memeorandum: Where do you stand in the new culture wars? (Sarah Baxter/Times of London)

10:05 AM ET, October 22, 2007

Top Items:

Clinton Finds Way to Play Along With Drudge — As Senator Barack Obama prepared to give a major speech on Iraq one morning a few weeks ago, a flashing red-siren alert went up on the Drudge Report Web site. It read, "Queen of the Quarter: Hillary Crushes Obama in Surprise Fund-Raising Surge …

Discussion: Chicago Sun Times, Don Surber, MSNBC, Booman Tribune, La Shawn Barber's Corner, TIME: Swampland, DownWithTyranny!, Assorted Babble, Bark Bark Woof Woof and Brilliant at Breakfast

Washington Post:

Dishwashers for Clinton — DONORS WHOSE addresses turn out to be tenements. Dishwashers and waiters who write $1,000 checks. Immigrants who ante up because they have been instructed to by powerful neighborhood associations, or, as one said, "They informed us to go, so I went."

Discussion: Captain's Quarters, Heading Right, Blue Crab Boulevard and Betsy's Page

New York Times:
The Republican Debate on Fox News Channel

Discussion: The Carpetbagger Report

Washington Post:
Candidates Spar With Each Other, And With Clinton

Discussion: The Politico, Captain's Quarters, MiamiHerald.com, The Caucus, Fausta's blog, New York Sun, MSNBC, Spin Cycle, New York Times, CNN Political Ticker and The Heretik

New York Times:
At Debate, G.O.P. Race Becomes More Personal

Discussion: Washington Wire, Wall Street Journal, The Hill, USA Today, MSNBC, New York Post, The Carpetbagger Report, NY Daily News, DesMoinesRegister.com Blogs, TIME and Brian Beutler

Deacon / Power Line:
A SLEEPING GIANT WAKES UP

Discussion: Reason Magazine, The Mahablog, Tennessee Guerilla Women, National Review, Death, Fox News, The Van Der Galiën Gazette and Gateway Pundit

Marc Santora / The Caucus:
For Thompson, It Was Florida in Four Minutes

Discussion: Wall Street Journal, MSNBC, Tennessee Guerilla Women, Eunomia and HeraldTribune.com

Valerie Plame Wilson / The Huffington Post:

Finally Telling My Story — I'm Valerie Plame Wilson and I'm excited to be here and blog about my book Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, which goes on sale Monday, Oct 22. When my publisher sent me the finished copy earlier this week, it was thrilling.

Discussion: TalkLeft, Macsmind, JammieWearingFool and Hullabaloo

Larry Johnson / NO QUARTER:

Valerie Plame Wilson and the Ultimate Betrayal — Valerie's problem is her decency and humanity. She has reasons most Americans don't know to be really angry with George Bush and George Tenet but she has contained her rage. In a new tasty nugget in her book, Fair Game, she gives some details on the 2004 Al Qaeda threat to kill her.

Discussion: Firedoglake, Brilliant at Breakfast and State of the Day

Logan Murphy / Crooks and Liars:
Valerie Plame On 60 Minutes: "The President Is Not A Man Of His Word"

Discussion: Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, TBogg, Tennessee Guerilla Women, At-Largely, Take Our Country Back, The Democratic Daily and The BRAD BLOG

Sabrina Tavernise / New York Times:

Iraq and Turkey See Tensions Rise After Ambush — A brazen ambush by Kurdish militants that left at least 12 Turkish soldiers dead touched off a major escalation in Turkey-Iraq tensions on Sunday, bringing fears that Turkey would retaliate immediately by sending troops across the border into Iraq.

