October 2010

From Joe Miller's campaign:

Congressional Democrats' pro-Obamacare votes "could prove to be their political death," the Hill writes.

Yesterday's “Restoring Sanity” rally sponsored by Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart of the Daily Show and Stephen Colbert of the Colbert Report attracted young fans of the shows, self-professed moderates looking for a toned down debate, and great deal of partisan liberal Democrats.

Mediaite reports that Yusuf Islam (aka Cat Stevens) was at Jon Stewart's rally in D.C. today:

We are still learning the details of the terrorist plot to send explosives into the U.S. from Yemen via cargo plane, so it is too early to make a definitive assessment. However, we have enough information to make some preliminary observations and ask some fundamental questions.

Chances are, if you're reading this site on the weekend before Election Day, you are searching hungrily for political insight, the latest Rasmussen, Gallup, Monmouth, Quinnipiac (my favorite), Harris, or network poll on races across the country. Well, you've come to the right place. But you do also…

Martinsburg, W.V.

Resurgent Republic released this pre-election memo on Friday that should top your weekend reading list. The analysis, authored by three top GOP strategists and Resurgent Republic leaders -- Ed Gillespie, Whit Ayers and Leslie Sanchez – argues that Obama and the Democrats’ slide among independent…

If you abhor uncertainty, this coming week will be a good week for you. On Tuesday voters will let you know the direction in which we want our politicians to take our country. On Wednesday Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues -- or some of them, since unanimity at the Fed…

Eighteen-term Democratic congressman Jim Oberstar usually wins his "Iron Range"-based Minnesota House seat with more than 65% of the vote, but a new SurveyUSA poll shows him leading Republican Chip Cravaack--a former Navy pilot and Northwest Airlines pilot--by just 1 point. 

Matt Continetti: "Watch Bloomberg."

Those who favor small government, less government spending and, in particular, getting rid of earmarks are getting pretty excited about the prospect of Harry Reid losing his election in Nevada on Tuesday. Brian Baker, president of both Taxpayers Against Earmarks and the Ending Spending Fund, emails:

ABC's Jonathan Karl documents how Democratic attack ads recently have been nothing about the policy and all about the personal. Take, for instance, this snippet about a House race in Kentucky:

Since taking office, the Obama administration’s policy toward Syria has been one of engagement. Repeated visits by high-level U.S. officials, as well as a strong push to re-send an ambassador there, were meant to signal to Damascus a departure from the Bush administration’s policy of isolation. The…

A Monmouth poll from two weeks ago showed O'Donnell trailing Coons, 38% to 57%. But a new Monmouth poll, released today, shows Christine O'Donnell trailing Chris Coons by just 10 points, 41% to 51%.  The poll finds that O'Donnell is now in the lead with independent voters--47% to 42%. Democrats are…

In case you were wondering if Charlie Crist's and Bill Clinton's last minute antics might shake up the Florida Senate race, Mason-Dixon says the answer is no:

With recent polling consistently showing the GOP nominee, Mark Kirk, leading mob banker Alexi Giannoulias in the Illinois Senate race, the Democrats are pulling out all the stops to try and steal any Republican advantage. 

Mason Dixon finds the exact same results that Rasmussen and CNN found recently in the Nevada Senate race: Angle 49%, Reid 45%. Meanwhile, Reid is claiming that the press has gone "easy" on Angle. That's a pretty absurd statement. Perhaps he's preparing himself for a loss.

"If you see an F-14 Tomcat," says a friend who teaches a U.S. Navy flight intercept course, "it's enemy. Shoot it down." 

Rasmussen reports:

The other day the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that election officials could provide a list of write-in candidates to voters who asked for it (a lower court judge had ruled officials could not do this). In protest, more than 100 Alaskans have registered as write-in candidates: 

The Cook Political Report yesterday released 15 new House race rating changes (subscription required), including shifting the race in Virginia between Democratic incumbent Gerry Connolly and Republican Keith Fimian to a toss up. Additionally, Georgia Blue Dog Democrat Jim Marshall's race against…

On two occasions over the past week, former president Bill Clinton attempted to persuade Democratic congressman Kendrick Meek to drop out of the Florida Senate race and endorse Republican-turned-Independent Florida governor Charlie Crist in the three-way contest. Clinton, who had campaigned for…

November 2nd is going to be a great day for Republicans. You can feel the good vibrations coming through strong now.

Bill Clinton pushed Kendrick Meek to quit Florida race.

David Zurawik, TV critic for the Baltimore Sun, has a searing critique of President Obama's appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night:

The Washington Senate race remains tight, according to Rasmussen:

A new Hays Research poll of the Alaska Senate race showing Joe Miller in third place is getting a lot of attention, but there actually hasn't been a lot of movement in this particular poll. Miller is exactly where he was a week ago, according to Hays: 

From Mike Allen's Playbook:

Yesterday, Marco Rubio said during a conference call with conservative bloggers that the Florida Senate race has seen some tightening. And sure enough, Quinnipiac releases a poll showing Rubio up seven points on Charlie Crist, with Meek fading to 15%. Barring a Meek endorsement of Crist, it's hard…

Among those regions of the country that are culturally self-conscious--northern New England, Southern California, Appalachia--the South has been especially occupied, during the past two centuries, in defining what constitutes its distinctive character. As with any such topic, there is no end of…

Steve Hayes, with Charles Krauthammer and Mara Liasson, discussed the election last night on Fox News:

On October 30, 2008 -- just days before the 2008 presidential election -- Bill Kristol restored sanity on Jon Stewart's Daily Show:

On Monday, Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that two doctors had offered sworn affidavits accusing Wisconsin Democrat Ron Kind's staff of charging them money in order to meet to discuss legislation: 

In the midst of a deluge of correspondence from learned readers correcting, amplifying and elaborating on my little post yesterday comparing the passage of Obamacare, next week’s elections, and November 2012 to Borodino, Leipzig, and Waterloo (I’m learning a lot about the historiographic…

A close look at the Senate polls suggests that they are likely understating the probability of Republican victories. Most seem to be under-sampling either Republicans, independents, or both. As a result, in 10 of 12 key Senate races, the Republican candidate’s likelihood of winning appears to be…

The name of Joshua Slocum (1844-1909) barely registers now, but a century ago, he approached what we would call celebrity today. Descendant of a loyalist family that fled to Nova Scotia after the Revolution, he led a life that would be impossible in our time: running away to sea in his youth,…

1. Senate Outlook. Last week I wrote that the Senate outlook was still cloudy. This week it has cleared up a bit, as expected.  Mixed results for the Grand Old Party. The good news is that the Republican position in Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Nevada has firmed up a bit.

The Washington Post reports:

President Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress seriously misdiagnosed the politics of health care reform. Yet their malpractice is even more extensive than generally known.Polling consistently shows that opposition to the new law outstrips support. Rasmussen’s tracking surveys regularly…

What better way for an RNC chairman to spend time right before an election than plotting his own reelection?

Feds reportedly subpoena Manchin officials in West Virginia.

A new batch of polls by CNN shows similar results to what other pollsters are finding (Republicans listed first):

ABC reports:

Ben Smith reports:

This report suggests that Barbara Boxer's latest tactic -- asking teachers to volunteer their students for her campaign -- might be illegal: 

Yesterday's news about an entire squadron of nuclear missiles dropping offline may have blown up the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, projected to hit the floor during the lame duck session of Congress.

The Washington Post's Aaron Blake reports that Virginia on senator Jim Webb's lackluster fundraising: 

Fox News reports:

In the West Virginia Senate race, Rasmussen showed Republican John Raese with a 7-point lead a week ago, but now puts Governor Joe Manchin on top 49% to 46%. It looks like Manchin has done an effective job of running away from his past support of Obamacare and hitting Raese for his comments that…

In an article entitled, "Health care vote-switchers an endangered species," the Washington Post writes:

Jim DeMint's Senate Conservatives Fund has posted a $7 million haul to date--70% of the money was raised online. From an SCF press release:

Politico's Jeanne Cummings reports: 

It's a fiscally conservative message with pro-life imagery:

How does Chinese espionage work? One illustrative case is recounted in court documents leading up to the guilty plea last week of 28-year-old Glenn Duffie Shriver of Detroit, Michigan.

I was reminded, reading Fred Bauer's interesting post, that on the day after Obamacare passed, I'd compared President Obama's legislative success to Napoleon's catastrophic victory at Borodino.

The Republican challenger to Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank was interviewed last night by Sean Hannity on the Fox News Channel:

The last time I was at the Elks Lodge of Toms River, NJ, was during a comic book convention 25 years ago. (It's where I bought Amazing Spider-Man #129, in which the Punisher makes his first appearance. I'm told it's actually worth something today.) Last Sunday night I found myself back at the…

CNS News writes that, after having misquoted the Declaration on "at least five occasions in the past," President Obama has now started reciting its most famous sentence correctly, including its statement that our rights are endowed by our Creator.  CNS News provides a great clip of the president's…

1. An Unsustainable Strategy.  It’s become increasingly clear that one strategy of the White House this midterm is to amp up African-American and Hispanic turnout, and this has occasionally gone so far as to include pitting ethnic groups against each other.

The Atlantic (and now Wired) is reporting that an entire squadron of nuclear missiles unexpectedly dropped into a "launch facility down" status on Saturday morning, taking a sizable portion of America's nuclear deterrent offline:

"She’s going to hell, this bitch!"--Joy Behar, tolerant liberal, on Sharron Angle.

In the Washington Post yesterday, Jackson Diehl had a column on the failure of the State Department to provide funding to something called the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, a collection of providers of gizmos that can circumvent firewalls constructed on the Internet by repressive…

A few months ago the Wall Street Journal ran a splendid essay by Allen Barra that could only be described as therapeutic. Entitled “What ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ Isn’t,” it was a calm, clear-headed, even humorous, evisceration of a novel that seems to be universally admired, required reading in…

The Cook Political Report has updated seven House races, moving all seven "Solid Democrat" races to "Likely Democrat." The list includes Frank Pallone of New Jersey, David Price of North Carolina, Peter DeFazio of Oregon, Jim Cooper of Tennessee, Lloyd Doggett of Texas, John Tierney of…

Fred Barnes, with Juan Williams and Charles Krauthammer, on Fox News last night:

Jimmy Vielkind reports:

A new SurveyUSA poll shows Democrat Jim Costa trailing Republican Andy Vidak by 10 points, 42% to 52%. Obama won the Fresno-based district with 60% of the vote in 2008, and Cook Political Report has the race rated "Leans Democrat."

In what it calls "a dramatic rebuke to a sitting president and freshly minted statute," National Journal writes that likely voters favor the repeal of Obamacare by a margin of 10 percentage points:  51 to 41 percent. The newly released Congressional Connection Poll, which National Journal conducted…

Ben Smith writes of Marco Rubio's closing ad:

From J. P. Freire, at the Washington Examiner:

As always, RealClearPolitics has your daily polling fix. 

Well, uglier: 

In a two-minute TV commercial, Marco Rubio closes out the campaign by coming back to the theme of preserving American exceptionalism: 

Should we bomb Iran to keep it from getting nuclear weapons? A new study by Eytan Gilboa shows that there has been a pronounced shift in public opinion toward an affirmative answer. It reports that “poll results indicate much more public determination to stop Iran than has been evidenced in…

CNN reports:

After former California Democratic governor (and 2010 gubernatorial candidate) Jerry Brown lost the 1992 presidential primary, he was a bit candid about his campaign promises on a CNN program:

Seven months after Obamacare's passage, the Senate's two doctors have conducted a “check-up” on the highly unpopular health care overhaul, the passage of which is about to cost the Democrats their nearly 80-seat advantage in the House and possibly even their 18-seat advantage in the Senate (where…

I have to admit, I’m of two minds about this midterm election.  There’s Bruce Banner and there is the Incredible Hulk.

Via Allahpundit, a strident call to identity politics from our post-partisan, post-racial president:

Gallup: Republicans hold 55% to 41% lead over Democrats on generic congressional ballot.

Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, shows West Virginia's Democratic governor and Senate candidate Joe Manchin with a 6-point lead over Republican John Raese, 50% to 44%. Two weeks ago, PPP put Manchin up 3 points over Raese, while Rasmussen showed Raese with a 7-point lead six days ago. 

When Republican congressman Christopher Shays of Connecticut lost his reelection bid in 2008, he left office as the last of the New England House Republicans. The New York Times has a story about Republican Dan Debicella and Democratic incumbent Jim Himes, who replaced Shays in the Fourth…

Dinesh D'Souza writes this letter to the editor in response to Andrew Ferguson's review of his latest book, The Roots of Obama’s Rage, which appeared in last week's issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD:

Bill Kristol, with Juan Williams, Nina Easton, and Brit Hume, on yesterday's Fox News Sunday's "Panel Plus":

It turns out that October is fashion month at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, so there’s probably no better time to check out the extensive photography exhibit, “Avedon Fashion: 1944-2000,” in the MFA’s Foster Gallery. Even a quick walk through the galleries shows how Richard Avedon helped shape some…

West Virginia governor and Democratic Senate candidate Joe Manchin was asked by Politics Daily if he'll support Obama's reelection in 2012. Manchin's response: "That's such a hypothetical thing, but basically I think there's two more years that have to play out."

In Pennsylvania, the Morning Call/Muhlenberg daily tracking poll gave Republicans quite a scare last week when it showed Joe Sestak leading Pat Toomey 44% to 41%, but now, following the debates, the same poll shows Toomey back on top 47% to 42%. In the RealClearPolitics average of polls, Toomey…

On Oct. 22, Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, among our most knowledgeable progressive political commentators, published a courteous rebuttal, “Debating the Tea Party: A Reply to Peter Berkowitz,” to my recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Why Liberals don’t get the Tea Party Movement.”  The…

Senator Lisa Murkowski, the write-in candidate in the Alaska Senate race against Republican Joe Miller and Democrat Scott McAdams, oozed with contempt for Miller during a debate last night, which was televised on Alaska's KTUU:

This morning, Omar Khadr pled guilty before a military commission to conspiring with al Qaeda and throwing the grenade that killed an American medic in Afghanistan. The guilty plea was reportedly part of an agreement that will allow Khadr to spend less time behind bars. The details of the agreement…

The Duluth News Tribune backs Republican Chip Cravaack over 18-term Democrat Jim Oberstar: 

Might voters replace another New England Kennedy with a Republican? A new poll, commissioned by the National Republican Congressional Committee and conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, shows that Rhode Island’s First Congressional District is in play, with Republican state representative John…

This Newsweek poll released over the weekend found some surprisingly good news for Democrats. But it probably doesn’t mean much for President Obama and his party: the sample includes too many Democrats, at least based on a lot of other recent polls.

Jeff Anderson writes in the New York Post:

1. Are State Polls Underestimating Republican Strength? Yes, says Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics.  He writes:

President Obama continues to sell his omnibus anti-work, anti-jobs, and antigrowth program at colleges and universities across the country. This is a setting where “most folks” (to use a favorite presidential expression) cling to their own version of guns and religion—consisting of left-wing…

Once upon a time there was a Democratic president who, despite his faults, championed the power of markets, technology, and the global economy. He spoke about building “a bridge to the 21st century.” He ratified major trade agreements like NAFTA and the WTO. He supported balanced budgets and signed…

Beijing

Wilmington, Delaware

The age of the electric car is here. Everyone says so. There it is emblazoned on the cover of the latest Wired magazine: “The age of the electric car is here. CHARGE!” In the New York Times, Thomas Friedman laments that the Chinese are embracing the electric car while America (sigh) is again…

A few years ago, you met a dark, handsome stranger, with a cool, remote manner and a smooth line of talk. You didn’t know him well, but he had a certain je ne sais quoi that you found irresistible. He was yourself, only better; yourself, only cooler; yourself, as you were in your dreams. You were a…

American Glamour

Iraqi Kurdistan "There is today a strategic alliance between Iran and Turkey’s [ruling AKP party],” says Murat Karayilan, the de facto leader of the PKK. The Kurdistan Workers’ party’s actual number one, Abdullah Ocalan, has been imprisoned in Turkey since 1999 for his war against Ankara dating…

The plural of syllabus is syllabi. Or is it syllabuses? Focuses and foci, cactuses and cacti, funguses and fungi: English has a good set of these Greek and Latin words—and pseudo-Greek and Latin words—that might take a classical-sounding plural. Or might not. It kind of depends.

After 16 years of New York City apartment living, I bought a house in Westchester County. I am very happy with this decision. The house, a 1935 Cape, is charming; it will be more charming once I renovate it. Currently the house needs a new kitchen, two new baths, some ceiling, some floor, a little…

Sometimes it takes a woman to say, “Be a man.”

Given Americans’ increasing anxiety over made-in-Washington socialism, it’s a wonder that the nuclear power industry has escaped scrutiny for so long. The federal government socializes the risk of investing in nuclear power while pri-vatizing profits. This same formula drove the frenzied…

A poll conducted by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life this fall finds that 43 percent of Jews do not know that Moses Maimonides, codifier of Jewish law, author of the Thirteen Principles of Faith, physician, and philosopher extraordinaire, was Jewish.

With the collapse of cap and trade in the Senate and the prospects dim for a measly renewable-energy mandate for electric utilities in a lame duck session, the dreams and schemes of the climate campaign and energy reformers have hit the wall. As long as oil prices remain moderate and gasoline…

How not to understand Obama

Nemesis

The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo on October 8 is a huge problem for China’s leaders. It undermines their efforts to portray the Chinese Communist party as the legitimate representative of China’s people. And for that very reason, Liu’s prize is an enormous boon to the people of…

In September, Big Government first reported that Illinois Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias may have dodged the Greek military service requirement when he lived and worked in Greece in the late 1990s:

At Commentary, Jennifer Rubin writes, in a piece titled, "Washington Post Confirms More Than a Year of Conservative Reporting,"

The Miami Herald endorses Marco Rubio:

Newsweek has just released a likely-voter poll showing Democrats leading by 3 points (48 to 45 percent) on the generic congressional ballot. The same poll shows that likely voters approve of President Obama's performance by a 14-point margin (54 to 40 percent).  Since Rasmussen shows Obama with…

Via the Huffington Post, here's West Virginia governor and Democratic Senate candidate Joe Manchin explaining on Fox News Sunday why he would have voted against the health care bill:

The recently released AP-GfK poll, which shows Republicans leading by 7 points (50 to 43 percent) on the generic congressional ballot, asks voters whether they "approve" or "disapprove" of "the way Barack Obama is handling" various issues.  To say the least, the results aren't good for the Obama…

