The 33 miners trapped in Chile are set to be "extracted" and freed on Wednesday.

Here's how the wives, mothers and sisters are preparing. Movie productions are already in the works.

The Chilean government is providing each miner with six months of psychological support to deal with the media attention. They've already had a day of media training.

Only in Texas? Or just more proof probation is no walk in the park? Daniel Mirales and his wife Eloise stole from a crime victims fund. She was a 16 year employee of the District Attorney's office. Is this shaming punishment really going to make a difference? And to whom besides the Mireles?

Daniel Mireles walked back and forth on Westheimer in front of the Galleria holding a sign. It read, "I am a thief. I stole $250,000 from the Harris County crime victim's fund. Daniel Mireles."

Mirales will have to do this for five hours every weekend for the next six years. (The spot is outside the Galleria mall in Houston.) This was his first weekend.[More...]

Both Michelle Obama and Bill Clinton will be coming to Colorado to campaign for Sen. Michael Bennet. No one's saying if President Obama will also be coming to town. after Clinton

Clinton supported Bennet's opponent, Andrew Romanoff, in the primary. But Romanoff has also been campaigning for Bennet since then.

The Ken Buck misconduct charge ad has played three times in primetime tonight that I've seen. I hope it's having a good effect for Sen. Bennet.

In other local news, Prop. 62, the Personhood Amendment seems destined for defeat.

No amount of tea partiers can save Carl Paladino from himself. Now he's attacking gays.

The Republican candidate for governor, Carl P. Paladino, told a gathering in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, on Sunday that children should not be “brainwashed” into thinking that homosexuality was acceptable, and criticized his opponent, Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, for marching in a gay pride parade earlier this year.

The polls had him losing before this. Four more weeks and he will fade back into the obscurity from which he sprang.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, presiding over the case of former Guantanamo detainee, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, barred the testimony of Hussein Abebe, a key government witness, because he was identified as a result of statements Ghailani made during secret CIA interrogation using harsh interrogation techniques.

Today the Government announced it won't appeal the decision and will proceed to trial Tuesday without Abebe's testimony. Ghailani is charged with conspiracy in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombings in East Africa:

Hussein Abebe, would have testified that he sold TNT to Mr. Ghailani that was used in one attack, the bombing of the embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, prosecutors have said. Without Mr. Abebe’s testimony, prosecutors had told the judge, they had “no way of putting such evidence in front of the jury at all.”

In 2001, the Government tried and convicted four other men in the Embassy bombings. All got life and are serving their sentences at Supermax in Colorado. Ghailani was captured in 2004 in Pakistan and moved to Gitmo in 2006.

CNN.com:

Asked about a solution, [GOP House Minority Whip Eric] Cantor replied: "People have to take responsibility for themselves. We need to get the housing industry going again. We don't need government intervening in every step."

(Emphasis supplied.) Assuming that's true, do you think Cantor will favor requiring the banks to follow the law of foreclosure, which in most states requires that the foreclosing party prove that it does in fact have standing to foreclose? See, there's the problem for Cantor and the bank defenders - if the Feds do not intervene on behalf of the banks, many banks are finding they can't foreclose, because they can't prove they own the mortgages they want to foreclose on. If Cantor believes what he is saying, then he should oppose any breaks being given to banks in the foreclosure process. But we all know Cantor is full of it.

Speaking for me only

I finally got my tax paperwork done and delivered to my accountant. I may sleep until tomorrow.

Since I haven't seen the news in a few days, here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

John Lennon would be 70 years old today. A Peace Monument was unveiled today in Liverpool in his honor.

The memories and the music live on.

A terrible week last week , going 6-11. Now 35-35-1 for the year. Here are this week's picks:

Miami (-6) over FSU; Missouri (-11) over Colorado; Mich St. (+4.5) over Michigan in the Big House; South Florida (-7) over Syracuse; Pen St.(-7) over Illinois; Ohio St. (-23) over Indiana; Tenn. (+11) over Georgia; Clemson (+2) over N. Ca.; Alabama (-7) over South Carolina; UCLA (+8) over Cal; Notre Dame (-6) over Pitt; Army (Even) over Tulane; Arkansas (-6) over Texas A&M; San Diego St. (-5) over BYU; Kentucky (+7) over Auburn; Northwestern (-8) over Purdue; Miss St. (-5) over Houston; and Stanford (-10) over USC.

Go Gators!

Open Thread.

It's snowing in the mountains.

If you are one of the few people who liked Jimmy Smits in his new show Outlaw about a conservative Supreme Court justice who quits to take on individual cases where he sees an underdog in need, you should tune in tonight. NBC has halted production on the show.

Eight episodes of Outlaw have been produced; 3 of them have already aired, with 5 more in the can. If there is a ratings uptick in the next 2 weeks, production on the show will be restarted. If not, it will become permanent.

Law and Order L.A. and The Defenders aren't doing well either. Are people not interested in crime or are the networks serving up sub-standard fare? I'll say it's the latter.

Since I'm still swamped in paperwork, here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

Russ Feingold debates tonight:

Johnson vs. Feingold, Round 1, is on for tonight. Republican challenger Ron Johnson and three-term incumbent Democratic U.S. Russ Feingold will square off for an hour starting at 8 p.m. in the first of three televised debates scheduled before the Nov. 2 election.

Cheddar for Russ here. The debate will be broadcast on C-Span.

Speaking for me only

Jon Chait writes, in the context of ironic GOP-nostalgia for Bill Clinton:

Right-wingers villified John F. Kennedy; now they revere him. One day, Obama will play the same role in the Republican imagination that Clinton does today.

You know the one Democratic President who is considered great historically that conservatives will never revere (nor should they) -- FDR. For all the talk of transformational Presidents, the truth is that in the past 100 years there really has been only one - Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In my first TalkLeft post, I discussed the revolution in government that FDR led: