on her own.

Couldn’t the focus on merit and art threaten the very idea of pop? It’s time to take a stand. Keep your art out of my pop star.

AirAmerica could just be a warm-up act. Coming soon, Al Gore TV. Gore is reportedly part of a deal to acquire and build-out a new news network; “Mr. Gore’s group plans to transform the sleepy foreign-news outlet into a youth-oriented public-affairs channel, a jump-cut news network for the iPod set.”