Ezra Klein and Marc Cooper discuss Air America Radio's filing for bankruptcy this week.

Marc thinks AAR will stay on the air until just after the elections. Ezra thinks it failed because it tried to copy the conservative framework.

I don't know anything about radio, and just a little about corporations that do debt restructuring in bankruptcy to stay alive. Think of all the airlines that have done so. I always thought a company that filed under Chapter 11 restructuring provisions did so because it planned to stay in business and was trying to repay its debts at its own pace as it reduced its costs rather than buckling under to a creditor who wanted money right now. Indeed, the Washington Post says,

Rick Manguson, the pro-drug war challenger in the Pitkin County Sheriff's race, is complaining that Grass Roots Television has shown a video he made a year ago showing him spanking the monkey.

Magnuson admitted the video shows him masturbating. The shot, however, is from far away and Magnuson says the piece was a legitimate mode of self-expression....The 12-minute movie shows Magnuson digging a hole in the Mojave Desert on his 40th birthday. When he strikes water, the shot switches to about 20 yards away, with Magnuson's back to the viewer as he faces the hole and masturbates into it.

The Los Angeles Times reports on a new book by former White House aide David Kuh in which he reports that while Bush aides publicly endorsed evangelical positions, privately they referred to them disparagingly.

In the book, Kuo, who quit the White House in 2003, accuses Karl Rove's political staff of cynically hijacking the faith-based initiatives idea for electoral gain. It assails Bush for failing to live up to his promises of boosting the role of religious organizations in delivering social services.

White House strategists "knew 'the nuts' were politically invaluable, but that was the extent of their usefulness," Kuo writes, according to the cable channel MSNBC, which obtained an advance copy.

(From Big Tent Democrat)

It is said that politics is show business for ugly people. Th Washington Post begs to differ:

The research is unambiguous . . . Attractive politicians have an edge over not-so-attractive ones. The phenomenon is resonating especially this year. By a combination of luck and design, Democrats seem to be fielding an uncommonly high number of uncommonly good-looking candidates.

The beauty gap between the parties, some on Capitol Hill muse, could even be a factor in who controls Congress after Election Day. Democratic operatives do not publicly say that they went out of their way this year to recruit candidates with a high hotness quotient. Privately, however, they acknowledge that, as they focused on finding the most dynamic politicians to challenge vulnerable Republicans, it did not escape their notice that some of the most attractive prospects were indeed often quite attractive.

My thought -- the Washington Post used page one space for this? The Beltway Media is just awful.

Marine Sgt Heather Cerveny went to Guantanamo three weeks ago to serve as a legal aide to military lawyers. She reported that five Navy guards told her how they beat up detainees. The Pentagon has ordered an investigation.

"The one sailor specifically said 'I took the detainee by the head and smashed his head into the cell door'," she said in the affidavit. "From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice," the sergeant wrote.

"Everyone in the group laughed at the others' stories of beating detainees."

Sgt. Cerveny's charges mirror those of military lawyers:

Military lawyers who represent detainees at the camp have filed an affidavit that describes guards boasting of abusing prisoners.

President Bush signed the Port Security bill today. Tagged onto it is the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act which essentially kills internet gambling in the U.S.

Attached to a port-security bill signed by President Bush yesterday was the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, which prohibits online gamblers from using credit cards, checks and electronic fund transfers to place and settle bets. The law puts enforcement on the shoulders of banks and other U.S. financial institutions, some of which fought the legislation.

Who's responsible for this dog of a bill? Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.).

Republican Congressman Chris Shays (CT) is scrambling, trying to backtrack from his comments at a debate this week in which he said the Abu Ghraib scandal didn't involve torture.

"Now I've seen what happened in Abu Ghraib, and Abu Ghraib was not torture," Shays said at a debate Wednesday. "It was outrageous, outrageous involvement of National Guard troops from (Maryland) who were involved in a sex ring and they took pictures of soldiers who were naked," added Shays. "And they did other things that were just outrageous. But it wasn't torture."

Today he told the Associated Press he didn't mean sexual abuse was not torture. Yet, he still maintains what happened at Abu Graib was the result of a sex ring of a National Guard unit run amok. He says the scandal was more about pornography than torture.

That dog won't hunt. Staging a mock execution as Ivan Frederick did is not sex abuse. It's torture, plain and simple. Frederick also admitted to stomping on prisoners' hands and feet and punching them in the chest.

Uh-oh. The Feds are investigating Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ) for allegations of inappropiate conduct with pages on a camping trip he took ten years ago.

A spokesman for the Justice Department in Washington said that the U.S. attorney in Arizona has started a "preliminary assessment" of the trip, after an unidentified source made allegations about the congressman's behavior on the expedition. "The U.S. attorney is looking into allegations about the congressman taking a trip with the two pages," the spokesman said.

Count me underwhelmed on this one. I'm not buying it.

From Big Tent Democrat

Charlie Cook's upcoming column says:

If you want to know how much pain the midterm elections are likely to inflict on the Republican Party, keep your eyes on the national spotlight. If, for the next three weeks, attention remains focused on the war in Iraq and on congressional scandals, the Republicans could lose 20 to 30 seats--or perhaps even more.

. . . In short, we need to be aware of how bad this election could be for Republicans, while also keeping in mind that politics is a volatile business. The spotlight could shift another time or two before November 7. Anyone who focuses only on the Republicans' vulnerability or only on the impossibility of knowing what will hold the public's attention in the coming weeks is missing half of the story.

Charlie is darn smart. I listen to him.

TChris is off in wine country this weekend (lucky him) and I'm working at my day job and testing the new scoop site in my spare moments. It's also a spectacular fall day and I want to get outside.

So, for those of you with something to say, here's the place.

Some things I would blog about if I had the time today:

• Lenny Bruce would have turned 81 today if still alive.

• Pot guru Ed Rosenthal indicted by the feds again -- after an appeals court threw out his first conviction.

• A British coronor has ruled U.S. forces in Iraq killed British reporter Terry Lloyd in the beginning days of the war.

Bump and Update: Ney appeared in court and entered his guilty pleas but is not resigning immediately. TPM Muckraker has Ney's full statement. He will be resigning in the next few weeks.

******
Original Post 12:35 am

Ohio Republican Congressman Bob Ney is set to plead guilty Friday in federal court to two five year felonies. Prosecutors will ask for a 27 month sentence. There's speculation he will resign from Congress at the hearing, to show remorse and acceptance of responsibility to the Judge.

Ney will be the first Congressman in the Jack Abramoff investigation to plead guilty.

Ney signed papers a month ago admitting to charges of conspiracy and making false statements, acknowledging that he had deprived the public of his honest services.

The Ohio congressman says he took tens of thousands of dollars worth of trips, sports tickets, campaign contributions, meals and casino chips in exchange for legislation and public statements supporting Abramoff's clients and a foreign businessman.

Ney recently went into alcohol treatment, which he blamed for his actions. As for others connected to the White House taken down in the Abramoff scandal, there's Karl Rove aide Susan Ralston and White House aide David Safavian: