For example,

Mr. Chalabi's relationship with the Americans stretched over decades. In 1998, he helped persuade Congress to pass the Iraq Mr. Chalabi's relationship with the Americans stretched over decades. In 1998, he helped persuade Congress to pass the Iraq Liberation Act, which was signed by President Bill Clinton and declared it the policy of the United States to replace Mr. Hussein's government with a democratic one.

Today the United Debate Debate front is rapid unraveling as the actually very different interests of the candidates begin to manifest themselves. Four candidates (Trump, Kasich, Fiorina and Christie) have refused to sign onto a protest letter dictating terms to the networks. And at least one candidate, Christie, is mocking the whole exercise, as reported by Politico's Isenstadt, Gass and Gold:

   "Why are we wasting time whining and bickering over this?" he asked. "I'd rather spend my time going out there talking to voters to talk about issues that really matter to the country, and if you think anybody who's watching those debates really really cares about the future of the country is worried about whether a bathroom is close? Come on."

    "If you can't exert bladder control for two hours, maybe you shouldn't be president of the United States," he cracked.

A new litmus test for candidates!

[...]

 As HuffPost's Sam Stein reports, Team Carson would apparently prefer a "debate" made up basically of opening and closing statements:

   Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon-turned-top presidential candidate, has not hid his displeasure with the current structure of Republican debates. His campaign finds them argumentative and disjointed, and they are spearheading a meeting on Sunday evening in Washington, D.C., to figure out ways to upend the system.

    The proposal they appear set to push to the other campaigns will be to actually eliminate the debating portion of the debates.

    Carson's campaign wants to have all the candidates onstage and to give each of those candidates five minutes, minimum, for opening and closing statements, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Who would even watch that?

  A spokesman for Ryan said that the new speaker "rotated in a different portrait."  Since 1910 portraits of all speakers are hung in the Speaker's lobby and nearby corridors and stairwells.

There were no sightings as to where Hastert's portrait was freshly rotated.  But, the prominent spot occupied for years by Hastert now portrays former Speaker Frederick Gillett (R.MA), 1919-1925.

 Representative Gillett was the last speaker who left the House for the Senate. And, was known for tooling about in his 1926 Pontiac roadster. Gillett assumed the speakership following the assertive leadership style of Joseph Cannon.

An important point: Even tho $$$$ poured in from national conservative interest groups in this test case, the district's parents resolutely--by an almost 2 to 1 margin--rejected the conservatives in the political bell-weather county that will be a key component of Colorado 2016 presidential politics.  Likewise, the neighboring upscale Lincoln County rejected the 3 previous right-wing "reformers" in favor of a more traditional school & teacher focused board.

This was found in a 1988 speech then he was asked about it on his "book tour".

Yes I still believe that.  He said.

IMO this is about nothing but polishing the terd that is the Bush family name.

Jeb is talking non stop about Poppy today.

Kentucky purple??  I think not.  There are some conservative Democrats in office, but even that is lessening (and the Secretary of State and Attorney General won by the skin of their teeth). No one who is serious would call it a purple state.  KY will likely go for the Republican presidential nominee in 2016 and their state House (the last one in the region to have majority Democrats) will flip in a matter of a few years (maybe even next year). This is a shift that's been coming for decades.

And no, he wasn't a great candidate. Democrats weren't enthused by him all along.

If genius, as former Louisvillian Thomas Alva Edison once said, is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, then Attorney General Jack Conway is the smartest man in Kentucky.

His campaign so far has left Democrats flummoxed over his inability to excite his base and inspire an uprising that would put away a Republican opponent they feel is the least qualified GOP nominee since Peppy Martin in 1999.

They didn't feel any better after Tuesday's Bluegrass Poll Gubernatorial Debate when all people wanted to talk about was Conway's sweat-filled performance where he glistened in the television lights. He seemed unsure of himself at times and his attempts at humor fell flat.

On style points, which are often the most important things in political debates, he lost to Republican Matt Bevin - who lost to independent candidate Drew Curtis. Curtis' humor and plainspoken answers made him seem more genuine than his two, supposedly more polished foes.

It wasn't a great night for the two leading candidates, but Conway clearly had the worst.

On the campaign trail, the former neurosurgeon has recounted being an angry juvenile in his native Detroit -- stabbing, throwing rocks at people, hurling bricks and beating others with baseball bats.

But through interviews with nine former classmates and friends, CNN was unable to verify any incidents supporting those claims.

BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa -- South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal grilled Oscar Pistorius' attorney and a prosecutor on Tuesday as it weighed whether to convict him of murder for killing his girlfriend, uphold a lower court's manslaughter conviction or order a retrial.

One of the five appeals court judges noted during the session on Tuesday, broadcast across the country and around the world on live TV, that Pistorius could still be convicted of murder even if he didn't think it was Steenkamp in the cubicle but knew someone was in there. Under the concept of dolus eventualis in South African law, a person can be convicted of murder if they foresaw the possibility of someone dying through their actions and went ahead anyway.

"If you look at the photographs, there's room behind there for a toilet bowl and a person and just about nothing else," Justice Lorimer Leach said to defense lawyer Barry Roux. "There's nowhere to hide. It would be a miracle if you didn't shoot someone."

