The Watertown Times has endorsed Bill Owens, the Democratic candidate to represent New York State’s 23rd Congressional district seat:

The New York Times notes that there are a lot of nervous Democrats in Washington who have suddenly noticed that the deficit and our national debt have somehow mysteriously spiraled into a range of numbers generally reserved for discussions of the number of grains of sand on the world’s beaches. Is it because of some new found concern for the public purse? Apparently not. But they did remember that many...

It’s clear the White House perceives news from New York about a Republican moderate in effect being forced out of a Congressional race by conservatives who felt she was not conservative enough as a sign that the Republican party is officially shifting further to the right — and comments made by a White House official on ABC this morning indicate this theme that will emerge again as more inevitable...

Bob Englehart, The Hartford Courant This cartoon is copyrighted and licensed to run on TMV. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. All rights reserved.

Presidential contender Abdullah Abdullah has announced he won’t participate in the upcoming runoff election, a move that insures a victory for incumbent Hamid Karzai. It is not clear at this point if he will formally withdraw or if he will simply stop campaigning. Abdullah has accused the vote counting commission of being biased in favor of Karzai and thus unable to run a fair election campaign. Most observers...

I thought it might be interesting — now that the Honduran government and exiled President Manuel Zelaya have come to an agreement that will restore Zelaya to the presidency until the legal end of his term — to look back at the reaction around the world when the coup occurred, at the end of June. It’s easy now, four months after the events took place, to forget how united the world was in its...

It’s been a little while since we’ve tried this One of the hardest things is to determine your own political position because it is only natural to assume you are the mainstream/center and everyone else should be left or right of you. There are a number of political surveys out there, and they too have some bias, but this one is pretty good at offering evaluation, and if anything it gives us an idea...

Okay, I’ll admit I’m surprised Hiatt decided to go the route of supporting the democratic rule of law and nonviolent conflict resolution — although he cannot resist a bit of propagandizing about the evil “Chavistas.”

John Hannah is being roundly mocked for his NRO piece today in which he complains that Hillary Clinton is doing harm to U.S. interests abroad by contrasting Pres. Obama’s foreign policies with those of the previous administration, to the latter’s discredit. In her recent trip to Pakistan, Clinton told a group of students that she spent her entire Senate career opposing Bush’s policies, and...

This is not one of the subjects I’ve been following closely, since I don’t live in New York State, but the response to her decision to drop out of the race is interesting. My understanding is that Scozzafava is a moderate Republican — she does not hew to the far right position on abortion and marriage equality, for example. But Michelle Malkin, in her post exulting about the news that she is...

The style book says elected politicians be identified by abbreviations of their political party and state after their names which is why I find it rather amusing that Sen. Joe Lieberman is (I-Conn). That Lieberman is conning progressive Democrats is paramount in their frustration directed at the man selected as their party’s vice presidential candidate in 2000. They overlooked a quirk in Lieberman’s...

It seems like the far right has got it’s wish: Republican Dede Scozzafava has suspended her bid in next Tuesday’s NY 23 special election, a huge development that dramatically shakes up the race. She did not endorse either of her two opponents — Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman or Democrat Bill Owens. The decision to suspend her campaign is a boost for Hoffman, who already had the support...

Per Politico: Republican Dede Scozzafava has dropped out of next Tuesday’s NY 23 special election. She did not endorse either of her two opponents, Conservative party candidate Doug Hoffman or Democrat Bill Owens. Scozzafava’s statement here. I think she made the wrong decision, but the statement is pure class. Before this development, the race was neck-and-neck between Hoffman and Owens, polling...

As we dig deeper into the behemoth House health care bill, the blatant honesty of Howard Dean shines through the extensive document. You may recall when the former DNC chair said, “the reason why tort reform is not in the bill is because the people who wrote it did not want to take on the trial lawyers in addition to everybody else they were taking on, and that is the plain and simple truth.” Plain...

Senator Lieberman of Connecticut has angered Democrats in his opposition to the “public option” for healthcare reform. Well this is not the first time he has gone his own way. It is perfectly understandable because he is officially an independent and thus he has no duty to the Democratic Party. He answers only to his constituents and himself. Just because he caucuses with Democrats who foolishly permitted...

Another freedom has been taken away from him:

Fox News Radio host John Gibson asked Liz Cheney for her thoughts on Barack Obama’s recent trip to Dover Air Force Base to witness the arrival of the bodies of U.S. troops who died in Afghanistan. Here is her response, via TPMDC:

News breaking that SF Mayor Gavin Newsom is dropping out of the California Governor’s race. This pretty much clears the field for former Governor and current AG Jerry Brown. Given the generally Democratic nature of the state it means we will be back in the 70’s again.

The ongoing negotiations between Honduras’s coup leaders and president-in-exile Manuel Zelaya have borne fruit:

U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones faces Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the Kremlin, Oct. 29. The American right will no doubt have a field day with this article from Russia’s leading business daily, Kommersant. According the Kommersant’s Vladimir Solovyev, the White House has made clear that it is eager to see the START III nuclear reduction treaty signed before President Obama...

Laugh in Tune! Listen to the Capitol Steps’ Halloween Show ‘Politics Takes A Holiday!’ on your local NPR station or online! Find an NPR Station or LISTEN ONLINE

Moving on to another French view of the Afghan conflict, Laurent Joffrin of the newspaper Liberation suggests that however bad the situation may be, the West in the person of President Barack Obama should not pull out of Afghanistan – yet. For Liberation, Laurent Joffrin writes in part: “A second round in the presidential election has now been scheduled. The outlines of a state, painfully, are...

Is it a fact that President Obama is ‘dithering’ – as former VP Cheney has said – over a decision on Iraq? In his editorial for Le Figaro yesterday, influential French columnist Pierre Rousselin seemed to agree, if not in a much more sympathetic fashion than Mr. Cheney. For Le Figaro, Pierre Rousselin writes in part: “From theory to practice, Obama is having a decidedly hard time...

The Washington Post breathlessly tells us today that 33 lawmakers are being investigated for questionable conduct that includes defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling. Granted, this is a legitimate story in Washington. But for the rest of the nation, it most likely will produce a collective yawn. “What else is new?” they might ask. The report was prepared in July. It was accidentally leaked...

Front page of the NYT: Iran told the United Nations nuclear watchdog on Thursday that it would not accept a plan its negotiators agreed to last week to send its stockpile of uranium out of the country, according to diplomats in Europe and American officials briefed on Iran’s response. And yet, over at Memeorandum, as of 11:00 am ET, the top three memes were about Congressional ethics inquiries, the race in...