Indians! Indians everywhere!

One of the joys of being from a small town is the joy I will always get when I see "my town" in a "big city" newspaper. Today's WashPost has a feature on my home congressional district, MN-7, and the crucial role its sugar beet industry could have on the 2004 elections. Shout-out for rural Minnesota.

I had this unnerving feeling on Metro all morning -- it just seemed at every stop, the cars got fulled with more Native Americans. This isn't any sort of racial-insecurity thing, nor do I think it's some vestigial fears from my ancestral Norwegian-settler great-grandparents on the prairie. I was just ... weird, like all my reservation sources from my cub-reporter days in Sioux Falls, South Dakota packed up and headed East. Then, the light bulb went off. Ah-ha! -- the National Museum of the American Indian opens tomorrow. Knight Ridder's got a whole package on it, led by recently retired blogger Tom Webb. Second new Smithsonian facility to open in the past year, following last year's Air and Space annex.

Big sigh of satisfaction ... my two-part series on Lt. Lonnie Moore, recovering veteran at Walter Reed, ran yesterday and today. I mentioned work on this last month, and the link to the story package is here. Would be flattered if you read it. Also, some odds 'n' ends on the delegation here.

Democratic Senate candidate Lee Jones is a heavy underdog against Sen. Sam Brownback, but that don't mean he ain't tryin'. Traveling across the state, he said today that Brownback doesn't represent Kansans. But mostly, not much is happening in the Sunflower State, as the GOP takes the state for granted.

For those of you really into the Kris Kobach-Dennis Moore race ... Kobach's doing an online chat at the Lawrence Journal-World today at 2:15 Eastern Time. Would be interested to know how it goes.