[duh...]

The toughest and longest questioning was directed at Roux who, according to local news website News24, said "I'm going to lose" in Afrikaans after the proceedings were finished, with his microphone still on.

 If Peggy were the only female criminal of Fargo's second season, one would have to raise some tough questions about how the show's producers were portraying women. But that's not the case: we have Floyd. And Floyd is amazing.

For a while I've been thinking that Trump would be great because he is the loonies choice and he would lose in a spectacular fashion.   And teach them a valuable lesson about national politics.

Carson is even more the right wing loonie choice and he would lose in an even more spectacular fashion.   And they could never again say "if the nominee had only been a REAL conservative"
Something they might say if Donald lost.

Some may find it odd that oil magnates and Republican kingmakers Charles and David Koch chose the so-called left-leaning MSNBC as the venue for a rare sitdown interview on Tuesday. But what MSNBC isn't promoting is that the hosts in charge of the interview are self-professed and unabashed Koch fans.

Unmentioned in the release is the fact that both Brzezinski and Scarborough earlier this year attended a weekend in Palm Springs for the "American Recovery Policy Forum," put on by the Koch's organization, the tax-exempt Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce.

Relations between the two avowed enemies have been warming since 2008 when President Ma first assumed office in Taipei, and in 2009 they signed a trade pact. Beijing has, however, recently expressed concern over the possibility that the Kuomintang could be ousted from power in next month's elections, amid widespread Taiwanese distrust of Chinese intentions. President Ma is stepping down early next year due to term limits.

Let's hope that regional tensions can be further drawn down in east Asia as a result of this meeting.

Witness this tidbit from a regular writer on Hugh Hewitt's blog:

Basically the nation is less religious because religion is not reaching the next generation.  No doubt in the days to come there will be endless opinions recorded as to why.  Factors blamed will include the rise of new media, the increasingly secular nature of the educational system, the necessity for both parents to work, single parent families, and so it goes.

See, conservatives have never come to grips with women in the workplace and equal rights for women.  

In 1998, he helped persuade Congress to pass the Iraq Liberation Act, which was signed by President Bill Clinton and declared it the policy of the United States to replace Mr. Hussein's government with a democratic one.

The fever to invade Iraq started even before GWBush - under the Clinton administration.

(Thanks to Oculus for providing the quote above.)

Jeralyn: "It's Election Day. Don't forget to vote."

Because once again, Democratic voters stayed home with their thumbs up their butts and didn't vote, perhaps assuming that because gubernatorial candidate Jack Conway was ahead in the voter surveys, he was going to win anyway. But all those crazy Republican voters marched resolutely to the polls, so guess what happened? Conway's a loser and instead, the totally crackpottic wingbat Matt Blevin will now succeed the eminently sane Gov. Steve Beshear in Frankfort.

When you vote for stupid, or vote for stupid by default by not bothering to show up, you can expect stupid in return. So, congratulations, Kentuckians. You're all likely to get exactly what you deserve. Can you say, "Bye-bye, Obamacare"?

I would love to summarize but that would be a huge spoiler for anyone who wanted to see it.

"Rubio has a disaster on his credit cards...snip....Take a look at what he has done with the Republican Party when he had access, what he had to put back in, and whether or not something should have happened. You'll understand it..snip...He has a basic disaster on finance. Let's see what you find, let's see what kind of reporter you are. It won't be hard. It won't be hard."

The Mexican Supreme Court opened the door to legalizing marijuana on Wednesday, delivering a pointed challenge to the nation's strict substance abuse laws and adding its weight to the growing debate in Latin America over the costs and consequences of the war against drugs.
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The vote by the court's criminal chamber declared that individuals should have the right to grow and distribute marijuana for their personal use. The ruling is a first step -- applying only to a single cannabis club that brought the suit -- and does not strike down Mexico's current drug laws. But it lays the groundwork for a wave of legal actions that could ultimately legalize marijuana.

The pungent smell of marijuana smoke drifted through the air outside Mexico's Supreme Court as legalization activists puffed and waited for judges to make their ruling. When it came, it sparked up cheers and more joints. Four out of five Supreme Court justices had voted in favor of a lawsuit by plaintiffs who argued that it was unconstitutional to stop them growing, possessing or consuming cannabis. The ruling only applies to the plaintiffs - four activists from a cannabis club called the Mexican Society for Responsible and Tolerant Personal Use, or SMART. But it sets a powerful precedent that could shake up drug laws in Mexico and across the region.

WASHINGTON -- After years of holding back, former President George Bush has finally broken his public silence about some of the key figures in his son's administration, issuing scathing critiques of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

In interviews with his biographer, Mr. Bush said that Mr. Cheney had built "his own empire" and asserted too much "hard-line" influence within George W. Bush's White House in pushing for the use of force around the world. Mr. Rumsfeld, the elder Mr. Bush said, was an "arrogant fellow" who could not see how others thought and "served the president badly."

I have great respect for the man when he was President, but as a father, he has failed this country to a very high degree.  And now his book appears to be defending GWB while he is currently pushing JED towards the WH.