Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller will join Fox News as a commentator on free speech issues, as well as those pertaining to foreign policy and national security.

"I get to spout my views, I will NOT be joining the news team," she stressed. "I care about First Amendment issues and free speech and I will talk about that and foreign policy if and when we ever stop talking about the economy, which is going to be going on for a while."

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State . . . U.S. Const. amend. XV, Section 1.

Rolling Stone has released an investigative report on Republican vote stealing in the 2004 election by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Greg Palast. It's findings:

Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted - enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.

How it happened and what it meant:

“The new registrations thrown out, the existing registrations scrubbed, the spoiled ballots, the provisional ballots that were never counted - and what you have is millions of voters, more than enough to swing the presidential election, quietly being detached from the electorate by subterfuge.

[More...]

ABC News reports a new Washington Post/ABC poll shows:

Likely voters overwhelmingly reject his effort to make an issue of Barack Obama's association with 1960s radical William Ayers. Fallout continues from McCain's pick of Sarah Palin for vice president, with 52 percent saying it weakens their confidence in his judgment. And on optimism, it's Obama by 2-1

60 percent say Obama's relationship with Ayers is not a legitimate issue in the presidential campaign; 37 percent say it is.

On Palin, [More...]

Ted Stevens will return to the witness stand Monday as prosecutors continue their cross-examination. Although two senators testified for Stevens as character witnesses, a third has been in the audience lending his support: Larry Craig. You can understand why Craig wasn't asked to testify in support of Stevens' good character.

You can review trial coverage in these posts: 9/29, 10/2, 10/9, 10/14, 10/17. The New York Times has this preview of the trial's closing days.

Sen. Barack Obama will concentrate on states that voted for George W. Bush in 2004. His schedule:

He and his aides appear so confident of his prospects that apart from a brief stop in Madison, Wis., next Thursday, Obama currently has no plans during the next 10 days to return to Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New Hampshire or any other state that voted for John Kerry in 2004.

Instead, he intends to spend two days this week in Florida, where early voting begins on Monday, and travel to Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, Colorado, New Mexico and possibly Nevada and Indiana. Those states hold 97 electoral votes combined, and Bush all in 2004.

Obama strategist David Axlerod says:

"I don't want to say he won't go to a Blue State, but we're certainly concentrating on expanding the map."

More...

Remember the last Presidential election year the Red Sox won the pennant? Dems lost. It is a real shame the Yanks lost. The last 2 times the Yanks won the Dems won the Presidential election (course the Supremes stole it from Gore in 2000.) And in 1932, the Yanks swept the Cubs. Another interesting factoid - when the Florida Gators win the national championship (1996 and 2006), the Dems win the election. Rooting for the Yanks and the Gators SHOULD be a Dem tradition.

This is an Open Thread.

Jon Meacham, the Editor of Newsweek, is catching hell from Left blogs for his typically obtuse nonsense. Meacham writes that "the nation is essentially "center-Right."

I think the reaction to Meacham is misguided. Meacham is a fool and will write foolish things. The key is the lesson of FDR:

[T]hat is FDR's lesson for Obama. Politics is not a battle for the middle. It is a battle for defining the terms of the political debate. It is a battle to be able to say what is the middle.

Consider Meacham's description of the New Deal:

Rep. Michele Bachmann, furthering the McCain campaign's attack on Barack Obama's patriotism, told Chris Matthews on Friday that she is "concerned that [Obama] may have anti-American views." Matthews asked Bachmann if Obama stood alone among elected representatives who harbor an anti-American agenda.

"What I would say - what I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating exposé and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think people would love to see an exposé like that."

What a great idea. Some intrepid reporter should be going door to door in the congressional office buildings with a survey. "How do you feel about America? For it or against?" Maybe elected representatives could be asked to sign a loyalty oath. Michael Tomasky explains why the reporter's first visit should be to Bachman's office: [more ...]

Fixing the nation's infrastructure will create jobs, save lives, and keep the economy moving.

One of every four bridges in the country is either structurally deficient or functionally obsolete, and bringing them up to snuff will cost $140 billion, according to the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials. America's drinking water infrastructure is woefully underfunded; the Congressional Budget Office says we must invest at least $11.6 billion over the next 20 years. Highway congestion costs us $78 billion annually through the 4.2 billion hours and 2.9 billion gallons of gasoline we waste each year, according to the Texas Transportation Institute. The list goes on.

Dave Demerjian finds both presidential candidates wanting in their commitment to infrastructure rehabilitation, although Barack Obama has been more attentive to the issue, and more specific in policy proposals, than John McCain. Demerjian believes both are too timid. He proposes a national infrastructure initiative modeled after the WPA. That seems at least as worthy an investment of taxpayer dollars as the financial industry bailout.

Bump and Update (TL): White Collar Crime blog weighs in with good suggestions. I'm with TChris, let's reduce the number of agents assigned to drug investigations.

Original Post by TChris 10/18/08

The Bush administration's top law enforcement priorities have been terrorism and (especially of late, it seems) voter registration fraud. The investigation of financial crime has suffered.

Since 2004, F.B.I. officials have warned that mortgage fraud posed a looming threat, and the bureau has repeatedly asked the Bush administration for more money to replenish the ranks of agents handling nonterrorism investigations, according to records and interviews. But each year, the requests have been denied, with no new agents approved for financial crimes, as policy makers focused on counterterrorism.

[more ...]

Iraq wants the US out:

The Iraqi parliament's biggest political bloc is calling for all American troops to leave this country by the end of 2011 as a condition for approving a new agreement extending the U.S. military presence in Iraq, a senior official said Sunday. . . . If the conditions are not met, "I cannot see that this agreement will see the light," said Sami al-Askeri, a Shiite parliamentarian and political adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

It was not immediately clear if the U.S. would accept the conditions, which would make significant changes to the draft agreement produced in recent days. The bilateral accord is aimed at replacing a United Nations mandate that provides the legal authority for U.S. troops to be in Iraq. It expires on Dec. 31.

(Emphasis supplied.) It seems the only people whgo want the US to keep spending 10 billion dollars a month in Iraq indefinitely are George Bush and John McCain. After all, as John McCain says:

One of our readers asked for an open thread to discuss the Sunday morning talk shows. Here it is. Open to all other topics, as well.