WikiLeaks has posted a massive collection of classified documents pertaining to the war in Iraq on the web. As it did with a previous leak of documents concerning Afghanistan, it provided them in advance to the New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel. The Pentagon has strongly condemned the…

Early Friday evening I received a link, via email, to this story at ABC News’s website by Russell Goldman and Luis Martinez. The opening sentences read (emphasis added): 

The good news, as reported by the Federal Reserve Board survey of business conditions, is that “on balance, national economic activity continued to rise” in September and at the beginning of this month. The bad news is that the rise was only “at [a] modest pace.” Translated into political language,…

Republican Pat Toomey continues to lead Democrat Joe Sestak by 4 points in Pennsylvania, according to the latest Rasmussen poll of likely voters. I've written that the gap in the Pennsylvania Senate race is likely bigger than that which has been indicated by three recent polls, each of which…

Retired Army colonel Patrick Murray, Republican candidate for Congress in Virginia's Eighth District, has a new web ad based on Rep. Jim Moran's outrageous comment that Murray hasn't "served or performed in any kind of public service" but merely "taken a government check" while serving in the Army…

In an interview with the New York Times, Harry Reid tweaks his comment that he saved us from a world-wide depression. Reid spreads the credit around, saying: "It’s little solace to [Nevada voters] for me to say, if we hadn’t worked so hard, there’d be a worldwide depression." "We" presumably means…

Former New York City mayor Ed Koch, along with Dan Senor, has written a letter slamming Congressman Maurice Hinchey of New York’s 22nd Congressional District for his anti-Israel views. In the letter, Koch and Senor endorse Republican George Phillips. Here's the full text of the bipartisan gesture:

Ben Smith reports: 

Democrats are facing a staggering deficit among senior voters. A Gallup poll showed that, in the month of September, Democrats were winning 18- to 29-year-olds by 19 points, losing 30- to 49-year-olds by 2 points, tied among 50 to 64-year-olds, and losing those 65 and older by 12 points.

This past spring, a conservative blogger asked Democratic congressman Phil Hare at a townhall meeting in Quincy, Illinois about the constitutionality of the controversial health care legislation. “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this, to be honest,” Hare said.

With eleven days left in the election, a new poll, commissioned by Carly Fiorina’s campaign and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, shows that the Republican candidate for Senate from California has a fighting chance. The race, between Fiorina and Democratic incumbent senator Barbara…

NPR's ombudsman ombudswoman ombudsperson Alicia Shepard has now spoken about the corporation's firing of Juan Williams. Here she is dealing with her chief concern about how this all looks:

The Boston Herald reports:

Many people are talking about the dramatic tightening of the Pennsylvania Senate race between Republican Pat Toomey and Democrat Joe Sestak.  But upon closer inspection, most of that apparent tightening seems to be a mirage.

A few weeks ago, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula released the second edition of its online magazine, Inspire. As with the first edition, Inspire seeks to garner new recruits in the West who are willing to carry out acts of jihad. Much of the publication is devoted to wooing would-be terrorists…

Former seven-term congressman Steve Chabot is poised to represent Ohio’s first district again after his 2008 loss to Democrat Steve Driehaus. Chabot’s comfortable lead in the polls reflects the district’s disgust with fiscal irresponsibility and the federal government’s sharp left turn.

Jonah Goldberg writes:

As Bill Kristol previously noted, voters in Ohio's Tenth Congressional District just might vote out long-time Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich. It's close: Kucinich's Republican challenger, Peter Corrigan, is behind by only 4 points, well within the margin of error in the latest poll.

TWS contributing editor Reuel Marc Gerecht writes in the Washington Post:

The kingdom of Jordan is widely acknowledged for its internal contradictions. It accepts peace with Israel, and its intelligence service has been praised for its work against al Qaeda. But as disclosed by CIA director Leon Panetta and described in the Washington Post this week, a Jordanian…

1. The House.  The following chart reviews the independent vote in the polls in the RealClearPolitics average of the generic ballot:

London

The Washington Examiner reports that Virginia congressman Jim Moran (VA-8) was videotaped speaking at an October 6th meeting of the Arlington County Democratic Committee, saying: "What [Republicans] do is find candidates, usually stealth candidates, that haven't been in office, haven't served or…

People of the world, take note: Harry Reid says he saved you from economic depression:

The Telegraph reports "the rest of the story" on a fatal airline crash in the Congo on August 25 that killed 20, sparing only one passenger:

NPR’s firing of Juan Williams tells you more about NPR than it does about Juan. What a stupid thing to do! You’d think the folks at NPR would be delighted: He’s a strong, mostly liberal voice on the most popular cable news channel in the country. But I suspect that was outweighed by their hatred of…

Quinnipiac: Toomey 48%, Sestak 46%.

The Telegraph reports "the rest of the story" on a fatal airline crash in the Congo on August 25 that killed 20, sparing only one passenger:

The Telegraph reports "the rest of the story" on a fatal airline crash in the Congo on August 25 that killed 20, sparing only one passenger:

Josh Rogin, writing at the Cable, has an interesting piece about the consequences the November elections might have on the START agreement’s fate in the Senate. Perhaps most interesting, though, might be the sheer silliness of this response Rogin received when he went around asking the candidates…

Juan Williams, now a former contract news analyst for NPR, was fired Wednesday for publicly taking a controversial position. A statement from NPR CEO Vivian Schiller said:

Citizens Against Government Waste has a creative and cutting new ad out. Set in 2030, a Chinese professor discusses why great nations have failed. "America tried to tax and spend itself out of a great recession," the professor says. "Of course we owned most of their debt, so now they work for us."…

One of the surest signs  that Republicans will show big gains in the upcoming election is that liberal commentators have started to pontificate about how “real conservatives behave.” Ever the trendspotters, Peter Beinart  and Andrew Sullivan today applaud Prime Minister David Cameron and his Tories…

A new poll from Sunshine State News shows Lt. Col. Allen West leading incumbent congressman Ron Klein:

Vivian Schiller, the CEO of National Public Radio, publicly questioned the sanity of former NPR news analyst Juan Williams one day after dismissing the Fox News contributor for comments inconsistent with NPR’s standards. Schiller said that Williams should have kept his views between himself and…

Sarah Palin defends Juan Williams's right to speak freely: 

As reported in the New York Times earlier this week, Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, best-known for his rejected offer of a $10 million check to Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, has come out against the Ground Zero mosque. Alwaleed’s Kingdom…

On Tuesday, THE WEEKLY STANDARD first reported that an activist in Illinois tied to Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias was working to recruit veterans to film a television ad attacking Senate candidate and 21-year Navy Reserve veteran Mark Kirk.

West Virginia's Democratic governor and Senate candidate Joe Manchin attended a $1,000 to $5,000 a head fundraiser in Washington, D.C. today and apparently* slipped out the back door without taking questions from the press.

Phillip Longman--who ranks just beneath Batman in my pantheon of heroes--has a great piece at Foreign Policy about the demography of aging societies. Longman's point is that the world is getting a lot older: "[T]he global population of children under 5 is expected to fall by 49 million as of…

“It could have been much worse.”  That’s the line many of my British friends are putting forward about the cuts to the British defense budget announced by the new Tory government this past week.  And they’re right. Early on, word both inside Whitehall and on the streets of London was that the new…

The Allentown Morning Call reports:

Outgoing Democratic governor Phil Bredesen of Tennessee argues in the Wall Street Journal that health care will force people out of their employer-based health insurance plans and into government-subsidized "market exchanges." Here's a snippet:

The sister channels PBS (television) and NPR (radio) must have radically different standards. What those are exactly isn't really clear. But we now know what is a firing offense at NPR, considering what happened to Juan Williams. As for PBS, the television station allows their employees to compare…

My Fox News Sunday colleague Juan Williams has been fired by NPR for telling an inconvenient truth.

As the American midterm election campaigns head to the finish line, the Obama administration is trying to convince Jewish voters that its treatment of Israel is not as hostile as it appears. In fact, it’s worse. The U.S. State Department has now adopted a practice honed by Israel’s Arab negotiating…

Increasingly, House Democrats from moderate districts are calling on the enormously unpopular Nancy Pelosi not to run for speaker next year.  The latest comes from Jason Altmire:

During the Pennsylvania Senate debate on Wednesday night, Republican Pat Toomey and Democrat Joe Sestak each tried to paint the other as too extreme to represent the Keystone state. Both candidates came well-armed with their talking points and were fairly well-matched rhetorically. Toomey was…

Around the 1964 presidential election--back when "Mad Man" Don Draper was still smoking Camels--men and women began to gradually diverge in their political views and behavior.  We call this the “gender gap.”

The Senate Conservatives Fund is up with a $100,000 TV and radio ad buy in support of Alaska's Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller. The ads inform voters that Miller is the only pro-life candidate in the race and says that Democrat Scott McAdams and Lisa Murkowski support taxpayer-funding of…

Pennsylvania Democrat helps a Tea Party candidate get on the ballot -- to "siphon votes away from his Republican opponent."

The Weekly Standard got a solicitation in the mail the other day from Prospect magazine—an estimable journal of politics and the arts, but edited and published in London, as the cover letter made abundantly clear.

