7 PM, KFOR (channel 4) in Oklahoma City. Carson's campaign is calling it a "debate", but KFOR's program listing only calls it "US Senate Town Hall Meeting Democrats". (It's followed at 7:30 PM by "US Senate Republican Town Hall Meeting." Insert your own theories about why the word "Republican" comes third but "Democrats" comes last.)

Update: Holy Christ, Channel 4 sure rigged this in Carson's favor. They only allowed 30 minutes for a debate, and they only allowed what they consider the "top two" candidates as determined by some unnamed polls, so they're not including Monte Johnson at all.

Carson is "debating" Carroll Fisher, who is under criminal indictment for abuses as Insurance Commissioner, and is also facing potential impeachment in the Oklahoma House. Fisher has no chance of winning anything - even if he's eventually acquitted, he's also been arrested for DUI and reprimanded by the state Ethics Commission, which is only acceptable if you're a Republican.

KFOR is the only Oklahoma City station even attempting to provide this information, and they've rigged it so Carson can't lose. A Tulsa station wanted to let Carson debate Johnson and others, but Carson refused, as noted in Brad Carson: Meh. What a joke.

Update 2: Well, I didn't get to see all of the GOP debate, but I saw all of the Democratic one, and it's distressing that Fisher made so much more sense.

• Carson says he endorsed Joe Lieberman for President and is proud of it, despite that Lieberman is the second-biggest Democratic Senatorial disaster in recent memory (Zell Miller is clearly #1). He did say that he supports John Kerry for President because "he's a Democrat," one of the few times he's dared say so in public
• Carson endorses enshrining discrimination against gay and lesbian citizens in the US Constitution as a step that "may be necessary" to preserve "important traditional" marriage. In his limited time, he didn't manage to communicate how two people of the same gender making a lifetime commitment "threatened" anyone else's marriage
• Time and time again, "Democrat" Carson emphasized how willing, if not eager, he is to break with his party. When he was asked if he would break with party lines if the majority of Oklahoma voters preferred the GOP position, I had hoped for a statement about being a leader, not a ballot box. Nope - Carson said he "absolutely" would go against party lines if Oklahoma voters wanted him to, because his "goal is to do what the people of Oklahoma want."
• A local activist group is raising a ruckus because "violent registered sex offenders" live in some nursing homes. This smells funny to me, because a "registered" sex offender has, by definition, served his (or her) sentence and been released. The group seems to be of the opinion that such people have no right to live-in nursing home care, no matter how elderly or sick they may be. (Remember when the proponents of registration laws said that the goal was simply public awareness, not vigilante actions to bar ex-felons from living where necessary? The media doesn't.)

  Carroll Fisher said such cases must be evaluated on an individual basis, although I'm not familiar with the concept that ex-felons of any class may be denied medical care because of their past. Carson, unsurprisingly, wants them all thrown onto the street, and wants to withhold "vital" federal Medicare and Medicaid funds from any nursing home that won't do so.

• Both Fisher and Carson were quite opposed to the idea that the US should admit UN election observers to Florida this fall, given all the obvious hanky-panky there in 2000, but Carson called trying to ensure fair elections a "crazy idea" that's a "perfect example of waht's wrong with politics," and emphasized he would have broken with the Democratic Party (if necessary) to vote against it.

One nugget I got from the GOP debate: Tom Coburn said that, as a Senator, he would use the Senate rules to block all business until it approved Bush's judicial nominees, as long as they were approved by the "bipartisan" Judiciary committee (where the GOP has a majority and has used party-line votes to approve Bush's most radical and reprehensible nominees). Sadly, the audience applauded vigorously.

Hobson's choice indeed.