CBS aired the Katie Couric interview of Sen. Joe Biden and Gov. Sarah Palin on Roe v. Wade. The transcript is here.

Think Progress has this portion where they discussed Supreme Court cases and Palin wouldn't or couldn't name any. Transcript below:

The Senate is about to vote on the bailout bill. Here's a thread to discuss bailout issues and the vote.

Update: So far it's 55 to 18. Looks like it will pass easily.

It's a done deal: It passed 74 to 25. Vrey few Democrats voted against it. Among them: Feingold, Johnson, Landrieu, Tester, Nelson,, Stabenow, Wyden, Cantwell, Dorgan.

Update: Here comes the self-congratulations: Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell are giving speeches about how great the Senate is. Reid says Chris Dodd did a yeoman's job. Reid said he was Dodd's lieutenant.

Sorry to contradict Jeralyn (yet again), but it's the economy. So says CBS:

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama leads GOP rival John McCain 49 percent to 40 percent among registered voters in a new CBS News poll. The nine-point spread marks an increase of four percentage points in Obama's lead from a CBS News/New York Times survey taken last week. Obama also leads by nine points among likely voters, 50 percent to 41 percent.

Why? It's the economy, stupid:

My view in a nutshell: Gov. Sarah Palin is the reason John McCain is behind in the polls in the battleground states. Yes, the issue on people's minds is the economy. Who would take a chance on having her in charge of economic policy if something happened to McCain?

There's not enough difference between McCain and Obama on the bailout bill. It's Palin that is killing him, particularly, I think, in Florida. No one except evangelicals want an evangelical with extremist views in the White House.

Even if Palin doesn't stumble tomorrow night, the debate won't help McCain .

Unless there's a huge terror or national security threat, areas in which McCain still outpolls Obama, he's history. And Palin sank him. [More...]

Via Kos, CNN/Opinion Research state polling:

Florida

McCain (R) 47 (48)
Obama (D) 51 (48)

Minnesota

McCain (R) 43 (41)
Obama (D) 54 (53)

Missouri

McCain (R) 48 (50)
Obama (D) 49 (45)

More...

Today in the Senate, Senate Hillary Clinton said:

. . . I think we all recognize that this is not the end but the beginning of what we must do. And I believe there are three big goals that we will have to address even after we pass the Rescue Package tonight here in the Senate and send it over to the House.

[MORE . . .]

Despite the McCain campaign's assertion that it did not know Gwen Ifill, moderator of tomorrow's VP debate, was writing a book on politics, race and Sen. Barack Obama, as Judd Legum points out, it was in the Washington Times two weeks before McCain agreed on August 6 to Ifill as a moderator. A simple Lexis search would have found it.

"We have an awkward history about how to talk about race in the nation and in newsrooms," says Gwen Ifill, senior correspondent for PBS' "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" and author of "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," slated for publication early next year.

The takeaway here is only the incompetence of the McCain campaign to do its homework. More...

The country's largest union of Registered Nurses with 85,000 members released this ad today in six battleground states -- Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, and Missouri.

The ad focuses on the possibility of a Sarah Palin presidency due to John McCain's health issues. From the e-mail I received from the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee:

Fostered by the growing concern among healthcare professionals over the health status of Sen. John McCain, the ad also provides a reminder of some of the controversial moments of Palin's record as governor of Alaska and mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

More...

Time Magazine released a poll today. It has Obama ahead of McCain, 50% to 43%. And Gov. Sarah Palin is not bringing women to McCain's side. Obama leads among women by 17%:

Among the poll's most dramatic findings: McCain is losing female voters faster than Sarah Palin attracted them after the Republican National Convention. Obama leads McCain by 17 points with women, 55%-38%. Before the conventions, women preferred Obama by a margin of 10 points, 49%-39%. After McCain picked Palin as his running mate, the gap narrowed to a virtual tie, with Obama holding a 1-point margin, 48%-47%.

The Supreme Court granted certiorari in ten cases today. Among the seven criminal cases, via Scotus Blog:

Among the new criminal cases is a test of the scope of the right to a speedy trial for a poor individual who is being represented by a public defender (Vermont v. Brillon, 08-88), a plea for the Court to clarify how federal appeals courts are to handle prosecutors’ violations of plea bargains when the violation was not challenged at the trial (the Court limited the grant in Puckett v. U.S., 07-9712, to one of two issues raised), and a claim that a voluntary confession made after a suspect’s arrest on federal charges but before he appears before a magistrate must be suppressed when there was a delay before that appearance occurs (Corley v. U.S., 07-10441).

More....

Good news today from the Supreme Court. Its decision in June in Kennedy v. Louisiana invalidating state laws that allow execution of those convicted of child rape that did not result in death will stand, despite complaints about a factual inaccuracy in the opinion.

In its 5-to-4 decision in June, the court reasoned that, because so few states allowed the execution of child rapists, there was a national consensus against applying the ultimate punishment to such criminals. Not long afterward, it was disclosed that the lawyers arguing the case, and the justices themselves, had been unaware of a 2006 amendment to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, specifically making child rape committed by service members a capital crime.

More...

Matt Yglesias catches George Will blaming LBJ (for privatizing Fannie and Freddie in 1968(!!)) for the Wall Street credit crisis actually caused by the reckless, feckless, rampant Republicanism of the Bush years (the same philosophy McCain promises for the next 4 years.) I was struck by this bit of mendaciousness from Will:

The rising generation of thoughtful Republicans was represented on both sides of Monday's vote. Virginia's Eric Cantor, 45, and Wisconsin's Paul Ryan, 38, supported the legislation because they had helped to achieve substantial improvements in it, such as requiring financial institutions to help finance their bailout, giving the Treasury potentially valuable equity in firms revived by public funds . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) To put it bluntly, Will is lying. That was a Democratic initiative contained in the Dodd bill. The "thoughtful Republican idea" that Cantor wanted and got was the ludicrous government insurance plan that is simply a joke. No reasonable premium could be charged that would make sense or help in this crisis. The "thoughtful" Republicans OPPOSE the government equity plan and wanted the equity plan out. George Will is either ill informed or lying or both.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only