I'll be in Washington, D.C. with a bunch of liberal and conservative bloggers on election night, courtesy of CNN.

CNN’s Internet reporters Jacki Schechner and Abbi Tatton will host the first “CNN E-lection Nite Blog Party” at Tryst, a Washington, D.C. hotspot for young politicos. The party will gather many of the top political bloggers from across the country to blog together. Some of their analysis will appear in segments on-air and in reports online, including on CNN Pipeline, CNN.com’s premium live video news service.

We'll be blogging the results and news tidbits live -- it should be a lot of fun.

Atrios, Christy of Firedoglake, John of Crooks and Liars will also be there.

This is a shame. Students for a Sensible Drug Policy reports that on Friday, a federal judge granted the Bush administration's motion to dismiss an ACLU and SSDP lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the law that strips financial aid from college students with drug convictions.

SSDP says it's more important for people to contact Congress and demand the repeal of this harmful and unfair penalty that has denied educational opportunities to nearly 200,000 would-be students.

The judge's ruling is here (pdf).

Via Wonkette, what's Cheney destroying now?

Spotted on 10/19, by an eagle-eyed Wonkette reader: The Mid-Atlantic Shredding Services truck making its way up to the Cheney compound at the Naval Observatory.

My good friend Ed Kilgore of the DLC is a terrific writer, a good Democrat and a smart and reasonable man. But I have always felt frustrated with his refusal or inability to distinguish between partisan politicking and pragmatic governance. He writes:

E.J. Dionne, explains the larger meaning of this collapse of GOP support among independents:

President Bush's six-year effort to create an enduring Republican majority based on a right-leaning coalition is on the verge of collapse. The way he tried to create it could have the unintended consequence of opening the way for an alternative majority. . . . The strategy pursued by Bush and Karl Rove has frightened most of the political center into the arms of Democrats. . . [T]his approach created what may prove to be a fatal political disconnect: Adventurous policies designed to create enthusiasm on the right turned off a large number of less ideological voters.

In other words, the Rovian politics of polarization, along with the failed policies it produced, are in ruins. And the long-term choice facing Democrats after this and (if we win) the next election is whether we pivot to a governing agenda that restores the confidence in progressive government that was becoming evident during the Clinton years, or go down the same road to perdition the GOP has followed, with disastrous results for their party and the country.

Why does Ed equate partisan politicking with ideological governance? It is the basic mistake of the DLC and many other Centrists and it tears at the fabric of our Big Tent for no good reason. I'll explain again on the flip.

Republican Rep. Jim Gibbons, running for the governor's seat in Nevada, can't be happy to learn that the police have reopened an investigation into his allegedly assaultive behavior.

[Chrissy] Mazzeo, a Las Vegas Strip casino waitress, accused Gibbons, 61, of pushing her up against a wall Oct. 13 and propositioning her. Mazzeo, 32, said she had been pressured and offered cash from people linked to the Gibbons campaign to drop the charges.

Gibbons claims a videotape will prove his innocence, and is trying to get it released for public viewing.

After four days in Omaha, I'm more than ready to get home and back to a desktop monitor and blogging.

On the plus side, I'm blogging from the airplane which is about to take off -- I got online in the jail even though there were those white cement blocks for walls -- and just about everywhere else in Omaha -- slow as molasses, but a lot better than not being online at all.

I think I could exist on a desert island with my laptop, online access, my ipod and a few movies from Netflix or Movieline.

Back to politics and crime tonight.

Greg Sargent continues reading the Rove tea leaves:

It looks like it may be time for pundits to drop the Karl Rove-is-supremely-confident-about-winning storyline -- because it's now pretty clear that Rove, for all his outward expressions of confidence, has also begun to lay the groundwork to spin his way out of blame and preserve his reputation should the GOP get shellacked next Tuesday.

Rove's emerging spin appears to be this: If the GOP loses, it's the candidates' fault, not mine.

Check out this passage at the end of today's Washington Post piece on Rove:

Associates say Rove is privately frustrated that individual candidates have not been more aggressive in drawing contrasts with Democrats on national security. In Buffalo, Rove dished out red meat with relish...

Below, I wrote my personal reaction to the Ellen Tauscher election eve stinkbomb in our Big Tent Democratic Party. But I really like what Chris Bowers had to say about it and our Big Tent, even though Chris and I have substantial ideological differences - particularly on tax and trade policy. While Chris and I differ on many issues, we agree completely on how our Big Tent Party must function. Let's look at what Chris wrote on the flip side.

One hundred deaths made October the deadliest month for American forces in Iraq since January 2005.

Update: 101.

For what its worth, an annual ranking of the relative safety of 371 American cities lists St. Louis as the most dangerous (followed by Detroit and Flint) while designating Brick, NJ as the safest. The rankings are based on an assessment of FBI crime statistics.

Collectively, the group could tilt the balance of power within the party, which has been struggling to define itself in recent elections.

Sounds ominous. Except:

The candidates cover the spectrum on political issues; some are fiscally conservative and moderate or liberal on social issues, some are the reverse. They could influence negotiations with Republicans on a variety of issues, including Social Security and stem cell research.

Sounds like a Big Tent group to me. And a bunch of DLC type nonsense from the NYTimes.

This:

Rove is giving a virtuoso performance designed to prevent the Democrats from taking control of the House and Senate or, if that is no longer possible, to hold down the size of the Democratic victory to make it easier for the GOP to come back in 2008.

If Rove is spinning that he is still a genius even if the GOP loses both houses of Congress, then the Republicans must really be in trouble.