WASHINGTON, DC -- In light of recent reports that conservative journalist and pundit Armstrong Williams received $240,000 from the Department of Education (DOE) through a contract with Ketchum Public Relations, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) today has filed a series of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to 22 government agencies, including all cabinet agencies.
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Nine nudes are a no-go at Wal-Mart.
The giant store chain won't stock Jon Stewart's big best-seller, "America (The Book)," because one page shows nine naked bodies - with the heads of the Supreme Court justices pasted on them.

... limiting his contact to a small circle led by debate briefer Ron Klain, traveling aide John Sasso and speechwriter (and former collegiate debating champion) Bob Shrum. They gathered for practice in an aluminum shed on the House on the Rock Resort in rural Wisconsin. Ever the serious student, Kerry staged four mock debates at night in recent weeks, videotaping his performances and timing himself with a stopwatch. He carried a set of huge briefing books with him, methodically studying the material.

The emphasis wasn't on substance--the man knew it cold--but on brevity. After each mock debate (Washington lawyer Greg Craig played George Bush), Kerry would sit on the edge of the stage, analyze his performance and hone his answers. Kerry's aides were so confident that they had schooled him in concision that they used his reputation as a windbag to play--and win--an expectations game on debate day. They say they circulated a bogus rumor: they were upset about warning lights on the podiums, fearing their blabbermouth candidate would be bathed in flashing red. In the end, it was Bush--not Kerry--who ran afoul of the strict time limits and earned a blinking light.

Last night's TV commentary was a fabulous example of pack journalism.   Immediately after the debate, the general sense among most commentators was that Kerry had done a bit better.   But, every 30 minutes after that, they judged Kerry's performance exponentially better and Bush's worse. By midnight when I turned off my TV set, you would have thought that instead of Kerry vs. Bush, it was Lincoln and Douglas vs. Elmer Fudd.

A federal appeals court on Monday overturned a judge who had thrown out a lawsuit seeking a paper trail for that state's new touchscreen voting machines.

Fifteen 15 Florida counties use voting machines that don't create paper copies.

Three judges from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the federal judge erred when he threw out the lawsuit filed by U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, a south Florida congressman.

says one prominent Democratic strategist. "The Bush campaign is more adept than the Kerry campaign at playing the game. The game is, the press only covers four things in a campaign: polls, scandal, mistakes and attacks. And the only one of those you can control are attacks."

Let's talk a minute about John Kerry and George Bush and I know them both. And I'm not name dropping to say I know `em both. I got a young man named George W. Bush in the National Guard when I was Lt. Gov. of Texas and I'm not necessarily proud of that. But I did it. And I got a lot of other people into the National Guard because I thought that was what people should do, when you're in office you helped a lot of rich people. And I walked through the Vietnam Memorial the other day and I looked at the names of the people that died in Vietnam and I became more ashamed of myself than I have ever been because it was the worst thing that I did was that I helped a lot of wealthy supporters and a lot of people who had family names of importance get into the National Guard and I'm very sorry about that and I'm very ashamed and I apologize to you as voters of Texas.

Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report; political analyst for the National Journal

The challenge for the Bush campaign is to expand its own base, mobilizing more conservative and Republican voters far more than they have ever been energized before, and turning Kerry into a patently unacceptable alternative. But the dangers of such a strategy are obvious. The more a candidate panders to the party base, the more likely they are to antagonize moderate, independent swing voters. When an incumbent president steps out of the Rose Garden, so to speak, and into the gutter, he loses much of the aura and protection that come with the job. Yet President Bush may have no other alternative.

As Republicans gather in New York, Bush has his work cut out for him. While many observers see national polls that have shown the race roughly tied since early April, it does not mean that the two have equal chances of winning.

Historically, we know that well-known, well-defined incumbents rarely win over many undecided voters on Election Day. With this widely accepted dynamic in mind, this year's pool of undecided voters must look especially daunting to Republican strategists. According to five Associated Press/Ipsos Public Affairs national polls conducted between April and early August, 41 percent of the 3,719 registered voters said that the country was headed in the right direction, to 56 percent who thought the country was on the wrong track. Among the 327 registered voters who were undecided in the presidential race, only 19 percent thought the country was headed in the right direction, while 74 percent said off on the wrong track.

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At this stage it seems unlikely that a couple months of good economic numbers, a diminished number of U.S. casualties in Iraq that might remove the war from the nation's news headlines, and three strong debate performances would change the structure of a race that in no way resembles what Bush campaign strategists might have anticipated a year ago. Barring a major external event, a major terrorist attack, a well-timed capture of Osama bin Laden, or some other major international development that unifies the country, President Bush will need to be perhaps 3 percentage points ahead going into Election Day, as he is highly unlikely to win over more than, say, a quarter of the undecided vote.