The Wall St. Journal (free link) reports that the latest Harris Interactive Poll shows that President Bush's approval rating dropped four points this month, from 38% to 34%.

Sixty-four percent of U.S. adults now have a negative view of Mr. Bush's job performance, compared with 61% who ranked him "only fair" or "poor" in a similar poll last month. The drop follows a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll that showed the president's job approval rating fell to 39% from 42% earlier in October.

With less than a month to go before the midterm congressional elections, 47% of registered voters said they would vote for a Democratic candidate, compared with 35% who said they would pick a Republican candidate. When asked about recent Capitol Hill scandals involving charges of corruption and sexual improprieties, 64% said they believed those activities were the just the "tip of the iceberg," compared with 25% who believed they were "isolated incidents."

Beleagured Jeanine Pirro, running for New York Attorney General, is catching more flak. This time it is for over-emphasizing her tough stance as a prosecutor in sex offender and pedophile cases. The New York Times reports:

In press releases she issued over six years, Jeanine F. Pirro, the Westchester County district attorney, trumpeted the arrests made in Internet sex stings that her office ran. By the time she left office at the end of 2005, that undercover pedophile operation had snared 111 men, including a Roman Catholic priest, a private-school headmaster, a New York City detective and a former Brooklyn prosecutor.

In her campaign, Pirro has repeatedly referred to her 100% conviction rate in these cases and stressed that the offenders were convicted of felonies that carried up to four years in jail.

One of my favorite movies of the 80's's, Reds, starring Warren Beatty, Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson, which was nominated for 12 Academy Awards, is set for release October 17th on DVD. It is a 25th anniversary edition, and you can get it here.

It's hard to believe it's been 25 years since this movie was released. I've probably seen it 5 times (I have a VCR copy.)

It tells the fact-based story of two activist journalists, John Reed and Louise Bryant, who fall in love around 1915 to 1920, with WWI and the outbreak of the Bolshevik Revolution as a backdrop. Jack Nicholson plays playwright Eugene O'Neil who also is enamored with Diane Keaton. It's visually stunning and emotion-packed.

As a personal aside, shortly after the movie was released, I was at the Hotel Jerome bar in Aspen one afternoon with my then-spouse. Jack Nicholson and another man were seated at the next table. I walked up to Nicholson and told him that his 22 minutes on celluloid in Reds were my favorite of the film. He pulled out a chair and invited me to sit down.

The Wall St. Journal (free link) today analyzes how the war on terror affects voters.

The latest research shows that because such violent political acts are brutal reminders of death, they make conservatives, but not liberals, more hostile toward those perceived as different, and more supportive of extreme military policies, according to a study in April in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Although some voters would feel betrayed by incumbents who failed to protect them, researchers say, these days that trend would more likely be swamped by a surge toward candidates perceived as hawks on national security.

This says to me there will be another October surprise that results in elevating the terror threat. As I've said many times before, the goal of this Administration is to use the war on terror to strike fear in the heart of every American. Fear that will translate into votes. This time around, with all their current problems, they need a doozie. Don't put it past them.

Mother Jones has a feature article warning internet users about the amount of information Google collects about them.

Internet privacy? Google already knows more about you than the National Security Agency ever will. And don't assume for a minute it can keep a secret. YouTube fans--and everybody else--beware.

....the question is not whether Google will always do the right thing--it hasn't, and it won't. It's whether Google, with its insatiable thirst for your personal data, has become the greatest threat to privacy ever known, a vast informational honey pot that attracts hackers, crackers, online thieves, and--perhaps most worrisome of all--a government intent on finding convenient ways to spy on its own citizenry.

Via Southern District of Florida Blog: Taj Mohammad was a goat shepherd in the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. His tribe, the Gudjers, are nomads. He got in a fight with his cousin and hit him with a stick. His cousin's family, in retaliation, claimed he was a member of the Taliban. Unbeknownst to Taj, his cousin had been working laying pipe for the American military. They came to question Taj, arrested him and took him to the prison at Bagram AFB, and then shipped him to Guantanamo where he was held for four years.

The Defenders began representing Taj about a year ago and, after security clearances were approved, Paul Rashkind began to uncover evidence and develop a strategy to obtain his release. Just 14 days ago, Rashkind and Cone filed a set of classified challenges to Taj's continued detention, explaining why he should be released now. Last night, on the eve of the military hearing, Taj was on a plane back to Afghanistan. He was released to his family earlier today. Rashkind commented, "America was not a safer place while he was detained, but we can certainly feel better about ourselves now that he is home."