The Washington Examiner's Timothy Carney, author of The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money, spoke at a conclave of right-wingers last year. Carney acknowledges that event, sponsored by the Koch brothers, was so secret that he publicly wrote about it at the time. Now, a…

At a Democratic fundraiser on Monday night, President Obama once again misquoted the Declaration of Independence’s most famous sentence and once again omitted its reference to our “Creator.” According to the text of his remarks published on the official White House website, he said: “[W]hat makes…

David Axelrod, the president's chief spin master: 

As the Pennsylvania Senate race tightens, so does the race in Washington. McClatchy reports:

Remember, this is about Joe Biden:

Last week, Rasmussen showed Republican John Raese with a 3-point lead over Democratic Governor Joe Manchin in the West Virginia Senate race (49% to 46%). Now, Rasmussen shows a 7-point lead for Raese:

With the 5-hour miniseries “Carlos” premiering this week on the Sundance channel and opening in art theatres in selected U.S. cities, there’s renewed interest in the Venezuelan-born Ilich Ramírez Sánchez’s career of terror. Undoubtedly his best-known operation, and the movie’s dramatic core, is the…

Newsbusters documents a genuinely outrageous lie told by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Monday night:

After some initial skepticism at a PPP poll that showed Democrat Joe Sestak one point ahead of Republican Pat Toomey in the Pennsylvania Senate race (46% to 45%), another poll by Muhlenberg showed Sestak up three, 44% to 41%. That was enough to wake up conservatives. Some conservative bloggers are…

Colorado Democratic congressman Ed Perlmutter slapped back at his GOP challenger during a televised debate on Sunday—literally.

Never before have matters of the newspaper business mingled so closely with matters of the heart as in Tom Rachman’s superb debut novel. Rachman used to be a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press in Rome, and he still lives there today; so it is fitting that the setting is an international…

Politico reports:

Last night former president George W. Bush said in a speech: "I believe this country is engaged in an ideological struggle of a kind we have never seen before."

Lee Smith writes in Tablet:

Jon Ward reports at the Daily Caller:

1. Senate Races Get Closer. Public Policy Polling made big headlines yesterday with a poll showing Democrat Joe Sestak in the lead over Pat Toomey in the Pennsylvania Senate battle.  Last week, Hotline On Call noticed the NRSC starting to amp up its commitment to Toomey.  Late last night, a new…

Ben Smith reports: "The Emergency Committee for Israel, which has been pounding away at Democratic candidates -- notably Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania -- has launched a new independent expenditure PAC that can solicit unlimited contributions and and play even more directly in elections."

The Chronicle of Philanthropy writes up the boss's remarks at a philanthropic conference:

Allahpundit gets it right on the the latest O'Donnell v. Coons kerfuffle.

National Review's Brian Bolduc gets a coveted interview with Jimmy McMillan, the the star of last night's New York gubernatorial debate and leader of "Rent Is Too Damn High" party: 

Jeff Anderson writes in the Hill:

Washington state senator Patty Murray wasn't shy about her support for Obamacare during a recent debate with Republican Dino Rossi. He tries to use Murray's words against her in a new ad: 

At 8 a.m. this morning, more than 1,800 people showed up for a congressional debate in Duluth, Minnesota between 18-term Democrat Jim Oberstar and his Republican opponent Chip Cravaack, a former Navy pilot and Northwest Airlines pilot. Cravaack said his first priority would be scrapping Obamacare,…

Opinion editor Matthew Continetti -- whose most recent book was endorsed by Sarah Palin -- is now writing THE WEEKLY STANDARD's newsletter, delivered to your email inbox every Wednesday afternoon. So, subscribe here.

Last Friday in Moscow, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev signed a formal agreement obliging his country to help Venezuela launch a nuclear energy program. Vladimir Putin first floated the idea of Russian-Venezuelan nuclear cooperation back in 2008, following the Georgian war, and he signed a…

Jon Stewart owes Senator Tom Coburn an apology. Josh Rogin reports that Stewart falsely accused Coburn of holding up $1 billion in aid money to Haiti. "Stewart's rant was based on this Sept. 28. AP article. Referencing that, Stewart called Coburn an "'international a**hole of mystery,'" Rogin…

Just in case you didn’t think the Illinois Senate race could sink any lower, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that Democrat Alexi Giannoulias is planning to launch a final ad campaign featuring a “veteran” to attack Mark Kirk’s service record.

Public Policy Polling, a Democratic polling firm, declares: "You can put Pennsylvania Senate back in the toss up category. Joe Sestak leads Pat Toomey 46-45 in our newest poll of the race, erasing the 9 point deficit he had in an August PPP survey."

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez is visiting Tehran today, along with his sidekick, Bolivian president Evo Morales. It’s Chávez’s ninth trip in the past 18 months but this one’s special because he’s stopping over on his way back from Moscow, where he announced a nuclear deal with the Russians. The…

Governor Joe Manchin, who trails Republican John Raese by 3 points in Rasmussen's latest poll on the West Virginia Senate race (the Real Clear Politics average has Manchin slightly ahead on the basis of two Democratic polls), is now running a pro-Obamacare ad:

Last night, New York gubernatorial candidate Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High party became an instant Internet celebrity:

In Massachusetts’s Tenth Congressional District, the first poll for the race to replace retiring Democrat Bill Delahunt has finally been conducted. Republican Jeff Perry is in a dead heat with Democrat Bill Keating, the Cape Cod Times reports:

Matt Continetti discussed Sarah Palin in an interactive chat with Washington Post readers. Here's a taste:

Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer and Juan Williams talk about the Kentucky, Illinois, Colorado and Nevada Senate races on Fox News's Special Report:

Another week, another outlying Gallup generic ballot result.  Gallup finds the Republicans with either an 11- or 17-point lead, depending upon the likely voter screen.  Compare that to a Republican advantage of a little under 7 points in the RealClearPolitics average.

President Obama: "15 Senate seats 'up for grabs.'"

Last night in Alaska, security guards hired by Republican Senate candidate Joe Miller's campaign handcuffed Tony Hopfinger, editor of the website Alaska Dispatch, after the editor was involved in an altercation at the town hall event at an Alaska middle school.

The liberal host of MSNBC's "Hardball" eviscerates Kentucky Democratic Senate candidate Jack Conway on national television:

Blackfive reports that Richard Eubank, commander-in-chief of Veterans of Foreign Wars, has announced a proposal to dissolve VFW’s political action committee to quiet outcry over some of the PAC's endorsements of liberal, anti-war Democrats over Republicans, many of whom are actual foreign war…

When Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize last week, the authoritarians in Beijing responded in their typical, iron-fisted fashion. The Foreign Ministry immediately called the award "blasphemy" and a "desecration," and characterized Liu as a common criminal. They cancelled…

"Struggling cable news net CNN has fallen to another 10-year low in terms of ratings," MediaBuyerPlanner reported last week.

Yuval Levin and others have had the foresight to warn that the choice we face is not between repealing Obamacare and fixing Obamacare, but between repealing Obamacare and expanding Obamacare – which means: if not repealed, the massive new health care entitlement would build "a health care bridge to…

Even the monthly Kaiser Health Tracking poll, an outlier poll that has consistently shown far greater support for Obamacare than one could glean from almost anywhere else – for example, the Kaiser poll in July maintained that only 35 percent of Americans opposed Obamacare – is now showing big…

From the Daily Caller's Alex Pappas:

CNN reports:

Rasmussen shows Angle hitting the magic number:

New York, New York

In the Kentucky Senate debate last night, Rand Paul hit back at Jack Conway's ad that painted Paul as anti-Christian: 

The leak wars continue. The Obama administration is prosecuting more leakers of classified information than all previous presidents combined. NBC investigative reporter Michael Isikoff asks a key question occasioned by the publication of Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward’s latest book:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained the results of a private poll conducted last night in Ohio-10, the Cleveland-area district held for seven terms by Democrat Dennis Kucinich. Kucinich has been widely viewed as safe—even though he fell short of 60 percent of the vote in 2008, and the district has a…

Is Barney Frank worried about whether he'll be reelected to the House? Maybe, but it's pretty certain that Frank's partner, James Ready, is rattled.

Fred Barnes writes in today's Wall Street Journal:

1. Obama’s Dime Store Sociology.  This recent story from Politico caught my attention.

Before there was 9/11, there was 10/12. A decade ago this week, al Qaeda operatives staged a spectacular suicide attack on the USS Cole while it was refueling in Aden, Yemen. The terrorists puttered up to the destroyer’s port side, waving at the U.S. sailors working on deck. Once aside the Cole,…

Republicans better sign up for yoga class between now and the start of the 112th Congress. They have a difficult balancing act ahead of them, and the performance will require incredible dexterity.

New York has two Democratic senators, both of them up for election this year. In the first race, Chuck Schumer has a commanding lead. In the other, Kirsten Gillibrand may be in trouble.

Captive

Thomas Hoenig, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, is the only significant public official on record in opposition to the easy-money, zero-interest-rate monetary policy being pursued by Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. So there were multiple layers of irony when Hoenig journeyed to…

Global warming activists are famously impatient with critics who question either the solidity of the scientific case for climate alarmism or the policy prescriptions of the alarmists. “The time for debate is over” is their rallying cry. Not that they were ever big on debate to begin with. Anyone…

Modernizing

Linköping, Sweden

Now we know who constitutes the real Israel lobby: the American public. Especially the Republican-leaning part of it.

