Fox News Polls Track Midterm Election Races in 5 Key States  —  Florida GOP Senate nominee Marco Rubio has jumped to a 16-point lead over independent Charlie Crist, according to the latest Fox News poll, as Republicans make gains across the country on dissatisfaction with President Obama's agenda.

Senate Democrats Overcome GOP Filibuster of Small Business Bill  —  ABC News' Matthew Jaffe reports:  —  Senate Democrats today overcame a summer-long Republican filibuster of a bill to jumpstart job growth by providing small businesses with a $30 billion lending fund and around $12 billion in tax relief.

Orszag Is Half Right On the Fiscal Gap  —  Last week, Peter Orszag turned some heads with his New York Times op-ed saying that we should extend all the Bush tax cuts for two years and then let them all expire.  I agree with some, but not all, of the Orszag op-ed, and I think he made a …

Blumenthal Up Just 6 Points In Connecticut Senate Race, Quinnipiac University Poll Finds; Much McMahon Support Is Anti-Blumenthal  —  Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, the Democrat, leads Republican former wrestling executive Linda McMahon 51 - 45 percent among likely voters …

False Alarm  —  Reports coming in that President Obama will name Elizabeth Warren as interim director of the consumer protection bureau created by the new financial regulatory law.  —  Late Update: Maybe not so fast.  Fox was one of the outlets originally reporting this and has now retracted that report …

Bill Kristol on Christine O'Donnell: No Sarah Palin  —  (CNN) - Guess who's getting slimed now in the increasingly nasty Senate race in Delaware: Republican stalwarts Bill Kristol and Fred Barnes.  —  The charge: both men, editors of the conservative magazine the Weekly Standard …

Ex-aide: O'Donnell a ‘complete fraud’  —  WILMINGTON, Del. — Christine O'Donnell's former campaign manager has recorded an Election Day robocall for the Delaware Republican Party meant to shred the tea party-backed candidate's conservative credentials as voters head to the polls.

Confessing to Crime, but Innocent  —  KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Eddie Lowery lost 10 years of his life for a crime he did not commit.  There was no physical evidence at his trial for rape, but one overwhelming factor put him away: he confessed.  —  At trial, the jury heard details that prosecutors insisted …

Former GOP leader apologizes to Obama, calls Republicans ‘racist’  —  Miami, Florida (CNN) - The ex-chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, Jim Greer, is now apologizing for stoking fears about President Obama's address to school children last year.  —  Greer, now under indictment …

The Day After Tomorrow  —  Every political movement has a story.  The surging Republican Party has a story, too.  It is a story of virtue betrayed and innocence threatened.  —  Through most of its history, the narrative begins, the United States was a limited government nation …

New Polls Show Mostly Republican Leads  —  Fox News is set to release a series of new polls of likely voters in several key states.  They were released early to users of their new iPhone app.  —  Florida: Marco Rubio (R) leads Gov. Charlie Crist (I) in the U.S. Senate race, 43% to 27%, with Rep. Kendrick Meek (D) at 21%.

Despite Electoral Landscape, GOP Proposals Not Popular  —  Americans offer tepid support for much of the Republican Party's domestic agenda, including repealing the new healthcare law and extending tax cuts for the wealthy, according to the latest Society for Human Resource Management/National …

Why is Gingrich pushing Dinesh D'Souza's crazy theory about Obama's “Kenyan anti-colonialism”?  —  The release of a new book by Dinesh D'Souza prompts a perennial question: Why do people keep publishing books by Dinesh D'Souza?  —  There's a simple answer.

Report: More women than men in U.S. earned doctorates last year for first time  —  For the first time, more women than men in the United States received doctoral degrees last year, the culmination of decades of change in the status of women at colleges nationwide.

Jack Anderson's Nixonian tactics  —  There was a time in Washington when Jack Anderson was a hero, the columnist who kept unearthing Richard Nixon's dark secrets, a Pulitzer winner who revealed the administration's secret tilt toward Pakistan in its war against India.

Mitch Daniels makes White House moves  —  Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has been holding a series of private dinners with top Republican business leaders, policy hands and donors from around the country since this spring, an indication that he's thinking more seriously about a presidential bid than he publicly lets on.

‘2010 is gone for Democrats’  —  “He cannot save 2010,” the big-time Democrat is saying of Barack Obama.  “It is gone.  He must now concentrate on saving 2012.  But the biggest fear of some of those close to him is that he might not really want to go on in 2012, that he might not really care.”