According to the Politico, Kit Bond is expected to announce this afternoon that he is not going to seek reelection to a 5th term in the Senate.  

In a speech before Missouri's General Assembly, Bond announced Thursday that after 40 years of public service in the state, he would retire at the end of the 111th Congress.

"As a sixth-generation Missourian, I have always loved our state. Through 40 years in public life I have met many wonderful people. The people I have met along the way are the reason I ran for public office and the reason I am still here," said Bond, 69, according to his prepared remarks. "I thank the voters of Missouri who elected me to represent them. There is no greater honor. I am truly blessed to have been entrusted by them with the responsibility of public office." 

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/010 9/17213.html

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This might be gearing up to be another brutal cycle for the Republicans. Here's the latest speculation from The Kansas City Star:

Four-term Missouri Sen. Kit Bond is to address the Missouri General Assembly this morning amid speculation that he may have a surprise announcement.

A surprise most likely would be a statement that Bond, a Republican, won't seek a fifth term in 2010.

Politico is going even further, reporting that Kit Bond "will not run for re-election in 2010, giving Democrats a shot to pick up a seat in a state that has emerged as a major battleground."Update [2009-1-8 10:53:29 by Jonathan Singer]: So does NBC News.

If this story does pan out and Bond does not run for a fifth term next year, it would be particularly bad news for the Republicans. Already one potentially vulnerable Republican Senator from a swing state -- Mel Martinez of Florida -- has announced that he won't run again, and the biggest Republican name in that state, Jeb Bush, won't be running either. If you add to that list the name of Bond, who has been elected four times to the Senate and twice before that to the Governorship, all of the sudden potential Republican candidates all around the country start to wonder, if established names who presumably should be able to win easily don't want to run, can I really win?

Looking more locally into the MO-Sen race itself should Bond indeed retire, The Star says that former House Minority Whip Roy Blunt might be interested in the race. Of course House Republicans lost close to 60 seats under Blunt's watch over the last two cycles, so he isn't exactly the strongest potential pick. On the Democratic side, the name floating around the most seems to be that of Secretary of State Robin Carnanan, whom some (myself included) met at both Netroots Nation and the blogger tent at the Democratic National Convention. Another potential candidate could be state senator Jeff Smith, known to many as the subject of the fine documentary Can Mr. Smith Get To Washington Anymore? about his 2004 congressional bid.

At this point, if indeed Bond is out, it's hard to see how this race wouldn't be rated as a tossup.

As a quick aside... I do have to note how cool it was for Jean Carnahan, Robin's mother and a former Senator in her own right, to have introduced herself to me as "a blogger for Fired Up Missouri" rather than as a former United States Senator.

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Well, it looks like Mitch McConnell and his disciples in the Congress are once again attempting to shred the Constitution, and asking the American people to give up generations of Constitutional protections because he and George W. Bush are acutely incompetent. As we all know, the NIE came out the other day and showed serious problems. Instead of addressing these problems, Mitch McConnell and the Republican leadership would rather ask us to shred our Constitution. Lets look at McConnell and Bond's proposals:

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