Of Time and the River, Thomas Wolfe’s second novel, and I came into the world within months of one another 75 years ago. But infants know nothing of stories and it would be years before I began to gulp down Wolfe’s fiction and couple my destiny, in imagination, with that of his gangling hero,…

Matthew Continetti writes in the Washington Post on "Five myths about Sarah Palin." Here's one myth:

It's come to this. In Kentucky, where Republican Senate candidate Rand Paul is leading Democrat Jack Conway 47% to 41.7% in the RCP average of polls, the Conway campaign has decided to release an ad painting Rand Paul as anti-Christian:

They came. They met. They dined. They whined. And then the finance ministers, gathered for the meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, representing some of the most indebted countries in the world, flew out of Washington, filling the first class sections of most of the…

Republicans are making a serious play for two West Cost Senate seats this year: the race in Washington--where Dino Rossi is challenging Senator Patty Murray--is close, as is the race in California, where Carly Fiorina is challenging Senator Barbara Boxer. But what about Oregon? Unlike its neighbors…

Here's Barbara Boxer explaining to Wolf Blitzer how she's voted for trillions of dollars in tax cuts, including the stimulus, or as it's known in Boxer-speak, "the biggest tax cut in history" (via Allahpundit):

As far as liberal financiers go, you don’t get much more powerful than S. Donald Sussman.

Does a Nobel prize winning economist have any obligation to demonstrate basic statistical honesty, even when editorializing? In his attempt to support his tedious and wholly unconvincing argument that the public sector has not grown substantially under Obama, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman…

In the annals of mind-bendingly obfuscatory teaser lines, the following from the New York Times surely must be given pride of place: “Germany may have secured one of the new nonpermanent seats on the U.N. Security Council, but with the rise of China, Europe’s influence is waning.” The teaser leads…

A couple other pollsters show Democrat Dick Blumenthal with a healthy lead in the Connecticut Senate race, but Rasmussen shows Republican Linda McMahon trailing by just five points:

Politico reports:

Determined to enhance my culture quotient, I recently watched Pollock on cable for about the hundredth time. Once again, I tried to figure out why the movie mesmerizes me. Surely it couldn’t be just the drip of the paint or the whine of Marcia Gay Harden. No, it had to be something else, some…

Republican John Dennis of San Francisco--the businessman running against Nancy Pelosi--is out with a new advertisement. It's a little less wacky than the infamous "Wizard of Oz" ad, but it retains the humorous tone as Dennis looks around San Fran for the speaker:

Rep. Steve Driehaus's lawyer got an agreement from a billboard company--Lamar Advertising--to suspend the "posting of billboard advertisements by the Susan B. Anthony List" against Driehaus until the Ohio Elections Commission rules on the Democratic congressman's complaint that the SBA List's ad…

Strongly indicating just how well ObamaCare is resonating with the public as we approach the midterm elections, Politico reports that, so far in October, advertising in opposition to ObamaCare and/or in support of repeal has outpaced advertising in support of ObamaCare by a margin of "20-to-1." …

Here's the video of Harry Reid explaining why "we need [insurance companies] to be forced to do mammograms" and colonoscopies:

In next week’s issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Ellen Bork explains how the Nobel Peace Prize given to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo is a “huge problem for China’s leaders.” Alas, it’s also turning out to be something of an embarrassment for America’s leaders, too, especially last year’s laureate,…

So sayeth T.A. Frank at The New Republic's website:

Steve Hayes in today's Wall Street Journal: 

Are we moving toward zero nuclear weapons? Zero is the declared objective of the Obama administration. But it is realistic enough to recognize, as the president did in Prague, that achieving it might take a long time: “I'm not naive. This goal will not be reached quickly–perhaps not in my lifetime.…

We’re a little more than two weeks out from the election, and now is a good time to check in with electoral prognosticators to see what they think is going to happen.

The Daily Caller's Jon Ward has a good write-up of the one and only debate of the campaign between Harry Reid and Sharron Angle:

Philip Brand has made an extraordinary journey.

ABORTION:

National Democrats have given up on Ohio Representative Steve Driehaus's reelection campaign, but the race took an interesting turn today when the Ohio Elections Commission agreed to allow Driehaus's case against a pro-life group, the Susan B. Anthony List, to proceed. 

Bret Stephens profiles Roger Hertog in Philanthropy magazine.

Maureen Dowd screens “Fair Game,” the new Valerie Plame-Joe Wilson bio-pic, and gives us an account: if we are to rely upon her (a riskyish venture), the flick peddles a glammed-up Vanity-Fairy-tale of a damsel in distress defended against the forces of evil bravely if perhaps overbearingly by her…

In this weekend's New York Times Magazine, Peter Baker profiles President Obama. He seems to have spent a serious amount of time with Obama and his aides—some on the record, others on background. If you're wondering what is our commander in chief thinking (you might not want to know), "The…

Garin Hovannisian is a product of what might be called Armenian-American aristocracy. His great-grandfather Kaspar stood helplessly by while his pregnant mother and infant brother were killed by the Turks in 1915, escaped to Ellis Island in 1920, and built an agricultural/real estate empire in…

In the world of the 20th century portrait there is John Singer Sargent, and all the rest. But first in line, just behind Sargent, is Philip de Laszlo (1869-1937), a poor Hungarian boy who rose to eminence in his own country, and in the wake of a stunning likeness of Pope Leo XII--now in the…

West Virginia's Democratic governor and Senate candidate Joe Manchin has tried to play up the class warfare angle against his Republican opponent John Raese. In one TV ad, the Manchin campaign cropped a picture of of Raese and his wife in front of their Florida mansion and darkened his wife's skin…

It's getting a little too close for comfort in Alaska:

Recently uncovered documents reveal that Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor Brian Colón has refused to make payments on a condo that he owns in Florida. A representative of the Sunrise Lakes Condominium Apartments association in Sunrise, Florida claims that Colón has refused to pay his…

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka:

While we're talking about Detroit, read Matt Labash's piece, "The City Where the Sirens Never Sleep: Detroit is dying. But, it is not dead yet."

Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the U.S., has an op-ed in today's New York Times:

In Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759-67) there is a character called Uncle Toby who had been hit on the head by a flying stone at the Siege of Namur--and never stopped talking about it. Nearly three centuries later, two specimens are sitting on my desk which can only be described as Uncle…

Rupert Murdoch last night delivered a speech to the Anti-Defamation League on anti-Semitism and Israel. The New York Sun provides a thoughtful editorial on the subject. And here's Murdoch's entire speech, as prepared for delivery:

Rasmussen moves the Pennsylvania Senate race to "solid GOP":

We are six years out from one of the most far-reaching reforms of U.S. intelligence in its history. In 2004, Congress passed legislation that created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to oversee and coordinate the sprawling collection of agencies that act as our nation’s…

Remember those signs that 18-term incumbent Jim Oberstar of Minnesota might be in trouble?

“Before we get off the plane, I might ask you to take my laptop and cell phone through the airport for me,” said my traveling companion. “In case I get arrested upon landing.” “Ok,” I answered hesitantly. “No problems.”

1. OFA To GOTV?  This story from Matt Bai caught my attention:

Last week’s anemic jobs report came as a sobering reminder that America’s economic malaise shows little sign of slowing. Overall non-farm payrolls shrunk by 95,000 in September, while private sector hiring decelerated for the third consecutive month. High unemployment is now an acute national…

Quincy Jones, who once roomed with Herman Leonard in Paris, wrote of him: “When people think of jazz, their mental picture is likely one of Herman’s.” All certainly true of the wonderfully talented photographer who died in California two months ago at 87. Strictly speaking, there can be no jazz…

Andy Ferguson reviews Drunk Stoned Brilliant Dead: The Writers and Artists Who Made the National Lampoon Insanely Great in the Wall Street Journal:

Chris Cillizza reports: "The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has canceled its final week of ads in Missouri and is going up with its first ads in Nevada, according to ad buyers and GOP sources," and the "Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is canceling all of its remaining ad…

Matt Labash on "Trekkies vs. Trekkers, selfish terminally ill people vs. taco-flavored Doritos, staying young vs. getting old." Here's a bit:

Bloomberg poll: Obama 51%, Palin 35%.

An EU diplomat and diplomats from 10 European countries tried to deliver a letter of congratualtions from EU Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso to Liu Xia, the wife of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo at her home in Beijing. They were prevented from entering by guards.  Liu Xia is under…

Wisconsin's junior Democratic senator Russ Feingold is out with a new ad attacking his Republican opponent Ron Johnson for keeping "privatization" of Social Security for "some" voters on the table. Feingold's position? In the ad, he literally takes everything off the table and promises not to "turn…

The Scrapbook was recently alerted to this gem from the New York Times editorial page, which we missed when it was published in August: a love letter to Montana Democrat senator Jon Tester and Iowa Republican Charles Grassley, the last two gentlemen farmers in Congress's upper chamber.  

Why, oh why, is the Obama administration spending so much time three weeks before the election attacking the Chamber of Commerce? There are different theories.

West Virginia governor Joe Manchin, the Democratic Senate candidate who's locked in a tight race with Republican John Raese, is now running an ad in which he promises to "take dead aim" at cap-and-trade and then literally shoots a hole through the law (which is labeled, conveniently enough, "CAP…

Democratic Rep. Jim Marshall of Georgia has a new ad that claims "Jim Marshall is a long way from Nancy Pelosi." Via Ben Smith:

Another poll shows Marco Rubio sitting pretty with a double digit lead over Charlie Crist. As for the rumors that Meek might drop out and endorse Crist and turn this into a real race? Left-wing blogger Markos Moulitsas, who had been pushing for Meek to do just that, now says that Democrats "are…

The opportunity to watch Washington graybeards at the Council on Foreign Relations jump over each other to take cell phone photos of George Clooney provided reason enough to attend Tuesday’s event on Sudan. But the discussion with Clooney and Enough Project co-founder John Prendergast offered…

Berlin

You might have thought that Kennedy kitsch was not likely to proceed much further beyond The Best Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, edited by Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg (2005), or that the gold standard had long ago been established with Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John…

Harvard, Mass.

