Character Reference: As Alabama voters go to the polls today for the special Senate election, Fox News published a poll that says Democrat Doug Jones leads accused child molester Roy Moore by 10 points.

While other polls have it much closer, even a dead heat, the Fox poll suggests that pollsters who don’t personally call cellphones are missing a lot of Democratic voters. There also tend to be flaws in robocall polls, which get a lower response rate. On the flipside, many Moore voters may be reluctant to admit it to a stranger on the phone.

Nate Silver writes on his fivethirtyeight  blog that, “Somebody’s going to be wrong in Alabama.” He notes that one poll has Moore leading by 9 points. Silver says, “What we’re seeing in Alabama goes beyond the usual warnings about minding the margin of error.”

The election is considered to be a referendum on President Trump’s leadership, and whether morality counts for a Republican member of the United States Senate. Six women have accused Moore of sexually abusing or coming on to them when he was in his 30s and they were teenagers. Moore denies ever knowing any of them, although two of them have signed notes from him.

Subway Attack: The explosion in the New York subway system yesterday appears to have been an attempted suicide attack with a crude pipe bomb.

A video clip shows a cloud of smoke bursting amid the morning rush of commuters in a pedestrian tunnel. Three people were injured including the bomber, identified as Akayed Ullah, 27, an immigrant from Bangladesh who lived in Brooklyn. He was being treated for cuts and burns.

Investigators say he told them he set off his bomb in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria and elsewhere.

The bomb blew at 7:20 am in a walkway connecting the Eighth Avenue, Seventh Avenue and Broadway lines, police said. Ullah so far is believed to have acted alone.

President Trump said in a statement, “Today’s attempted mass murder attack in New York City — the second terror attack in New York in the last two months — once again highlights the urgent need for Congress to enact legislative reforms to protect the American people.”

The 4^th Estate: White House reporters had one of their testiest exchanges with Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders yesterday following a press conference by three women who claimed President Trump groped them years ago. The three had called for the president to resign.

Sanders said the president had already denied the allegations and,
“This took place long before he was elected to be president and the people of this country had a decisive election, supported president Trump and we feel that these allegations have been answered through that process.” She also said that eyewitnesses could prove the incidents never occurred, but she didn’t name them.

Several senators, including New York Kirsten Gillibrand, called for Trump to resign.

But anyway, Sanders deflected several questions on the matter until a reporter asked a question about how the president treats the difference between mistakes made by the press and Russian election influencing. Trump has denounced the American press, but not the Russians.

“There’s a very big difference between making honest mistakes and purposefully misleading the American public,” Sanders said. Exactly what we’ve been saying. She was unable to cite an example of a story that was intentionally misleading.

Cooked: Celebrity chef Mario Batali is stepping away from his restaurant business and television show after he was accused of sexual misconduct.

Batali was done in by a report on the food business website Eater  that said at least four women have accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior.

The story says, “Three of the women worked for Batali in some capacity during their careers. One former employee alleges that over the course of two years, he repeatedly grabbed her from behind and held her tightly against his body.”

Batali issued a statement saying, “That behavior was wrong and there are no excuses.”

Dear Mr. Secretary: The reorganization and dismantling of the State Department is one of the quiet stories of the Trump Administration. Career diplomats with decades of experience are being forced out and not replaced.

The resignation letter of Elizabeth Shackelford, who most recently served as a political officer based in Nairobi, went public this week. She wrote to Secy. of State Rex Tillerson, “Over the past 10 months our government has failed to demonstrate a commitment to promoting and defending human rights and democracy.” She said, “I have deep respect for the career Foreign and Civil Service staff who, despite the stinging disrespect this Administration has shown our profession, continue the struggle to keep our foreign policy on the positive trajectory necessary to avert global disaster in increasingly dangerous times.”

Nation: San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee collapsed and died while grocery shopping last night. Lee, 65, was the city’s first Asian-American mayor.

To the Moon, Alice: President Trump declared yesterday that it should be NASA’s goal to “lead an innovative space exploration program to send American astronauts back to the moon, and eventually Mars.” Interesting. It’s already the goal of NASA to send astronauts to Mars, but there’s no money appropriated to go back to the moon. As they say, “No bucks, no Buck Rogers.”

No word on whether Trump would fuel the new moon program with coal-fired rockets.

Casting Call: Comic actor Seth Rogen has been cast to play the legendary CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite in a new movie about the Kennedy assassination. Cronkite would be flattered to be portrayed by an actor as handsome as Rogen.

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