Why North Korea is the Wrong Focus  —  As fate would have it, I was sitting in a local Italian restaurant with Marc Armed "Liberal" Danziger when the call came in at around 8:30pm California time.  Kim Jong-Il, the star of "Team America: World Police" and also incidentally the ruler of North Korea, had set off a nuke.

Allen's Undisclosed Stock Options Were Worth Up to $1.1 Million  —  Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) — Stock options that Senator George Allen described as worthless were worth as much as $1.1 million at one point, according to a review of Senate disclosure forms and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Former pages surveyed in Foley probe  —  WASHINGTON - Lawmakers, following a request from the House ethics committee, are surveying aides and former House pages to find out if any of them had knowledge of ex-Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record)'s inappropriate conduct toward male pages.

Woman: Saddam Guards Buried People Alive  —  BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Prison guards under Saddam Hussein used to bury detainees alive and watch women as they bathed, occasionally shooting over their heads, a former female prisoner testified Monday in the genocide trial of the ex-president.

Dynamic Capitalism  —  Entrepreneurship is lucrative—and just.  —  There are two economic systems in the West.  Several nations—including the U.S., Canada and the U.K.—have a private-ownership system marked by great openness to the implementation of new commercial ideas coming from entrepreneurs …

Streisand Has Outburst at NYC Concert  —  It was an evening that elicited tears, standing ovations, raucous laughter and shouts of joy from the audience _ and was just in the first few minutes.  —  Yes, Barbra Streisand's return to touring after a 12-year absence was the extravaganza that it promised to be.

Republicans Want to Turn Over a New Page  —  The Foley scandal is no "October surprise"  —  Leading Republicans, with the support of conservative media outlets, are charging that the Mark Foley scandal was a plot orchestrated by Democrats to damage the G.O.P.'s electoral prospects this November.

Tucker Carlson to Evangelicals: Duped  —  Tucker Carlson gets honest about what he says the Republican elites feel about the Extreme Christian Right.  —  Video-WMP Video-QT  —  Duncan:

Bad News In The Polls  —  Well, the media has been able to create the impression Mark Foley represents the GOP in some recent polls out.  The range of lead for the Dems is between 13 and 23 points (A href="http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/ images/10/09/rel24a.pdf">CNN, USA Today/Gallup, ABC News/WaPo, CBS News - H/T TCP).

F.B.I. Struggling to Reinvent Itself to Fight Terror  —  Last February, top F.B.I. officers from across the nation gathered in a high-security auditorium for the latest plan to reinvent the crime-fighting agency to take on terrorism.  —  Philip Mudd, who had just joined the bureau …

What it means to be a liberal  —  For most of the past four decades, liberals have been in retreat.  Since the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, Republicans have controlled the White House 70 percent of the time and Republican presidents have made 86 percent of the U.S. Supreme Court appointments.

Gibson: Run golden-oldie ads, get golden-oldie viewers  —  Want younger viewers for the evening news?  Ditch the geezer ads, says ABC World News anchor Charlie Gibson.  —  If networks are serious about luring pre-Social Security eyeballs, they should replace commercials for adult diapers …

Hastert Tries To Shift Blame To Staff, Raises Prospect of 'Cover Up'  —  At a press conference this morning, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) set up his staff to take the blame for the Mark Foley scandal.  Asked if he was satisfied with how his staff handled the matter, Hasert said, "I understand what my staff told me.