Steve Hayes and TWS contributing editor Charles Krauthammer last night on Fox News's Special Report:

Eyes have been focused on the succession underway in North Korea, where Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il’s pudgy third son, appears to be being groomed for power.

My goal between now and Election Day is to run through the major regions of the country to explain the political dynamic in each.  Yesterday, I looked at the Great Lakes Region.  Today, I want to look at the South.

John McCormack highlights three Wisconsin House races that are ripe for a Democrat-to-Republican flip. In WI-08, Republican Reid Ribble is challenging Democrat Steve Kagen, a doctor whose most notable moment in Washington came when he seems to have invented a confrontation in a White House bathroom…

Recently I watched a 10-minute YouTube video purporting to be the “100 Greatest Movie Insults.” It’s a pretty diverse collection, though as you’d expect it favors American films from the 1980s and later.

A federal judge in California has ruled, for a second time, that the United States Constitution includes a right of gays to serve openly in the military:

Bret Stephens: "How strong can China be if it is terrified of Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo?"

If Bundestag elections were held on Sunday, Germany would most likely have a new left-wing SPD-Green coalition government headed – for the first-time ever – by an ecologist chancellor. Current opinion polls put the Greens at a stunning 24 percent of the vote, slightly ahead of the SPD who gain 23…

Here's the latest print ad from the Republican Jewish Coalition, which connects Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak and George Soros:

Ever wonder why Republican challenger Ken Buck can't open up more of a lead against Sen. Michael Bennet in Colorado? Bennet, the Democratic incumbent, was not elected by the people (he was appointed) and yet brazenly thought he could get away with voting for Obamacare in a GOP-leaning (if only…

Never Let Me Go is a haunting exploration of what humans can do to one another, how they can attempt to redefine the very concept of humanity in order to exploit those they see as subhuman. It tackles these themes as skillfully and memorably as any film of recent years, perhaps even more than most.…

I noted earlier that Public Policy Polling shows West Virginia's Democratic governor Joe Manchin with a 3-point lead over John Raese, but the poll appears to be a little bit skewed to the left. Our very own Jay Cost (who keeps a record of all exit polling data dating back to 1796 indexed in his…

Gregg Easterbrook, ESPN's Tuesday Morning Quarterback, delights as usual with his analysis of Oregon's "blur offense" and the NFL's sweet and sour plays of the week, not to mention the Cheerleader of the week. His commentary on English grammar? Not so much.

The Hotline's Jeremy Jacobs writes:

Today is the tenth anniversary of al Qaeda’s October 12, 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Three thoughts come immediately to mind.

The four causes of what’s likely to be a landslide defeat for Democrats in the midterm election are now locked in place. All that’s left for Democrats in the final three weeks of the campaign is to trash Republicans, stir their base to vote, and pray.

A new batch of polls out today shows most Senate races holding steady, with one possible exception. Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, shows West Virginia governor and Democratic Senate candidate Joe Manchin leading Republican John Raese by 3 points (48% to 45%), just a couple weeks after…

Twentieth and twentyfirst-century art do not always age well. Consider this Oldenberg. Or this Rauschenberg. Or, horrible visu, this shark suspended in formaldehyde. It rotted not even 15 years after it was tossed into its vitrine coffin-tank, and had to be entirely refashioned.

The blog Mere Rhetoric recently reported that Daniel Levy, one of the founders of the left wing, anti-Israel lobby J Street, made remarks that reveal his radical approach to Israel. (I followed up on this report here.) “Levy quite explicitly revealed that he thinks that Israel’s creation was ‘an…

Morgantown, W. Va.

Ellen Bork's roundup of Nobel Peace Prize reactions yesterday deserves a postscript. Hugo Chávez of Venezuela sucked up to his ideological comrades in Beijing (not to mention very large customers of Venezuelan oil) in memorable fashion:

Harvard, Mass.

Opinion editor Matthew Continetti -- whose most recent book was endorsed by Sarah Palin -- is now writing THE WEEKLY STANDARD's newsletter, delivered to your email inbox every Wednesday afternoon. So, subscribe here.

Earlier this year, Massachusetts and New York, blaming budget troubles, pulled the plug on their state tests in U.S. history. Given the strident union rhetoric against “high-stakes” testing— America's Federation of Teachers’ Randi Weingarten has accused reformers of turning schools into “Test Prep,…

"They're counting on your silence. They're counting on your amnesia. They're counting on your apathy. They're counting on young people staying home and union members staying home and black folks staying home and middle-class families staying home." President Obama made this comment at a rally in…

If Americans know anything about the presidential election of 1924, they know that it was won by the incumbent Calvin Coolidge in a landslide over the Democratic nominee, John W. Davis of West Virginia, a prominent lawyer and diplomat who was a compromise candidate after 103 ballots at a convention…

Mark Halperin: "With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the…

Fall River, Mass.

Jake Tapper talks to David Axelrod about the Obama administration's allegation that the Chamber of Commerce is using foreign money to fund the group's political activities--a charge the Chamber denies. This part of the interview is pretty amusing:

From a Washington Times editorial: 

In a debate yesterday in Michigan, the Republican, the independent, and the Green Party candidate all agreed that Obamacare must go. While the candidates had different thoughts about what Obamacare should be replaced with, they all agreed that it should be repealed, leaving only Democratic…

I don’t actually have proof that John Podesta’s Center for American Progress is funded by foreign interests and corporations, but does anyone have proof that it isn’t? This is the new standard set by the Obama administration for organizations engaged in political activity it dislikes – guilty until…

The Library of America, founded in the late 1970s with initial funding from the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, grew out of an idea of Edmund Wilson’s that there ought to be an American equivalent of the French Pleiade editions, which seek to keep classics in…

Democrats currently hold five of Wisconsin's eight House seats, but that probably won't last for long. Last week, the Cook Political Report moved WI-08, which encompasses Green Bay, from "toss-up" to "leans Republican." In 2006, Democrat Steve Kagan won the open Republican district, which swung…

The “virus” of Saudi-financed Wahhabi radicalism has “destroyed every chance” for the development of European Islam, according to a leading Muslim theologian from Bosnia-Herzegovina. Professor Resid Hafizovic of the Sarajevo Faculty of Islamic Studies, in an interview with the Bosnian secularist…

Jennifer Rubin, writing at Commentary, further analyzes the newly released poll on support for Israel among American voters, which was sponsored by the Emergency Committee for Israel:

West Virginia's Democratic governor and Senate candidate Joe Manchin, who said he would have voted for Obamacare days before it passed, called for repealing some bad parts of the health care law on September 27. At the same time, Manchin maintained that Obamacare is "a great bill."

Joe Queenan writes about Jimmy Carter in the Wall Street Journal:

Another crazed tea partier, right? Nope, it's West Virginia's Democratic governor and Senate candidate Joe Manchin, who touts his NRA endorsement in a new ad and vows: "I'll take on Washington and this administration to get the federal government off of our backs and out of our pockets." Manchin…

Need a break from poring over polls from endangered Democratic congressional districts? It's a lot of fun, but you can't really do it twelve hours a day. So when you need that change of pace, pick up the witty, clever, and thought-provoking Rules for Radical Conservatives: Beating the Left at Its…

Here are a few reactions to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize on October 8 to the writer and literary critic Liu Xiaobo, who was sentenced in December 2009 to an 11-year sentence for “incitement to subversion of state power” for his writings about democracy and human rights and his association…

1. Can John Dingell Be Defeated This Cycle?  On Friday, a poll from Rossman/Team TelCom reported that Republican challenger Rob Steele is running ahead of Democratic John Dingell in Michigan’s 15th congressional district.  Dingell has been in Congress since 1955, replacing his father who was swept…

London 

On the Thursday after Memorial Day, 1933, J. Pierpont Morgan Jr. sat at the witness table awaiting the resumption of a hearing by the Senate Banking Committee investigating the practices of New York investment banks. Suddenly, a publicist with the Ringling Brothers circus thrust a German-born dwarf…

If all goes well for Republicans in the midterm elections, they’ll capture the House and maybe the Senate, having revealed few specifics of what they might do in the next Congress. This makes sense. It’s the Chris Christie strategy.

