SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:44 P.M. ET: 

KELLY WARNS – From The Politico:  "Former New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly says he’s concerned about a 'copycat' incident at Monday's Boston Marathon but believes authorities there have done all they can to secure the race and the region.  Appearing Sunday on ABC's 'This Week,' Kelly said he worries about 'some sort of copycat event, something that looks similar to what we saw last year' along the marathon route.  And, he said, there's also the potential for an attack elsewhere in the Boston area. 'Again, you cannot totally rule out an event happening away from the marathon,' he said. 'You need resources to respond to locations away from the marathon if something untoward happens,' and local authorities are prepared for that."  We'll hope for the best tomorrow.  We hope the Boston authorities are prepared, and that there was no political correctness in their preparations.

THE FRENCH ARE NOT TOAST – The French, who have a colonial history in Syria, have often been much more on top of the situation there than has our CIA.  From AFP:  "France has 'information' but no firm proof that Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime is still using chemical weapons, President Francois Hollande said Sunday. 'We have a few elements of information but I do not have the proof,' Hollande said in a radio interview after he was asked about reports that Assad was currently using chemical weapons.
'What I do know is what we have seen from this regime is the horrific methods it is capable of using and the rejection of any political transition,' he told the Europe 1 radio station."  I suspect the French know more, but don't want to be "definite" because that may dictate action.  We were assured by the UN this week that Syria is on schedule to "export" its chemical weapons, but that assumes that the UN actually knows how much inventory Syria actually has. 

GOP IN OREGON? – Obamacare in Oregon is a wreck, and Republicans feel they may actually have a shot at taking a Senate seat from that very Democratic and very trendy state.  From Fox:  "Democratic-leaning Oregon seems like an unexpected place for Republicans to advance their efforts to win control of the Senate this year. But with a strong candidate in a state with arguably the worst ObamaCare rollout in the country, Washington Republicans think they have a winning strategy.  A Republican hasn't been elected to a statewide Oregon office in more than a decade. But Washington Republicans think they have the right candidate in Monica Wehby, a children's brain surgeon who's raised more than $1 million and who, like Republicans, has made her opposition to ObamaCare the centerpiece of the 2014 campaign.  The roughly $160 million Oregon-run ObamaCare website failed to properly enroll anybody nearly five months after its Oct. 1, 2013, start, despite officials having worked since 2002 on creating an exchange."

April 20, 2014