Bartlett: 'It's Never Been A Stay The Course Strategy'  —  On CBS this morning, White House Counselor Dan Bartlett claimed that the administration has "never" had "a stay-the-course strategy."  Watch it:  —  President Bush made the same claim over the weekend.  It's not true.

State Department official: I misspoke on Iraq policy  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — A senior State Department diplomat apologized Sunday for having told the Arab satellite network Al-Jazeera on Saturday that there is a strong possibility history will show the United States displayed "arrogance" and "stupidity" in its handling of the Iraq war.

MTP Transcript for Oct. 22  —  Barack Obama, David Broder, Charlie Cook, John Harwood, Robert Novak  —  MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: Only 16 days until the midterm elections.  Will the Democrats retake control of the Congress?  What would they do if they did?

Open Secrets: Voting In The Blogosphere  —  Secret ballots are taken for granted in America these days, but it wasn't always the norm that it is now.  The first president elected by secret ballot was Grover Cleveland in 1892, so until Bill Clinton was elected in 1992, more presidents had been elected by open ballot than in secret.

Washington Whispers  —  Calling President Bush's third and best treasury secretary, Hank Paulson, a different kind of bird than Washington is used to doesn't ruffle the feathers of the former Goldman Sachs chairman.  How could it?  A nature buff who got his start in birding at 26 …

A Nadir of U.S. Power  —  It's not exactly morning in America.  —  In Iraq, things get ever uglier, and the old remedy of extra troops now seems tragically futile.  The Bush team has recently tried putting thousands of additional soldiers into Baghdad, and the result after two months is that violence there has increased.

Lancet-go-round  —  Tim Lambert easily dispenses with criticism of the Hopkins/Lancet study of "excess deaths" in Iraq grounded in the divergence between their estimate of Iraq's pre-war death rate and the UN's estimate.  The UN's estimate turns out to have just been a kind of guess with no real methodological grounding at all.

Follow-up questions for Byron Calame and the Times' Bush-bashing allies  —  Byron Calame: NYTimes' lapdog tucks tail  —  I am sure that the New York Times public editor, Byron Calame, is hoping we will all go away now.  —  Fat chance.  —  Three months after defending his paper's decision …

Electronic Voting Machines Could Skew Elections  —  Researchers, Candidates Have Little Confidence in Machines Designed to Make Elections Easier to Call  —  Cheryl Kagan, a former Maryland Democratic legislator, was shocked when she opened her mail Wednesday morning.  —  Inside, she discovered three computer discs.

In Balad, Age-Old Ties Were 'Destroyed in a Second'  —  Sectarian Battles Drive Out Sunnis, Create State of Siege  —  OUTSIDE BALAD, Iraq — At midweek, Shiite Interior Ministry commandos and their Shiite militia allies cruised the four-lane hardtop outside the besieged city of Balad …

BEST GOP HOPE: SCARE 'EM SILLY  —  WITH only two weeks left 'til Election Day, Republicans won't save themselves with phony optimism - pathetic claims that, somehow, they're mounting a comeback.  They need to sound a note of alarm and fill the airwaves with specifics of exactly what will happen if the Democrats triumph.

15 Police Recruits Killed in Iraq; U.S. Death Toll for October Hits 86  —  At least 15 Iraqi police recruits were killed Sunday when two buses taking them to Baghdad were ambushed by insurgents north of the capital, a local police official said.  Twenty-five recruits were injured in the attack, and 20 others were kidnapped, he said.

We Can't Just Withdraw  —  I f only Iraq were like Vietnam.  After the 60-day siege of An Loc in the spring of 1972, where heavily outnumbered South Vietnamese troops and their American advisors rebuffed several North Vietnamese divisions, the Saigon government found itself …

Mud in the face  —  Clinton foe: 'Whew' she was hideous before 'work'  —  Hillary Clinton's Republican challenger is getting personal and it's not pretty: He says the senator used to be ugly - and speculates she got "millions of dollars" in plastic surgery.  —  "You ever see a picture of her back then?

God knows why faith is thriving  —  A group of leading atheists is puzzled by the continued existence and vitality of religion.  —  As biologist Richard Dawkins puts it in his new book "The God Delusion," faith is a form of irrationality, what he terms a "virus of the mind."