The Truth About Love

JFK-a-Palooza

Tony Curtis, who died last week at the age of 85, had one of the strangest careers in Hollywood history. He was, for years, an extremely pretty boy with not much discernible talent. And then, all of a sudden and for only two years, Curtis became a genuinely great film actor. And then, just as fast…

All day, every day, from the middle of March through the end of May, performance artist Marina Abramovic sat at the Museum of Modern Art in her performance piece, The Artist is Present. This appearance was Abramovic’s contribution to the eponymous MoMA retrospective running in the gallery space…

On October 1, Rahm Emanuel announced his departure as White House chief of staff, ending the shortest and most hapless tenure in that position since Bill Clinton replaced his childhood friend, Mack McLarty, in 1994. McLarty is a nice guy who wasn’t tough enough to bring order to Clinton’s White…

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, aka Obamacare, turned six months old on September 23. Hardly anybody celebrated the occasion, and it isn’t hard to figure out why. Last spring President Obama promised Democrats that supporting the new entitlement would turn out to be a…

President Obama came to power intending to rectify the perceived mistakes of George W. Bush in the Middle East. With that goal in mind, he announced two major initiatives: reaching out to Iran and intensifying efforts to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty. Neither effort has borne fruit,…

Last week, in an effort to limit the damage to congressional Democrats in November’s elections, President Obama set out in pursuit of the youth vote, traveling to several college campuses to rally the young activists who were so important to his presidential campaign. “What I want to do is just to…

On September 7, a particularly aggressive Chinese fishing boat captain, Zhan Qixiong, rammed his vessel, the Minjinyu 5179, into two Japanese patrol boats after he refused to heed warnings to leave disputed waters in the East China Sea. The incident occurred around the islets and rock outcroppings…

The Grand Jihad

If billionaire Alki David is an honest man, the man who streaked in front of Barack Obama at the president’s rally today in Philadelphia will be paid $1 million for his stunt. The man who performed today’s stunt, which captured the attention of the Drudge Report and an Associated Press…

The most telling line of today’s Meet the Press debate between Illinois Republican congressman Mark Kirk and Democratic state treasurer Alexi Giannoulias came from the Democrat, who proclaimed: "I didn't know the extent of their activity." The line was in reference to the loans to well-known…

The New York Times has published a piece on Charles Krauthammer's love of chess:

James Taranto profiles Sean Bielat, the congressional candidate in Massachusetts who is seeking to defeat Barney Frank in November's election:

Some 53 percent of Americans now say they don’t much like free trade, compared with 32 percent a decade ago. In part that is due to unhappiness with the jobs situation. Today’s jobs report might have cheered specialists who dig beneath the headline numbers: 64,000 private sector jobs were created…

Gallup: Likely voter breakdown: 54% conservative, 27% moderate, 18% liberal. In 1994 it was 40% conservative, 48% moderate, 12% liberal.  

As Ben Smith reports, ADL chief Abe Foxman recently voiced his concern to a reporter about President Obama's Israel policy:

The Atlantic's Josh Green recommends some weekend reading (as if you haven't already read it):

A new Linda McMahon ad clips Dick Blumenthal's meandering answer to her question: "How do you create a job?"

Vic Matus reviews Chris Kimball's book Fannie's Last Supper in today's Wall Street Journal:

When Missouri voters passed an anti-Obamacare referendum two months ago by a tally of 71 to 29 percent, Sen. Harry Reid responded, “It’s very obvious that people have a lack of understanding of our health care reform bill."  He added, “The more people learn about this bill, the more they like it.”

A new Rasmussen poll shows Marco Rubio getting 50%, with Charlie Crist and Kendrick Meek trailing far behind at 25% and 19%, repsectively.

The Courier-Post has a blockbuster story this morning about the NJ-3 race between Democratic incumbent John Adler and Republican Jon Runyan.It seems that the third candidate in the race, an unknown named Peter DeStefeno, who is running on the "NJ Tea Party" line, is actually a Democratic plant.…

The New York Times reports that national security adviser Jim Jones’s departure, long expected to take place at the end of the year, was accelerated because of “statements that he apparently made to Bob Woodward” that were reproduced in Woodward’s Obama’s Wars.

Rasmussen:

The Detroit Free Press reports:

When the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today to Liu Xiaobo, one of China’s most prominent dissidents, now serving an 11-year jail sentence, I could not help but think of a small, inspiring museum in Oslo called the Museum of Resistance. It tells the story of Norway’s courageous citizens who refused…

Now we know who constitutes the real Israel lobby: the American public. Especially the Republican-leaning part of it.

The New York Times reports: 

Washington just closed the book on the federal government’s latest dismal fiscal year. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, this year picked up where last year left off – extending spending, deficit, and debt records.

The European edition of Newsweek has discovered the face of European extremism. It peers out from the cover of the October 4 issue of the magazine. It consists neither of the hoary features of French National Front leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, nor the fresher look of the blond-coiffed Dutch anti-Islam…

Based upon how residents of each congressional district voted in the past three presidential elections, House Democrats currently hold 68 Republican-leaning seats. Of the 68 Democrats holding these seats, 59 are running for reelection: 31 voted for Obamacare, 28 of these members of Congress voted…

1. Will the GOP Take Control of the Senate?  It's looking better and better for Republicans in the upper chamber.  While some factors are still variable – like how the unusually large number of undecideds break in Illinois – their path to a Senate majority is getting clearer every day.

Via Drudge, Charlie Crist tries to impress the public in Tampa Bay but utterly fails by throwing a wild pitch far to the (catcher's) left:

At a White House press briefing today, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was asked about the Treasury Department's review of Austan Goolsbee's comments on Koch Industries' tax status. Gibbs says Goolsbee's comments were "not in any way based on any review of tax filings," and added: "I don't think he'd…

In NY-23, Republican Matt Doheny leads Democratic congressman by 14 points, according to GOP poll.

In a tartly worded column this week, Washington Post writer Dana Milbank bemoans the conservative “cannibalizing…of Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Bob Bennett of Utah.”  He runs through the American Conservative Union (ACU) ratings for historical Republican leaders, compares them to…

At an event today, President Obama said that "groups that receive foreign money" are a "threat to our democracy."

Blogger Mr. Wolf at Blackfive is rightfully livid over the Veterans of Foreign Wars political action committee endorsing Democrat Ron Klein over Republican Allen West in the race for Florida's 22nd District. Not only is retired Army lieutenant colonel West a heroic veteran of Iraq and the son and…

An announcement of the Nobel Prize for literature is almost necessarily accompanied by columns listing those distinguished writers who were passed over, as well as more than a few clunkers who were not. As for the roster of the omitted, since the Russians Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) and Leo Tolstoy…

If you like your hospital, you'll get to keep your hospital.  Well, maybe not.

Jen Rubin first reported here and here on the existence of a letter written by former DOJ attorney and New Black Panther trial team leader Chris Coates to a Justice Department official documenting his concerns about unequal enforcement of voting rights laws. Now, Rubin tells us, the U.S. Civil…

Democratic representative Steve Driehaus has filed a complaint with the Ohio Elections Commission against the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List to stop the group from putting up four billboards claiming that Driehaus voted for taxpayer-funding of abortion (see the ad here).

Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio has a comfortable 15-point lead, according to a new Mason-Dixon poll, which shows independent Gov. Charlie Crist and Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek are stuck in the 20s, battling for second place. Last night ABC News hosted a Florida Senate debate with the…

This morning the Swedish academy awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for Literature to Mario Vargas Llosa “for his cartography of the structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.” With benefactors like the ones who authored this overwrought passage, who…

The New York Times reports that the Obama administration's Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been busy granting selective waivers to Obamacare's mandates, restrictions, and requirements. The Times reports that, “To date, the administration has given about 30 insurers, employers and…

Rasmussen:

As noted here the other day, it appears that Jim Oberstar, the 18-term Democrat who usually wins Minnesota's 8th District with more than 65% of the vote, is facing a serious challenge from Chip Cravaack, a former Navy pilot and commercial pilot for Northwest Airlines. An internal poll conducted by…

The Hill writes, "A majority of voters in key battleground districts favor repeal of the legislative overhaul Congress passed this year."  A newly released survey that The Hill conducted of nearly 5,000 likely voters in twelve hotly contested congressional districts finds that 56 percent, including…

1. The Latest Sign of the Dem-Pocalypse.  Today’s sign of Democratic doom comes from the Penn Schoen Berland polling outfit, which is conducting a series of polls sponsored by The Hill and America’s Natural Gas Alliance (huh?).The first round of polling is of freshmen House Democrats, and the…

If the Republicans win enough seats in Congress this November, GOP leader John Boehner will become the next speaker of the House. The Ohio Republican would assume the gavel amid a maelstrom of polarization not seen since the late nineteenth century.

Politico's Josh Gerstein wrote earlier today that a federal judge's decision to throw out testimony against al Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Ghailani "could be setback for civilian terror trials." Here's a statement from Liz Cheney hitting the Obama administration for "insisting on trying Ahmed Ghailani in…

Rick Sanchez apologizes to Jon Stewart.

First the sad news: Stephen J. Cannell has died. As the Los Angeles Times reports, the longtime Hollywood producer passed away last week at the age of 69 due to complications from melanoma.

A recent high-profile ad war in the New Mexico gubernatorial election, which has taken place on television screens across the state, involves GOP nominee and Doña Ana County district attorney Susana Martinez, Democratic nominee and Lieutenant Governor Diane Denish, and a teacher named Freda…

Politico: Ruling could be setback for civilian terror trials.

Rasmussen:

Never mind for a moment that J Street lied about accepting George Soros's money, that the so-called pro-Israel group is accepting cash from a mysterious foreign national, and that J Street helped facilitate Richard Goldstone's visit to Capitol Hill  -- though all three troubling facts have rightly…

Tomorrow the Swedish Academy will announce the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature and various sportsbooks, like Ladbroke’s, are laying odds. But since the Swedish academy’s methods for selecting the prize-winner are a mystery to all but its members, those odds reflect almost exclusively the…

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/248728/honesty-caucus-rich-lowry

Time's Kate Pickert, picking up on this post, writes that the end-of-life counseling provision in Obamacare "was the root of the 'death panels' lie."

A judge's reason for excluding damning testimony against al Qaeda terrorist Ahmed Ghailani makes no sense.

