May it be a portent:

May it be a portent: A week before the election in 1994, Charlton Heston was the main attraction at a fundraising dinner for Rod Grams in Bloomington, Minnesota. Heston stated that, when he was training for the chariot scene in Ben-Hur prior to filming, his director had no patience for Heston’s questions about the details of the scene. Heston recalled him exploding, “Just don’t fall out of the chariot! You’re going to win the damned race!” Heston’s advice to Grams was the same, and he was right.
Yesterday Heston attended the NRA convention in Duluth and addressed a crowd of 1,500 in support of Norm Coleman. Now hampered by Alzheimer’s, Heston was nevertheless able, though more haltingly, to tell the same story, and to give Norm the same advice. Try not to let the reporter’s editorializing bother you too much if you read the Star Tribune story, “Heston brings NRA message to Duluth.”
Tim Pawlenty must have a hell of an effective ad supporting commonsense state law measures against terrorism, because his opponents are trying to make an issue of it, and I would guess the Strib will weigh in editorially (on the editorial page) soon. The story is worth reading: “Pawlenty ad on terrorism causes a stir.” As almost always on stories like this, the St. Paul Pioneer Press version is more balanced. The Pioneer Press story is also worth reading, “Pawlenty ad fuels fears, rivals say.” Also of interest today is Dane Smith’s profile of Pawlenty in the Strib this morning, “Pawlenty’s ID: ‘Contemporary conservative.'”
Saving the best for last, our friend and faithful reader Brian Sullivan, who lost the Republican endorsement to Pawlenty by a hair, writes a magnanimous piece in support of him on the Strib’s op-ed page today in “Only Pawlenty offers voters alternative to tax-prone rivals.”