The revved-up primary season has meant an early start for fundraising, for ad-buys, for talk of campaign romances and for large mini-bar bills, but one wonders, when will start to see demands from extraneous bi-partisan interest groups, hoping to attract publicity and attention by hopping on the vaguely topical idea of an election that’s …

Greg Sargent burrows into the Rudy-weasel story. Worth reading in full, but a favorite passage:

This conversation is over, David. Thank you. [Mr. Giuliani cuts him off.] There is something really, really, very sad about you. You need help. You need somebody to help you. I know you feel insulted by that, but I’m being honest with you.

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Just in time for this week’s “milblogger” conference in D.C., the Army has issued new regulations for active duty blogger-soldiers: basically, stop. All blog updates must be okayed, and personal emails will be subject to scrutiny. This seems like a mistake to me, as milbloggers are generally advocates for their operation and their word …

I’ve agreed to “moderate” this debate.

Two enterprising GOP staffers have come up with a conservative “alternative to YouTube,” since, you know, it’s YouTube’s fault George Allen is a boob. They tell the WT’s Eric Pfeiffer, “We saw a need for a social-networking site for the center-right…They want something that isn’t controlled by our good friends at Google.” And here I …

Mike Allen — Time contributor and ace reporter for Politico.com — has posted a great piece on Time.com about the death throes of the phrase “Global War on Terror”. John Edwards leads the way among the candidates. Even President Bush tells audiences now to “call it whatever you want”. Now if only someone would re-name the Department of …

TotT is a daily rundown of campaign events, compiled by Katie Rooney.

While all of the Republican presidential candidates are getting ready for their turn at the podium at tomorrow’s debate, at least three of them are arriving in California a little early to do some pre-debate campaigning. Today Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) holds another …

President Bush’s veto of the $124 billion Iraq spending bill puts the congressional Republicans in a spot where they haven’t been since last year: They actually matter. While Democrats have yet to decide precisely what they plan to do, the sense I’m getting from talking to leadership sources is that, in the face of the reality that they …

Tucker Carlson is, right now, interviewing actual whores on MSNBC about the ethics of revealing clients’ names: “This seems like a violation of a code.”

Insert bloggers’ ethics panel joke here.

UPDATE: A colleague writes: “That’s a first.” Actual whores on cable news not so much a first, ones that get paid for sex, well, …

On a day when one GOP candidate endorsed the origin myth of Psychlos, I’d be remiss not to draw your attention to the candidate who thought that ferret owners were psycho:

“There is something deranged about you.… The excessive concern you have for ferrets is something you should examine with a therapist.… There is something really,

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A reminder that George Bush’s vision for Iraq has been evolving for quite some time.

This makes Bush’s “my favorite philosopher is Jesus” answer look positively Lincoln-esque:

When asked his favorite novel in an interview shown yesterday on the Fox News Channel, Mitt Romney pointed to “Battlefield Earth,” a novel by L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. That book was turned into a film by John Travolta, a

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