AMERICA/Conor O'Clery: Howard Dean has emerged as the front-runner among nine Democrats vying for the presidential nomination in 2004, at least in terms of his ability to raise funds.
Dismissed six months ago as an upstart from an oddball state, he raised $7.5 million in the last three months, more than any of his rivals could manage. Of this $4 million came from an innovative grassroots "telethon"-type Internet campaign which channelled donations through his web-site, DeanforAmerica.com.
The former Vermont governor has tapped into a deep vein of discontent among Democratic voters with his vociferous opposition to the Iraq war. He has made an impact with young people hungry to take on the President and who feel let down by more cautious candidates. Dean maintains that George Bush moved the country so far to the right that most Democratic candidates ran after him and ended up supporting the war and tax cuts and alienating the liberal base that detests the Bush administration. He is no way-out liberal, however.
As governor he was pro-gun and supported the death penalty. This gives him some credentials to move to the centre when things get serious. The Dean challenge now has to be seriously reassessed by former Congressman Richard Gephardt, who was favourite to win the Iowa caucus but has come fifth in money raised, and Senator John Kerry, who hoped to win the New Hampshire primary. These two contests will kick off the presidential campaign in January.
Mr Kerry, still the party's favoured candidate, raised $6 million in the last quarter. The telegenic Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, top money-spinner in the first quarter with $7.4 million, pulled in $5 million and has not attracted enthusiastic grassroots support.
Al Gore's former running mate, Senator Joseph Lieberman, the most hawkish of the nine, raised a similar amount but he, too, is seen to be slipping.
All five top-tier candidates have enough cash to take them to January but the battle is narrowing to Dean and Kerry, barring a strong late entry, which is always possible: Bill Clinton didn't declare until four months before the primaries.
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George Bush, meanwhile, has been raking it in. No Democrat can match his fund-raising prowess. The President raised $34.2 million in the second quarter for his re-election campaign just by turning up at a few dinners. At each event he makes the same rallying speech, about al-Qaeda being on the run and about two regimes that challenged the United States being no more. He gets rapturous applause for mentioning his tax cuts. He repeats at every stop - most recently in Tampa on Monday - that "two-and-a-half years ago we inherited an economy in recession." Except he didn't. President Bush took office in January 2001.
The recession officially started in March 2001, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, which decides these things. But blaming Clinton for everything goes down well with the Republican faithful. Mr Bush also makes the same jokes in every campaign speech. "Dick Cheney is a great Vice-President of the United States, the greatest Vice-President," he says, drawing applause. "I say the greatest - Mother might have a different opinion." (Bush's father was Vice-President to Ronald Reagan.)
The current Vice-President has his own self-deprecating crack to start off his campaign speeches. "This has been an impressive turnout for the number two man on the ticket," Dick Cheney declares. "But like I always say, nothing draws a crowd like raw charisma."
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No one can accuse Jerry Springer of being charisma-challenged or of lacking the capacity for self-promotion. The talk show host who provokes guests into screaming obscenities and throwing chairs on episodes with titles like "Your Lover Is Mine!" is talking about a new career - as a US senator. If movie actor Arnold Schwarzenegger can run for governor of California, which he is expected to do if Democratic Governor Gray Davis is terminated in a recall ballot, why should someone like Jerry Springer not make a run for Capitol Hill?
"I could be an incredible voice in the Senate," Springer told Ohio Young Democrats on Saturday. "Why? Because the media will cover me every single day."
One can imagine Springer strolling through the Senate chamber egging on Senators Trent Lott and Ted Kennedy to divulge their innermost secrets as spectators in the gallery scream encouragement.
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Denver is gripped by the mystery of the serial killer - of cats. Four cat corpses in the last week bring to 40 the number of mutilated felines that have been found in the mile-high city in the last year. To the west in Salt Lake City 10 more murdered cats have been found. Maybe someone has taken to heart Simon Bond's book "101 uses for a Dead Cat", except that these dead cats are not being used to prop open doors or for other useful purposes. There are no suspects, but there is one Washington resident who is known to have adopted stray cats at shelters, take them home, treat them as pets, and then cut them up to further his skills as a medical student.
"It was, of course, a heinous and dishonest thing to do," he would recall later. "And I was totally schizoid about the entire matter." By day, this cat-killer said, he was a little boy who lived in Nashville and had decided to become a doctor, by night he was the "future cardiothoracic surgeon who was not going to let a few sentiments about cute, furry little creatures stand in the way of his career."
Who is this person? None other than Senate Majority Leader (and heart surgeon) Bill Frist. Dr Frist was embarrassed when a Boston Globe reporter dug up his confessions in an out-of-print 1989 book. There's a twist. Five years ago a killer called Rusty Weston shot dead two policemen on Capitol Hill before being shot and injured. Frist rushed to the scene, gave medical aid and rode with Weston in the ambulance to the hospital. It emerged later that Weston had shot dead 14 of his family's cats.