CQ's Tricia Miller reports on the latest dust-up in the bitter race to replace Bart Stupak:

Yesterday, the anti-Palin blog Mudflats leaked an email that Todd Palin had sent to several people, in which he complained about something Alaska Republican senatorial candidate Joe Miller had (not) said about Sarah Palin's qualifications for the presidency. Predictably, a media frenzy ensued.

Politico reports:

Fox News reports:

Another great video of New Jersey's governor, Chris Christie:

From Andy Ferguson's column in Commentary: 

Matt Labash dishes out advice on the environmental damage done when a Toyota Prius runs over a chipmunk and a squirrel:

1. Obama’s Job Approval in Comparative Perspective.  A key factor in the congressional midterm is the standing of the president.  Even though he is not on the ballot, the president is seen as the leader of the government and a political party, and candidates from that party are inevitably viewed in…

“When the United States sneezes, Latin America catches a cold.” This old maxim proved true in 2008 and 2009, when the U.S. financial crisis deeply affected countries throughout the Western Hemisphere. Yet while the U.S. economy has been struggling through a painfully weak recovery, Latin America’s…

Limbaugh: I’m not sure about this new Christine O’Donnell ad.

The inspector general for tax administration at the Treasury Department will investigate the allegation that an Obama administration official may have improperly accessed and discussed private taxpayer information.

Berlin

A statement from former Florida governor Jeb Bush on Charlie Crist's dishonest Social Security attack on Marco Rubio:

Senator Russ Feingold, a leading voice for tight regulations on campaigns and elections, has been contacted by the National Football League today for using NFL footage without permission for a new campaign ad.

Earl Pomeroy (D., N.D.), who stubbornly cast not one but two votes in favor of Obamacare in a state that has favored GOP presidential candidates by an average of 21 percentage points in the past three elections, is now running an ad in which he brazenly tries to convince his constituents that he…

Good news for Republicans:

It’s one month until Election Day and Florida governor Charlie Crist is desperate. When Crist launched his campaign more than a year ago he was leading conservative Marco Rubio by more than 30 points. Now, after having opted to run as an independent to avoid a humiliating defeat in the Republican…

Less than a month before the midterm elections, candidates of both parties seem to have found something on which they can agree: There’s no sense in trying to defend Obamacare as it was passed by Congress and signed into law by the president. Instead, the debate over the federal health care…

A new SuveyUSA poll shows California senator Barbara Boxer her leading Republican Carly Fiorina by just 3 points, 46% to 43%. Meanwhile Rasmussen shows Boxer up four points, 49% to 45%. So, after months of advertising by Boxer, she still isn't above 50% in the polls. That could spell trouble for…

Sunday’s presidential election results from Brazil came as a surprise. Pre-election polling had indicated that center-left Workers’ Party candidate Dilma Rousseff, the hand-picked successor of incumbent Brazilian president Lula da Silva, would win an outright majority in the first round of…

From a Wall Street Journal article about Barney Frank's re-election contest:

1. Generic Ballot. Conflicting numbers last night from Gallup and Rasmussen on the generic ballot. Rasmussen finds a tighter race than earlier, with the GOP holding a three-point lead.  Gallup, meanwhile, says that if the election were held today, the Democrats might be on track for a 1920-style…

Republican Linda McMahon and Democrat Dick Blumenthal sounded a common theme during the Connecticut Senate race's first debate Monday night: My opponent has serious character flaws, and I'm not like those Democrats in Washington.

The same day that Rasmussen shows Republicans leading Democrats by just three points on the generic ballot question among likely voters, Gallup's "first estimates among likely voters" in 2010 show the GOP up by double digits:

If it’s still unclear exactly what the Stuxnet worm was meant to target, it’s possible that we won’t entirely understand the consequences of this now notorious malware attack for many years to come. Maybe it will turn out that Stuxnet was little more than the over-hyped tech version of the recent…

Las Vegas Review Journal endorses Sharron Angle.

Many Republican House candidates are running against Nancy Pelosi, but only John Dennis of San Francisco is going head to head with the Speaker of the House on Election Day. How does a Republican defeat a San Francisco liberal and one of the most powerful people in the federal government?

After enacting comprehensive energy sanctions on companies that do business with Iran, and encouraging 31 other countries to follow suit, last Thursday the United States announced penalties against only a single firm for violating them.

Ed Morrissey reports that a new internal poll for Republican congressional candidate Chip Cravaack shows Democratic incumbent Jim Oberstar leading Cravaack 45% to 42%. The race for Minnesota's 8th district is currently rated solid Democratic by the Cook Political Report, and Oberstar has won…

Ben Smith reports: 

Yes, we've known about Dick Blumenthal's false claims of serving in Vietnam for months, but Linda McMahon's new ad seeks to remind voters (and inform those who haven't heard):

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol had some thoughts on former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel's bid for mayor of Chicago, particularly the media's coverage of the subject:

Sean Bielat is a compelling GOP House candidate, running a strong campaign in Massachusetts's Fourth Congressional District. Here's Byron York's profile of the 35-year-old officer in the Marine Corps Reserve:

Bill Kristol, AEI's Arthur Brooks, and Heritage's Ed Feulner write in today's Wall Street Journal: 

Republican congressional candidate Keith Fimian fact-checks incumbent Democrat Gerry Connolly's latest ad: 

Sean Trende writes at Real Clear Politics that Republican Joe DioGuardi could beat New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand:

Left-wing groups convened the “One Nation Working Together” rally on the National Mall on Saturday, October 2, hoping to counter Glenn Beck’s well-attended “Restoring Honor” gathering in August.  They also wanted to energize their base before the November elections, hoping to counter Tea Party…

Normally, I use this space to run down various news items related to the campaign, but today I am going to deviate from that practice to offer a snapshot of where I think the midterm battle stands.

Throughout American history, citizens have been duped. It’s a word as old as the republic itself. George Washington, in his “Farewell Address,” warned about “dupes”—that is, those who, unwittingly, allow themselves to be deceived or misled by active adversaries of the United States.

After Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speeches, press conferences, and interviews in New York City last week, it’s obvious the Iranian president lives in a parallel universe. This has been difficult for many in the West to grasp. The Western reflex to believe that there are “universal truths” is…

As a cradle-to-grave welfare state, Sweden has long been the northern light of liberals, the pole star of congressional progressives. And yet when the Social Democrats cast the recent election as a choice between tax breaks for the rich and more welfare, they were handed their worst electoral…

Charlotte and Emily

The Balfour Declaration

Dirty Sexy Politics

Last week, on Monday, I sat down to watch a new television show with a great deal of buzz behind it: Lone Star, on Fox. Reviews were rapturous; it was said to be vibrant, delicious, captivating. Then came a phone call I had to take, and I pressed the red button on my DVR so that the show would be…

St. Paul

Youngstown, Ohio

A ticket to see the Washington Redskins play costs $95.

Rot at the DOJ

Profits rising. Pricing power returning. Credit rating upgrades. Deal makers flying high. Can this be the airline industry investors periodically love and loathe? The International Air Transport Association (IATA) certainly thinks so. Most carriers are reporting healthy second-quarter profits --…

Well that was quick: According to a CNN statement issued today (and as reported by Politico and elsewhere):

Rahm Emanuel's ridiculous exit address: “I want to thank you for being the toughest leader any country could ask for in the toughest times any president has ever faced.”

The immigration attorney for the accuser of California's gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman has a shady past -- and has given a fair amount of money exclusively to Democrats. Whitman is currently being accused of hiring an illegal alien and trying to cover it up. Marc Van der Hout is the…

Charlie Crist says he "absolutely" would have decided to run as an independent if he had been beating Marco Rubio by 20 points in the primary:

When Talking Points Memo is calling him the "poster child for the angry Left" and tweaking him in headlines—"That poll is bogus. I'm totally winning."— surely some of the shine has worn off this lefty Internet folk hero.

Rick Sanchez is the host of CNN's "Rick's List" and the author of newly released "Conventional Idiocy: Why New America is Sick of Old Politics."

Obamacare continues to work its wonders on the insurance market. The latest from the New York Times:

In the wake of former voting rights attorney Chris Coates’s bombshell testimony on September 24, the New Black Panther Party scandal has reached the front pages of some mainstream press outlets and taken on fresh momentum.

It's been remarkable to watch Jon Stewart fall out of love with Barack Obama. Stewart is an intelligent man, a liberal who has reasons for his liberalism, and so he's been unable to sustain the cult worship of the president you find in more reliable Democratic partisans. But Stewart is also a funny…

When last we left Nick Sprayregen, the New York businessman was fighting Columbia University and New York City over Columbia’s proposed takeover of the Manhattanville neighborhood. Columbia has been working closely with the city to invoke eminent domain on the university’s behalf. Sprayregen and…

The conventional wisdom in the political community is that Republicans will probably win the House in the midterm election but fall short of capturing the Senate.  Maybe, but Republicans have at least a 50-50 shot at taking the Senate, too.

1. Obama’s Best Pick.  Yesterday, Gallup found that Barack Obama has just a 15-point lead over Hillary Clinton for the 2012 Democratic nomination, with 10 percent undecided.  Yikes.  Gallup accurately notes:

Perhaps the most basic measure of a country’s character is whether people, when given the chance, flood into the country or risk life and limb to escape from it. By this measure, Muslims are flourishing in America. Meanwhile, though Christianity predates Islam by centuries in the Middle East,…