McCain will go to debate  —  Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) ended three days of suspense on Friday morning and announced that he will leave bailout negotiations in Washington and fly to Oxford, Miss., for the opening presidential debate.  —  McCain had previously said that he would suspend …

Thinking About McCain  —  I've been covering John McCain steadily for a decade.  A few years ago, I worked on a book, which I foolishly never completed, on the U.S. Senate with McCain as the central character.  So when I step back and think of McCain, even in the heat of this campaign …

Why Did McCain Decide to Go to the Debate Tonight?  —  Maybe with all of the drama of the past week, the viewership for tonight's debate will be off the charts, and McCain will hit it out of the park.  —  But my first instinct is that by agreeing to go to Mississippi for the debate tonight …

McCain's Choice  —  Is there a third way?  —  The McCain campaign is now trying to broker a deal between House Republicans, Treasury Secretary Paulson, and the Democrats.  This will be tough—but it's worth a shot.  —  If it works, fine.  If it fails, McCain will have, I think, three alternative paths:

Where Are the Grown-Ups?  —  Many people on both the right and the left are outraged at the idea of using taxpayer money to bail out America's financial system.  They're right to be outraged, but doing nothing isn't a serious option.  Right now, players throughout the system are refusing …

Palin Problem  —  If at one time women were considered heretical for swimming upstream against feminist orthodoxy, they now face condemnation for swimming downstream — away from Sarah Palin.  —  To express reservations about her qualifications to be vice president — and possibly president — is to risk being labeled anti-woman.

SLATE PREDICTS MCCAIN'S NEXT 10 HAIL MARY STUNTS.  —  1. Returns to Vietnam and jails himself.  —  2. Offers the post of “vice vice president” to Warren Buffett.  —  3. Challenges Obama to suspend campaign so they both can go and personally drill for oil offshore.  —  4. Learns to use computer.

National Review asks: Did WaMu fail because it employed minorities?  —  (updated below)  —  National Review's Mark Krikorian notes that (1) Washington Mutual became the largest bank to fail in American history yesterday and (2) its last press release touted the fact that it was named …

WaMu Seized, Sold Off to J.P. Morgan; Deal, Bailout Delay Rattle Investors  —  In what is by far the largest bank failure in U.S. history, federal regulators seized Washington Mutual Inc. late Thursday and struck a deal to sell the bulk of its operations to J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Memo To House Republicans  —  Here's a shocker: No one likes the risks involved in Paulson 2.0 or the precedent of using so much public money to rescue reckless bankers, both private and semi-private..  —  But there is a very good chance that (1) it will actually make money for the Treasury and …

Suggest one question for the foreign policy debate and for extra credit, what is McCain thinking?  —  Do we really want to bring Georgia into NATO and risk sending American sons and daughters to remote mountainous inland Asia in coming years to fight nuclear-armed Russia over a territorial dispute involving …