Staffer Cites Earlier Role by Hastert's Office  —  House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's chief of staff confronted then-Rep. Mark Foley about his inappropriate social contact with male pages well before the speaker said aides in his office took any action, a current congressional staff member …

New LA TIMES publisher is a Right Wing Hatchet man with ties to Judge Roberts and Ken Starr  —  Last night David Hiller, from the Chicago Tribune came into town to replace Jeffrey Johnson because he "publicly opposed a corporate demand for a stringent cost-cutting plan last month," In other words he was fired.

A True Blowout is Now Possible  —  After looking at the news for the past 10 days or so, I have to wonder how Democrats can possibly fail in their efforts to take both the House and the Senate.  —  The national atmospherics don't merely favor Democrats; they set the stage for a blowout of cosmic proportions next month.

Investigation to Look at Facebook  —  University Says Social Networking Site 'Not Exempt'  —  Columbia will review information and images posted on students' Facebook profiles as part of its investigation into Wednesday night's Minutemen brawl, a University spokesman confirmed Thursday evening.

Busted!  Harold Ford Jr. - Life Imitates Lawyer  —  Democrat Harold Ford Jr. is found guilty!  —  Ford Impersonates a lawyer on CNN with Wolf Blitzer  —  (20 seconds)  —  Harold Ford Jr. says, "I'm a lawyer.  You would expect all of those who are interviewed to be truthful and candid and forthcoming."

Lamont's Lull  —  In a record week, futures in Ned Lamont continued to plummet in the political market.  Big board polls put the Connecticut Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate falling sharply behind incumbent independent Joseph Lieberman.  Most legit polls that insiders and serious observers look …

2 ROCKETS DEFUSED AT PAKISTAN PARLIAMENT  —  ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Two rockets rigged with mobile phones and primed to fire toward Pakistan's parliament were discovered by a construction worker Thursday and safely defused by bomb disposal experts, a security official said.

Google in Talks To Buy YouTube For $1.6 Billion  —  Deal Could Put Search Giant  —  In Top Spot for Online Video;  —  A Front Door for Web Visits  —  The latest prize in the great Internet land grab, online-video company YouTube Inc., could soon be snapped up by Google Inc.

Danish TV shows cartoons mocking Prophet Mohammad  —Text+COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Danish state TV on Friday aired amateur video footage showing young members of the anti-immigrant Danish Peoples' party engaged in a competition to draw humiliating cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

U.N. warns North Korea against nuclear weapon test  —  UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council on Friday urged North Korea not to carry out a planned nuclear-weapon test and warned Pyongyang of unspecified consequences if it did.  —  The warning, in a formal statement adopted unanimously …

September Employment Report  —  The BLS reports: U.S. nonfarm payrolls climbed by 51,000 in September, after a revised 188,000 gain in August, and the unemployment rate fell slightly to 4.6% in September from 4.7% in August.  —  Click on graph for larger image.  —  Here is the cumulative nonfarm job growth for Bush's 2nd term.

Newspapers 2.0  —  Here's a remarkable and comprehensive report (by Krestia DeGeorge in City) on the current fracas going on at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle.  Key point: … (Or hell, into Google, or Technorati.) … As Tim Rutten reports (and I pointed to yesterday) …

Warner's Iraq Remarks Surprise White House  —  The White House, caught off guard by a leading Republican senator who said the situation in Iraq was "drifting sideways," responded cautiously on Friday, with a spokeswoman for President Bush stopping short of saying outright that Mr. Bush disagreed with the assessment.

Start the Revolution Without Him … "I AM WISE TO YOUR SNARKY WAYS."  Superstar blogger Markos Moulitsas won't let me near his house.  Instead, he meets me at a Berkeley coffee shop.  "When the Newsweek guy was there, he saw some workmen putting in my new plasma television and said something about it in the article."

Rove Aide Linked To Abramoff Resigns  —  A top aide to White House strategist Karl Rove resigned yesterday after disclosures that she accepted gifts from and passed information to now-convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, becoming the first official in the West Wing to lose a job in the influence-peddling scandal.