Ed Morrissey says New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson could be the most dangerous Democrat in the race. Very true. He's got a great political profile: tons of experience, Latino, from the Southwest, etc. The addition of Nevada to the primary calendar and the selection of Denver as the site of the 2008 convention help Richardson on the margin as well.

Morrissey suggests there are other reasons Richardson should worry front runner Hillary Clinton:

Richardson should worry Hillary Clinton based on his extensive experience. However, his experience with the Clintons also might give Hillary Clinton a different set of vulnerabilities, depending on whether the former baseball player will go hardball in the primary race.

Even the fact of his candidacy makes a case for his readiness to dish on Hillary Clinton. He's just young enough at age 60 to have waited for 2012 or 2016 to avoid going against Hillary Clinton, and yet he chose to run against his former boss' spouse. That indicates that Richardson doesn't feel especially loyal to either Clinton on the national stage and hints that some fireworks may await us on the primary trail.

Will he start telling stories out of school about first lady Hillary Clinton and her actions during those years? Richardson isn't known as a hardball politician despite his prowess on the baseball field in his youth, but he has to know that running against Hillary Clinton will require such a mindset.

So far, Richardson is the only member of the Clinton cabinet now running for president, and the only one with the motivation to go negative about Hillary Clinton's work during her husband's two terms in the White House.

Pure speculation, of course, but interesting. However, it also looks like Richardson may have an an issue of his own that could end up getting dished in a game of presidential primary hardball - and one not dissimilar to the problem that plagued the aforementioned frontrunner's husband.

Another possibility that Morrissey doesn't address is that Richardson isn't out to get Hillary so much as he's angling to be her (or someone else's) vice presidential pick.

And here I thought I had watched the end of Richardson's career back in June of 200 when Senator Robert Byrd dressed down the then Secretary of Energy over the loss of two computer disks containing nuclear secrets at the Los Alamos lab. (The discs were subsequently found by the FBI behind a copy machine.) At the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing called to investigate the security blunder, Senator Byrd said to Richardson:

I have to say, I am not calling for your resignation at this moment, but you have shown a supreme, a supreme contempt of the committees of this Congress. When you decided that you would go-- if the newspaper stories are correct-- when you decided that you would go before the Intelligence Committee when you were ready... you weren't ready yet...that was a supreme act of callous arrogance, and I resent it. I think it's a rather sad story that you had a bright and brilliant career that you had never, that you would never again receive the support of the Senate of the United States for any office to which you might be appointed. It's beyond... you have squandered your treasure, and I am sorry.

F. Scott Fitzgerald may have been right in saying "there are no second acts in American lives," but there sure are in politics. And what a remarkable final act it would be for Richardson to cap his career by either scoring a huge upset to take the nomination or by winning himself a number two slot on the '08 Democratic ticket.