Who Is Joe Miller?

He's the conservative Alaska attorney who stands on the brink of the year's biggest electoral upset, as absentee ballots are still being counted in his race against incumbent Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski, but The Wall Street Journal supplies some more biographical and contemporary context in a brief profile:

"He just came out of nowhere," said Richard Fineberg, an economics consultant in Fairbanks. "Not a lot of people know him."

Mr. Miller attributes his voter appeal to what he calls discontent over expansion of the federal government. "This country is in crisis and doesn't have much time to turn itself around," he said in an interview Friday at his law office and campaign headquarters in Fairbanks.

Mr. Miller--a graduate of West Point and Yale Law School, a combat veteran and former state and federal magistrate--advocates dismantling some federal agencies, saying many of their functions, such as the federal welfare system, should be handled by states. "The age of the entitlement state is over," he said.

Read the full story at The Wall Street Journal.