Campaign call reveals Clinton debate concern  —  Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D-N.Y.) top advisers, doing damage control after the candidate's debate performance Tuesday, told supporters on a conference call Wednesday that the campaign needed more money to fight back.

Finalists Announced  —  Here is a partial list of the finalists for The 2007 Weblog Awards.  Finalists badges (hosted by Imageshack) will be available Thursday.  Voting is scheduled to begin Thursday evening (late), but at this point we can't pinpoint the exact time polls will open.

L.A. Times Editor Denies Having Heard About the Sex Scandal Story — And I Believe Him  —  This morning Allah linked that rumor that the L.A. Times is sitting on a sex scandal involving a leading presidential candidate.  I tried nosing around a little, and asked Matt Welch about it.

Nominee's Stand May Avoid Tangle of Torture Cases  —  In adamantly refusing to declare waterboarding illegal, Michael B. Mukasey, the nominee for attorney general, is steering clear of a potential legal quagmire for the Bush administration: criminal prosecution or lawsuits …

From the Desk of Donald Rumsfeld . . .  In Sometimes-Brusque 'Snowflakes,' He Shared Worldview, Shaped Policy  —  In a series of internal musings and memos to his staff, then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld argued that Muslims avoid "physical labor" and wrote of the need to …

'Criminal' Botnet Stumps for Ron Paul, Researchers Allege  —  If Texas congressman Ron Paul is elected president in 2008, he may be the first leader of the free world put into power with the help of a global network of hacked PCs spewing spam, according to computer-security researchers who've analyzed …

My Nobel Moment  —  I've had a lot of fun recently with my tiny (and unofficial) slice of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).  But, though I was one of thousands of IPCC participants, I don't think I will add "0.0001 Nobel Laureate" to my resume.

The angry voter: Bad news for Dems  —  Congressional Democrats certainly know the power of a throw-the-bums-out message.  It vaulted them to power a year ago this week.  Little wonder anxiety is boiling over inside the new majority as lawmakers ponder a succession of polls and reach …

Iraqi Islamic Party says, "Al Qaeda is Defeated."  —  O1 November 2007  —  Iraqi Islamic Party: "Al Qaeda is Defeated"  —  "Al Qaeda in Iraq is defeated," according to Sheik Omar Jabouri, spokesman for the Iraqi Islamic Party and a member of the widespread and influential Jabouri Tribe.

Stop Saving Social Security  —  I said last night that I disagreed with the oft-stated claim that it just gets harder to 'fix' the non-existent Social Security crisis the longer you wait.  In fact, as I thought about Obama's proposal to remove or retool the cap on Social Security taxes I got …