Discussion: Think Progress, The Swamp, FP Passport, The Glittering Eye, Needlenose, The Reaction, Prairie Weather, The American Street and Alternate Brain

Amit R. Paley / Washington Post:
Kurds From Iraq Kill 17 Soldiers in Turkey

Discussion: Outside The Beltway, The Van Der Galiën Gazette, BlondeSense and Unqualified Offerings

David Segal / Washington Post:

Low Road to Splitsville — Right-Wing Publisher's Breakup Is Super-Rich In Tawdry Details — Looking for a perfect little weekend vacation this fall? Here's a travel tip you don't hear very often: Head to Pittsburgh. Right away. — Seriously, get in the car and read this story later …

Discussion: NewsBusters.org, Pharyngula and Paul Krugman

Vikas Bajaj / New York Times:

Mortgage Security Bondholders Facing a Cutoff of Interest Payments — For all the pain in the mortgage market, investors who hold bonds backed by risky home loans have continued to receive their monthly interest payments — until now. — Collateralized debt obligations …

Irenep / Michael Yon:

Resistance is Futile — October 22, 2007 — Resistance is futile: You will be (mis)informed. — A gulf. — A gap. — A chasm. — A parallel universe. — All describe the bizarro-world contrast between what most Americans seem to think is happening in Iraq versus what is really happening in Iraq.

Discussion: Say Anything, Hot Air and Confederate Yankee

Jake Tapper / ABCNEWS:

Key Clinton Backer Rips Giuliani's Personal Life — Rep. Charles Rangel Apparently Refers to Giuliani as a 'Cheating Goddamn Husband' — Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., the dean of the New York congressional delegation, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, longtime political booster …

Discussion: Des Moines Register, Bark Bark Woof Woof, Fausta's blog, Weasel Zippers, A Chequer-Board of Nights … and CNN Political Ticker

Doug Struck / Washington Post:

At the Poles, Melting Occurring at Alarming Rate — For scientists, global warming is a disaster movie, its opening scenes set at the poles of Earth. The epic already has started. And it's not fiction. — The scenes are playing, at the start, in slow motion: The relentless grip …

Discussion: Liberty Street, Gay Patriot and Hot Air

Raymond Hernandez / New York Times:

A Protector as a Child, Honored as a Hero — In June 2005, Lt. Michael P. Murphy and three fellow members of the Navy Seals were on a mission in the mountains of Afghanistan when they were pinned down by a swarm of enemy fighters. Trapped in a steep ravine, they were unable to get a radio signal to call for help.

Discussion: michellemalkin.com, Associated Press, American Thinker and JammieWearingFool

US Department of State:

Says U.S. will keep its commitment to build a secure Iraq — "Iraq has become the central front in the war on terror," Vice President Cheney said October 10. — Speaking at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, Cheney said it was "crucial that we enforced the U.N. Security Council resolutions" …

Discussion: The Atlantic Online

White House:
Vice President's Remarks to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, The Belgravia Dispatch, Foreign Policy Watch and Blogs for Bush

The Big Trunk / Power Line:

IT'S THE COVERUP THAT KILLS YOU, PART 3 — It's been another week without word from the New Republic on the status of its "investigation" into the columns of TNR Baghdad Diarist Scott Thomas Beauchamp. "The editors" have not spoken on the matter since their August 10 update.

Discussion: Captain's Quarters

Ed Morrissey / Captain's Quarters:

What NASA Won't Tell You — NASA commissioned a study of aviation safety through thousands of interviews with the people with a bird's-eye view of the industry — the pilots. After conducting telephone interviews with 24,000 commercial and general aviation pilots from 2001 to 2005 …

Discussion: Associated Press

Adam Liptak / New York Times:

Say What You Like, Just Don't Say It Here — The American commitment to free speech is the most robust in the world. But these days that tolerance stops at the border. — Two cases pending in federal court in Manhattan will soon test how far the government can go in keeping Americans safe …

Discussion: The Sideshow, The American Street and Bark Bark Woof Woof

Jan Moller / New Orleans Times-Picayune:

JINDAL WINS — He's the nation's first governor of Indian descent — BATON ROUGE — In a campaign that had the air of both the inevitable and the historical, Bobby Jindal was elected governor Saturday, claiming the electoral prize that eluded him four years ago.

Discussion: Taegan Goddard's …, Democratic Strategist, Bluey Blog and Redstate