And now for some shoddy war reporting...from an NRO milblogger  —  Ugh.  This is bad on many levels.  W. Thomas Smith, Jr., a former Marine and milblogger who writes at National Review Online's The Tank (and whose work in Iraq I've praised and linked to here), posts a long-winded defense of bogus …

Doing the Marxist Slide— Venezuela Votes on Chavista Rule... Update: CHAVEZ WINS!  —  CHAVEZ WINS!!!  (4:30 PM CST)  —  Aljazeera reports: … Reuters reports that "Government Sources" have confirmed that Chavez has won.  —  Ahmadinejad ought to be calling soon for congrats.

More on Romney Religion Speech  —  The venue is not a surprise, since Romney has given a previous major address (on defense policy) at the Bush library, and the two families are very close.  And Texas, of course, was also the venue for John F. Kennedy's famous speech on religion in 1960 …

Jay Leno turns traitor: Fires his writers  —  I guess passing out some donuts while wearing his Republican lapel pin to striking writers was as far he was willing to go.  What a putz. … Bob Cesca says:

An Attack, From the Candidate's Mouth  —  CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - At a news conference here just now, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton expanded her attacks on Senator Barack Obama by suggesting that he has a character issue because of his assertions that his health insurance plan covers all Americans …

Jeb'd  —  state of Florida. … Don't know if Siedle has information or if he's just making a guess, but I too suspect that the last gasp of Big S**tpile involved finding marks in state and local governments.

More gay men describe sexual encounters with U.S. Sen. Craig  —  Allegations made since news of the Minneapolis case broke lend weight to rumors about Craig. … David Phillips.  Mike Jones.  Greg Ruth.  Tom Russell.  —  Four gay men, willing to put their names in print and whose allegations …

Prognosis: Rudy and the records  —  Predictably, Ben's story about Rudy's security billing got considerable play on the Sunday shows.  —  But whether it lives past today remains an open question.  Let's look at both sides.  —  In support of Argument A, that it does:

A loss for civilisation  —  ACCORDING to my Oz-watching pals in Britain and the US, John Howard is not a failure but a victim of his own success.  He made Australia safe for the Labor Party: or, at any rate, safe enough that a sufficient number of bored electors were willing to take a flier …

US says it has right to kidnap British citizens  —  AMERICA has told Britain that it can "kidnap" British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.  —  A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens …

CNN'S VIRTUAL REALITY  —  ITS ORDINARY WORLD IS ANYTHING BUT  —  By now you've probably heard that CNN made such a laughingstock of itself at the recent YouTube debate in Florida that it could only have been worse if host Anderson Cooper conducted it in fluent Klingon.

Fire Dept. Suspends Apprentice For Noose, Note  —  The Baltimore Fire Department has suspended a paramedic apprentice who admitted placing a threatening note and a rope shaped like a noose inside a firehouse.  —  Fire officials say the paramedic, Gary Maynard, is the one who initially reported finding the note and the rope.

Israelis hit Syrian 'nuclear bomb plant'  —  Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv and Michael Sheridan in Seoul  —  ISRAEL'S top-secret air raid on Syria in September destroyed a bomb factory assembling warheads fuelled by North Korean plutonium, a leading Israeli nuclear expert has told The Sunday Times.

KABUL'D TOGETHER  —  TURNS OUT THE DEMOCRATS WON THE COLD WAR.  WHO KNEW?  —  At last, Hollywood has (sort of) made a pro-CIA, pro-war, anti-Soviet movie: "Charlie Wilson's War."  It's all about how Democrats defeated the Soviet Empire.  —  A better title for the movie would be …

Huckabee: 'a different kind of Jesus juice'  —  The Republican's idiosyncratic agenda in Arkansas — a health plan, taxes for parks — was always driven by faith, he says.  —  LITTLE ROCK, ARK. — In 2005, a Republican state senator named Jim Holt introduced a bill to deny public benefits …