Looking for a Lifeboat  —  A new NEWSWEEK poll shows that the GOP has lost more ground.  Will rallying the base stem a Democratic tide?  —  Jason Reed / Reuters  —  President Bush speaks to supporters in Iowa on Friday  —  As President George W. Bush jets across Red State America this weekend …

Time for Rumsfeld to go  —  "So long as our government requires the backing of an aroused and informed public opinion ... it is necessary to tell the hard bruising truth."  —  That statement was written by Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Marguerite Higgins more than a half-century ago during the Korean War.

Neo Culpa  —  As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence.  In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman …

U.S. Seeks Silence on CIA Prisons  —  Court Is Asked to Bar Detainees From Talking About Interrogations  —  The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk.

Poll: Burns, Tester in dead heat  —  HELENA - After months of campaigning and millions of dollars of advertising, it all comes down to this: Republican Sen. Conrad Burns and Democratic challenger Jon Tester are running dead even, a new Gazette State Poll shows.

The Patrician and the Grunts  —  What we can learn from John Kerry's latest flub.  —  Regrettable though it might be for the United States military to become an untouchable "third rail" in American politics, there can be little sympathy for someone who keeps on brushing against that rail just to see what will happen.

The Saturday Brunch  —  A special news digest from the staff of the Hotline.  —  A weekend from .... for the GOP?  Dems nervous about MT as poll shows dead heat .... Turnout hints .... Bill Clinton's only TV ad?  —  WHAT'S BREWING  —  This may be the closing weekend from hell for the White House.

Weldon decides to scale back TV advertising  —  Two days after launching a new advertisement, U.S. Rep. Curt Weldon has canceled some of his TV time, fueling speculation Friday he was throwing in the towel and saving money for a legal defense fund.  The campaign denied the rumors …

"Either WE Win Or YOU Cheated"  —  That's liberal Robert Kuttner's claim in today's Boston Globe-Democrat, offered without irony (Democrats are, after all, the "vote early and often" party). … Last week, Democrats were complaining that black voters weren't going to turn out because they're assuming the elections are rigged, anyway.

Bob Ney: Moron of the Year  —  What a doofus!  He was dead busted more than a year ago, but waits until the Friday before Election Day to resign: … Now we can be sure that Tim Russert will be reminding voters all about Abramoff on Sunday.  Brilliant move, Bob.

G.O.P. Glum as It Struggles to Hold Congress  —  The battle for Congress rolled into a climactic final weekend with Republican Party leaders saying the best outcome they could foresee was losing 12 seats in the House.  But they were increasingly steeling themselves to the loss of at least 15 …

'NYT' Sunday Preview: Ahmad Chalabi Says, 'The Real Culprit is Wolfowitz'  —  NEW YORK So, Ahmad Chalabi, what went wrong in Iraq in the war you helped to sell?  "The Americans sold us out," he tells longtime Baghdad reporter Dexter Filkins in a lengthy cover story in this coming Sunday's New York Times Magazine, reviewed by E&P.

"Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser  —  Media treat us to breathtakingly stupid feeding-frenzy over transparent GOP efforts to trick people into thinking John Kerry insulted the military and John Kerry is the Democratic Party  —  Last week, we asked the so-called "Gang of 500" …