Air America Radio may or may not survive its financial troubles, but say hello to the new kid on the block -- Nova M Radio, formed by two of the original founders of AAM, consultant Joe Trippi and pollster John Zogby.

Nova M Radio, Inc. based in Phoenix, Arizona officially announced the formation of its new progressive talk radio network. Debuting on the network will be the long awaited return to the airwaves of America’s original “truth-seeker” Mike Malloy. The Mike Malloy Show will initially broadcast live, from 9PM -12 Midnight (EST) beginning October 30,2006 on Nova M Radio affiliate 1480-AM KPHX Phoenix. The Mike Malloy Show will be made available to affiliates across the nation and will also stream live on www.novamradio.com.

Here's the backstory:

Seems pretty clear to us this cynical tactic [discussing Schlesinger's debate performance] is part of a coordinated strategy -- and that it will fall as flat as the rest of Ned's general election campaign.   The next logical step will be for Ned and his more wealthy friends to start funneling money to Schlesinger to try to get him on television.

Whoa! Does Lieberman really want to talk about who is funding campaigns? The fact is that Schlesinger was the surprise star of that debate, and to be frank, I was as surprised as Lieberman was. But that is just a lucky break for Lamont. There is nothing Lamont can do to help Schlesinger. As before, Lamont must make Lieberman pay a political price with Democrats for his Bush and GOP support. If Schlesinger can make Lieberman pay on the Right, so much the better for Lamont, but that is out of Lamont's control. Joe's careful Republican dance became more difficult yesterday. Tomorrow, another debate in Connecticut will make watching Joe dance even more entertaining.

The federal judge in Ken Lay's Enron trial has vacated his conviction. Charges against him were dismissed.

In his decision, Lake cited a decision in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that makes death, before the appeals process has been exhausted, grounds for throwing out a conviction and dismissing an indictment.

Although the Justice Department tried to get Congress to trump the precedent by passing a law, no member of Congress voted for it.

Lieberman has said he will not endorse Democratic candidates because he understands that his candidacy has put Democratic candidates in an awkward position, and has said he would stay out of their races.

Excuse me? Lieberman's candidacy has hurt Democratic candidates in Connecticut but his endorsement could mitigate that damage.

The harm he wishes to avoid is to his Lieberman for Lieberman candidacy. The Lie in Lieberman - everyday. Have any doubt that Lieberman is now fighting for Republicans? This flip flop should put them to rest:

"I see no reason not to be for [John] Bolton [as UN Ambassador]," Lieberman told a meeting of the Daily News Editorial Board.

Lieberman, when fishing for Dem votes earlier this year, voted to filibuster Bolton's nomination.

I asked myself what I would have liked to discuss with Clinton. I thought of this issue most of all - 'does Clinton think his Third Way/New Democrat approach, that worked so well for him (did it work for the Dem Party?) in the 90s (of course since he is the best politician of his generation it is not clear that using of other approaches would not have worked for him) is the right political approach in today's hyperpartisan age of Bush Republicanism?'

In the past month, Bill Clinton has provided his answer:

Former President Bill Clinton rallied Iowa Democrats Saturday with a blistering attack on the Republican leadership in Washington . . . Republicans, who control the White House and Congress, have alienated rank-and-file voters by working for the interests of the wealthy and painting opposing viewpoints as unpatriotic, Clinton said in his 45-minute speech at Hy-Vee Hall in Des Moines.

A new poll commissioned by NPR, and conducted by Public Opinion Strategies and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research shows Democrats are in position to take back the House of Representatives.

Asked whom they'd vote for in their congressional district, 51 percent said they would pick the Democratic candidate and 40 percent would vote for the Republican. The remaining 9 percent were undecided or declined to answer. And a majority of moderates -- 59 percent -- said they plan to vote for Democrats running for Congress.

The results are almost identical to one taken last week for Democracy Corps.

The New York Times has an interesting article about how the electronic age has stripped the expungement of criminal records of practical effect.

Before, when courts used paper records, they were destroyed or put in a closet with an "expunged" stamp on them, making them inaccessible to third parties.

Now, courts keep electronic records and companies buy criminal records information. So even if the arrest or conviction is later expunged, the company still has the record of its existence.

Private database companies say they are diligent in updating their records to reflect the later expungement of criminal records. But lawyers, judges and experts in criminal justice say it is common for people to lose jobs and housing over information in databases that courts have ordered expunged.

Take Representative Terry Everett, a seven-term Alabama Republican who is vice chairman of the House intelligence subcommittee on technical and tactical intelligence.

"Do you know the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite?" I asked him a few weeks ago. Mr. Everett responded with a low chuckle. He thought for a moment: "One's in one location, another's in another location. No, to be honest with you, I don't know. I thought it was differences in their religion, different families or something." To his credit, he asked me to explain the differences. I told him briefly about the schism that developed after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, and how Iraq and Iran are majority Shiite nations while the rest of the Muslim world is mostly Sunni. "Now that you've explained it to me," he replied, "what occurs to me is that it makes what we're doing over there extremely difficult, not only in Iraq but that whole area."

But I bet he is someone you would want to have a beer with. [Hat tip Tristero..

Update: The RSS feed is fixed. It displays the entire post, formatted and with pictures if you access it here or just the basic xml is here

We had problems with the RSS feed yesterday and this morning. It's fixed now, but set to display the first 40 words of entries. Does anyone remember what it used to show? Was it the whole article or just a paragraph or so? Which would you prefer?

Strategists and electoral observers, Democrats especially, may now start claiming that the very fact that Republicans are having to defend seats in these [Red] states -- two of them southern states, no less -- confirms the genius of the idea of running everywhere with equal vigor . . . But this is crap. Looking at the two southern races, Tennessee is an open seat with a strong, smart, dynamic Democratic candidate running in a clear, Democratic tailwind cycle, and yet Harold Ford's lead is still within the margin of error. . . . . Virginia's race has featured one of the most disaster-prone, self-destructive Republican candidacies in modern electoral history in a clear, Democratic tailwind cycle, and yet Jim Webb still trails.

But Schaller is wrong on his own terms, which, in any event, completely misunderstands the 50 state strategy. I'll explain on the flip.

President Bush today signed into law S. 3930, the Military Commissions Act of 2006.

The ACLU has issued a statement calling the law "one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history."

"With his signature, President Bush enacts a law that is both unconstitutional and un-American. This president will be remembered as the one who undercut the hallmark of habeas in the name of the war on terror. Nothing separates America more from our enemies than our commitment to fairness and the rule of law, but the bill signed today is an historic break because it turns Guantánamo Bay and other U.S. facilities into legal no-man's-lands.

"The president can now - with the approval of Congress - indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions. Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act."

The ACLU took out a full page ad in today's Washington Post to protest the law. You can view it here (pdf).

I can name on two hands over a half century the number of Democrats we have endorsed for public office. This year, we will do something different. . . . So, what in the world has happened? The Republican Party has changed, and it has changed monumentally.

You almost cannot be a victorious traditional Republican candidate with mainstream values in Johnson County or in Kansas anymore, because these candidates never get on the ballot in the general election.

Extremism should be a brand Democrats have stamped on the Republican Party for some time. That they have not is a frustration for me.