Updates

Politics:

Little Ricky Santorum, who doesn''t live there anymore, trails Bob Casey in Pennsylvania opinion polls by 23%, 56 to 33.

Coingate impresario Tom Noe plead guilty yesterday to illegally funneling campaign contributions to President Bush; prosecutors plan to recommend a two-and-one-half year sentence, while he could have gotten 15 years and a $950,000 fine. He still faces charges of embezzling from Ohio state worker's compensation funds.

AP has a story about moderate Republicans; says Blutarski Sweeney faces a "tough challenge" from Kirsen Gillibrand (who I learned from 20TrueBlue blog pronounces her name "Jill-i-brand")



Soccer:

Australia's Harry Kewell won't be fully fit for the World Cup group games.

Peter Crouch's scored England's third goal in their tune-up against Hungary last week, then did an 80s-style robot dance; here are photos, and video of the same dance, on a dance floor. Too funny.

The US beat Latvia 1-0 in Hartford Sunday night (we were there!) in their final tune-up before Germany and the World Cup. Eddie Johnson looked good; a crappy officiating crew from Canada kept calling him offside when he wasn't (we were sitting on the 18 yard line so we had the perfect view in the first half.) Brian McBride, or McHead, was magnificent, playing the entire game and scoring the only goal after getting a giant egg on his forehead from a clumsy Latvian attempted head. Landon Donovan kept taking most of our freekicks, why I can't imagine, as Eddie Lewis is much more accurate. Pablo Mastroeni played well but ran out of gas about the 70th minute. Johny O'Brien played 65 minutes; he's still not 90 minute match fit.

As preparations for our trip to Germany intensify, blogging will be light. I'll have a computer in Germany, so will be filing a few reports from there. Go USA!