Is there any good news for Alan Keyes? Yes. Far Right supporters paid off thousands in tax debts so he could move to Illinois and engage in a political battle royale there. However, that appears to be the only development Keyes can brag about. Any hopes that prognosticators were wrong about his ability to compete with Democratic senatorial hopeful Barack Obama have proven unfounded. Obama's popularity has grown, if anything. His campaign doesn't ignore Keyes, but is treating him like one does a very determined gnat. The Baltimore Sun reports that the polls tell why.

At the moment, if you believe the polls — Keyes does not; he recently termed them "manipulative and degrading" and "the work of a biased media" — Illinoisans aren't buying it. A Bloomington, Ill., Pantagraph-St. Louis Post-Dispatch poll conducted last week found Obama favored 3-1, with 22 percent of voters reporting a favorable impression of Keyes.

Oh, those plots by the 'liberal media!'

But, let's go back to taxes. Keyes, a chronic tax deadbeat who resides in a $750,000 home, says neither he, nor others, should have to pay them.

He called for government to get out of people's private lives, and for an end to the income tax: "Not to cut the income tax, not to manipulate people by talking about how much of their own money we will let them keep so that they fall down on their knees and thank 'massa' government. ... We must be liberated from tax slavery."

Seems that, left to his own devices, Keyes takes the initiative in that regard.

Analysis of issues has not been the focus of Keyes' curious campaign so far. His jeremiads about them have. He says a proposed plan to match Individual Retirement Fund monies with government contributions is Communism. The movement to extend marital rights to homosexuals is pandering to "selfish hedonist(s)." According to Keyes, domestic terrorists are not Right Wingers who might blow up a federal building or maim and murder health care providers, but doctors who perform abortions. Barack Obama? He's a Marxist.