Biden to Supporters: “Gird Your Loins”, For the Next President “It's Like Cleaning Augean Stables”  —  ABC News' Matthew Jaffe Reports: Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., on Sunday guaranteed that if elected, Sen. Barack Obama., D-Ill., will be tested by an international crisis within his first six months …

Safety in Numbers?  Poll-Driven Press Goes Out on a Limb  —  The network maps are bathed in blue, the pundits contemplating a landslide, the conservative columnists preparing for the indignities of an Obama administration.  —  With the numbers breaking Barack Obama's way …

Evidence of Obama-Ayers Tie Sent Down the Memory Hole . . . Almost!  —  The best evidence that Barack Obama launched his political career from Bill Ayers's living room has disappeared . . . down the memory hole.  —  Well, not quite.  The Wayback Machine and I have both saved copies.

The Excrescence Of Right-Wing GOP Hate  —  The racist and xenophobic bile that has flowed from the right-wing Republican base and spokesmouths like Rush Limbaugh has been unprecedented in this campaign season, and it was easy to predict that the moment Colin Powell endorsed Barack …

Here the People Rule  —  According to the silver-penned Peggy Noonan, writing in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend, “In the end the Palin candidacy is a symptom and expression of a new vulgarization in American politics.”  —  Leave aside Noonan's negative judgment on Sarah Palin's candidacy, a judgment I don't share.

More Challenges for McCain, From Ayers to the Palin Pick  —  Obama leads on optimism and temperment in final weeks.  —  More challenges for John McCain: Likely voters overwhelmingly reject his effort to make an issue of Barack Obama's association with 1960s radical William Ayers.

EXCLUSIVE: .22 Gunshot, paint balls fired at McCain / Palin Straight Talk Express  —  (Sunday, October 19 - Filed by Mark Williams in Raton, New Mexico with the Stop Obama Tour) We learned at this morning's Stop Obama Rally here that the McCain/Palin Straight Talk Express came through town yesterday.

Palin Signals Support for Federal Marriage Amendment  —  In a one-on-one interview with The Brody File, Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin signaled her support for a federal marriage amendment.  Up to this point, she hadn't really said one way or the other whether she officially supports one.

Is Capitalism Dead?  —  IS THIS the end of American capitalism?  As financial panic spread across the globe and governments scrambled to contain the damage, reality seemed to announce the doom of U.S.-style free markets and President Bush's ideology.  But this is wrong in two ways.

Bachmann Lies, Denies She Ever Called Barack Obama's Views ‘Anti-American’  —  After right-wing Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) appeared on MSNBC's Hardball on Friday and called for a McCarthyite investigation into the “anti-American views” of members of Congress, she has come under a withering storm of criticism.

CNN Poll: Race may be tightening  —  Latest CNN/ORC Poll of likely voters:  —  Barack Obama: 51 percent  —  John McCain: 46 percent  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — With two weeks and one day until election day, a new national poll of likely voters suggests the race for the White House may be tightening up.

Palin Becomes Increasingly Accessible To The National Media  —  From CBS News' Scott Conroy:  —  (COLORADO SPRINGS) It was less than two weeks ago when Sarah Palin astonished her traveling press corps by lifting the curtain (literally) and journeying to the back of her campaign plane …

Obama's Carbon Ultimatum  —  The coming offer you won't be able to refuse.  —  Liberals pretend that only President Bush is preventing the U.S. from adopting some global warming “solution.”  But occasionally their mask slips.  As Barack Obama's energy adviser has now made clear …

ARE THEY ALL AS SLEAZY AS MCCAIN?  —  Either because of age or recent immersion in politics, a lot of readers have asked, is it really usually this bad?  Do they all get this sleazy?  As sleazy as McCain?  —  The simple answer, I think, is, No. They don't.

How to Read the Constitution  —  The following is an excerpt from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's Wriston Lecture to the Manhattan Institute last Thursday:  —  When John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address, “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country …

What Bradley Effect?  —  WITH only two weeks to go before the election, talk has turned to the Bradley effect.  The phenomenon is named for Tom Bradley, the African-American mayor of Los Angeles, who lost the 1982 California governor's race even though exit polls predicted he'd defeat his Republican opponent, George Deukmejian.

Chess, Not Checkers  —  I've hesitated to do this post, partly because I think excessive conservative attention gets paid to short-term political horse race issues.  But here's something practical and urgent that I think everybody on the Right — from rabid Sarah Palin fans to Andrew Sullivan …

Jon Stewart to Sarah Palin: ‘[Expletive] You.’  —  Speaking to a college audience in Boston, Mass. Friday, “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart used his stand-up routine to respond to Sarah Palin's comments about “pro-America” parts of the country, shedding the profanity restrictions that govern his Comedy Central show.

The Real Plumbers of Ohio  —  Forty years ago, Richard Nixon made a remarkable marketing discovery.  By exploiting America's divisions — divisions over Vietnam, divisions over cultural change and, above all, racial divisions — he was able to reinvent the Republican brand.

John McCain and an Army of Joes  —  Woodbridge, Va. — Tito Munoz was ready to rock when John McCain showed here up at the Connaughton Community Plaza in Woodbridge, Virginia Saturday afternoon.  Dressed in a yellow hard hat covered with McCain-Palin stickers, wearing an orange high-visibility vest …

Obama's Secret Campaign Cash: Has $63 Million Flowed from Foreign Sources?  —  As Barack Obama reaped a stunning $150 million in campaign donations in September, bringing his total to more than $600 million, new questions have arisen about the source of his amazing funding.