Kudos to defenders Paul Rashkind and Tim Cone for their victory.

Ok, it's taken 5 weeks to build a Scoop site for TalkLeft. In case you missed my previous post, here's why in a nutshell: TalkLeft has become too big and cumbersome for Movable Type to process, and the continual rebuilding that goes on in the background has made the site way too slow. I chose Scoop over Wordpress and other systems because I wanted the site to have growing room and to allow more people to post (not just comment). I want the site to load quickly and commenting should be a breeze.

I'm also moving TalkLeft to a new hosting company which specializes in Scoop sites and it will be on it's own dedicated server. If you want to see some other Scoop sites, see Daily Kos or click on those at that link.

The site will look almost exactly like it does now. That's why it took 5 weeks and a few thousand dollars or more (I haven't gotten the final bill yet) to build. It's a modified Scoop site. My hosting costs are going to increase by more than $200 a month. I'm looking at the cost as a long-term investment in the site.

I hope you all like it and find it easier to use.

This coming Sunday, the New York Times will feature a q and a with former Attorney General John Ashcroft. Among the suprising revelations: He makes barbed-wire sculputures in his spare time. Other nuggets:

Ashcroft also suggests the American Civil Liberties Union opposed the Patriot Act partly to make money and add members.

.... Ashcroft, a leading evangelical, admits he is a sinner, explaining, "I'm unkind on occasion, and I am selfish." He's an active Christian "because I am not good, because I need help."

Ask about specific "sins," Ashcroft says he has "never had a mixed drink," never smoked a cigarette, and if tempted by another woman he would immediately call "my wife."

[Hat tip reader Scribe]

From Big Tent Democrat

Gail Collins steps down as Editorial Page Editor of the New York Times. From my perspective, Collins was the best Editorial Page Editor the Times ever had. She fully grasped the extremism, incompetence and danger the Bush Administration has presented and spoke to the issues in terms appropriate to the times (no pun intended.)

I have enjoyed Collins' work since she was a columnist at the New York Daily News. Always a gifted witty writer, Collins stepped up to the role she undertook, and with little fanfare, proved that the first woman Editorial Page Editor of the New York Times was not only up to the role, but was up to the unique challenge of being perhaps the foremost liberal voice in the Media in a time where liberalism and the country were challenged by the worst administration in memory.

[more on the flip]

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall. The Red Cross this week met with the 14 new detainees at Guantanamo, those who reportedly were interrogated under abusive conditions in overseas prisons, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh.

It was the first time anyone but their captors have seen the men since their capture. From my post of October 12, 2004, exactly two years ago:

From Big Tent Democrat

I know it is bad form to laugh at the insane but Hitch is too easy:

Hitchens uses this to brand Dean a "pathological liar," and when some at the table protest, Hitchens turns his shotgun full of crazy on the assembled:

"Fine, now that I know that, to you, medical ethics are nothing, you've told me all I need to know. I'm not trying to persuade you. Do you think I care whether you agree with me? No. I'm telling you why I disagree with you. That I do care about. I have no further interest in any of your opinions. There's nothing you wouldn't make an excuse for. You know what? I wouldn't want you on my side. I was telling you why I knew that Howard Dean was a psycho and a fraud , and you say 'That's O.K.' Fuck off. No, I mean it: fuck off. I'm telling you what I think are standards and you say, 'What standards? It's fine, he's against the Iraq War.' Fuck. Off. You're MoveOn.org. Any liar will do. He's anti-Bush. Fuck off...Save it sweetie, for someone who cares. It will not be me. You love it, you suck on it. I now know what your standards are, and now you know what mine are, and that's all the difference -- I hope -- in the world."

This was at, mind you, a dinner party.

Ezra goes on to psychoanalyze Hitch. I just laugh my head off. To each his own. H/T atrios.

From Big Tent Democrat

Mark Warner is not running for President. Unlike Markos and Jerome, I never saw the window for Warner. Their view appeared to be summed up today by Markos, by implication -- Warner was a Southern Governor. Seemed like a thin reed to me. In any event, does this give space for an Obama run? Markos says:

Obama? Perhaps still too raw, but he's ambitious and the rumors are flying fast and furious. His recent dis of Daily Kos might even be a sign he's burnishing his "centrist" credentials . . .

Um, that centrist credential burnishing has been going on for some time. As those who have read me on the subject know, I am not impressed:

Obama has learned nothing from Lincoln and nothing from Hofstadter. As wonderfully talented a politician he is, until he does, he will not best serve the interests of progressives and the Democratic Party.

And the quote Markos references seems more of the same: