An anonymous reader inquires as to my thoughts about the possibility that Bush was wired for that first debate (and the last one, too, actually).

Put away your tinfoil hats; this has progressed beyond being conspiracy-theory material. Salon was the first semi-major media outlet to write about the story. The NYT followed.

Scanning through blogs, I'm sure I've now seen dozens of photos that purport to show something. Kos has a picture up from the town-hall debate that seems to show a wire running down a Bush's back, for example. Or maybe it's a wrinkle in his suit. It's hard to tell.

The evidence that Bush has been wired before is pretty compelling. Check out isbushwired.com for that stuff, including some video and a couple of compelling anecdotal accounts. That Bush has likely been wired in the past makes it more likely that he might be wired later, for those of you keeping track at home.

Would you put it past Karl Rove to wire the president for the debates? I wouldn't exclude the possibility. The debate rules did include a strange negotiated clause forbidding photographs of the candidates from the back. Why could that possibly be? Bush has too much junk in the trunk? A big ass? A hole to jack into the Matrix on the back of his head? It's all a little confusing.

If Bush were definitively caught cheating, though, the ensuing brouhaha would almost certainly doom his re-election. Perhaps Rove was so arrogantly confident about not being caught that he did do it. But hanging on to (and abusing) power seems to be the leitmotif of this administration, and they have consistently been risk-averse when it comes to scandal. Wiring Bush for a debate would have been a scandal.

My answer, then? Possible but unlikely. We need a good ol' leak from a patriot inside the Bush campaign to push this story along.