As TalkLeft reported here, the Republican candidate in Nevada's gubernatorial race is under investigation for allegedly assaulting a casino waitress. Jim Gibbons claims that surveillance tapes will clear him (a friendly court ordered them released yesterday) but TPM Muckraker explains why the tapes might lack any evidentiary value. This comprehensive AP report discusses the political impact of the accusation.

The Baptist General Convention of Texas, hoping to compete against the Catholic church in the Rio Grande Valley, provided three pastors with $1.3 million in seed money to establish Baptist churches. The pastors claimed they set up 258 churches, but the Convention can only find five to ten.

It found that some monthly new church reports, which were used to obtain funding, were fabricated. In some cases, the money was used to enhance other mission projects unrelated to the new churches; in other cases, where the money eventually went remains unknown.

Complaints from parishoners and an FBI probe failed to motivate the Convention to conduct an earlier investigation. Even after the investigation, no disciplinary action has been taken against the pastors who received the money.

Chris Bowers is a treasure. But he is prone to this type of knee jerk nonsense:

Democrats are once again showing weakness in the face of attack, an eagerness to apologize for calling the right-wing names, and a willingness to close Daou's triangle on themselves.

Just look at the latest AP headline:

Some Democrats join Republicans in pressing Kerry for apology. Game over. So much for showing strength in the face of attack. Once again, we are weak, divided, and grovelling for forgiveness. The triangle is officially closed on this now. Well done, Democrats. My only remaining hope is that this story goes away quickly.

This is dumb beyond belief. Chris, it was game over the moment Kerry pushed this thing big with his stupid press conference. There is no reason for Democrats to have to go to bat for John Kerry in THIS ELECTION!! The Left Blogs have been dumb as hammers on this one. There was one thing to do with this story for the word go - hope the story went away quickly. MY gawd, Chris wanted to fight on the issue of whether John Kerry insulted the troops?

Now Stoller joins the dumb act. What is it with these guys? Kerry misspoke AND apologized. So what the heck is there to defend now? Honestly, stupid pills abound.

Here's an obnoxious idea: make all tenants obtain the government's permission before renting an apartment. Hazleton, PA enacted an ordinance that does just that, with the notion that permits to rent apartments will be denied to those who can't prove their citizenship -- and to those who can't afford the permit.

The ordinance also requires every business in town to obtain a permit, and denies permits to those businesses that employ undocumented aliens. The likely result: businesses won't hire anyone who looks Latino, for fear that job applicants are using forged documents to establish their eligibility to work, jeopardizing the business' ability to survive.

Federal Judge James Munley issued a temporary restraining order that blocks enforcement of the ordinance.

"We find it in the public interest to protect residents access to homes, education, jobs and businesses," he wrote in a 13-page opinion.

America is less secure. So if you see commercials telling you to be afraid of terrorism, remember, it's because of Iraq."

Great ad from VoteVets.

This is all nice stuff but can we get back to the elections please? So John Kerry, please keep your word:

"I'm coming back to Washington today so that I'm not a distraction, because I don't want to be a distraction to these campaigns." -- Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), on the Imus in the Morning radio show, after canceling several campaign appearances today in the wake of his botched joke.

So we can talk about this:

A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.

. . . The slide includes a color-coded bar chart that is used to illustrate an “Index of Civil Conflict.” It shows a sharp escalation in sectarian violence since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and tracks a further worsening this month despite a concerted American push to tamp down the violence in Baghdad.

. . . The conclusions the Central Command has drawn from these trends are not encouraging, according to a copy of the slide that was obtained by The New York Times. The slide shows Iraq as moving sharply away from “peace,” an ideal on the far left side of the chart, to a point much closer to the right side of the spectrum, a red zone marked “chaos.” As depicted in the command’s chart, the needle has been moving steadily toward the far right of the chart.

John Cole writes a powerful piece:

I just thought I would go on record stating that the last few weeks and months have really sucked for me. I spent my whole life in the GOP- starting in 1984 with county meetings, going to Teenage Republican camp (my friends called it Hitler Youth Camp, proving that Nazi/Republican quips are no new development), and spending the better part the fall of 1984 going door to door for John Raese in his race against Rockefeller (Raese, as you know, lost). Now, 22 years later, I find myself not only refusing to support Raese against Robert Byrd (the man who for years has embarassed me with his pork), but I have come to the conclusion that the Republicans are so corrupt, so dishonest, so beholden to special interests and fanatical lobbying groups that Byrd not only looks to be the better option, but the entire Democratic party looks better.

I wouldn't label either Brian Williams, Katie Couric or Charles Gibson "rookies," but the Wall St. Journal (free link) offers a preview of the major networks' election night coverage. I'll agree, the stakes are high, but these are all seasoned journalists.

The planned departures from prior election year coverage are interesting.

In a change from the 2002 midterm elections, the networks promise they won't project a winner in any state until after all of that state's polls are scheduled to close. In a first, each network has also agreed to send two representatives to a "quarantine room" at an undisclosed location in New York City to comb through exit-poll data. The goal: to prevent early exit-poll data -- which is often unreliable -- from leaking to the Internet, and to monitor the results in a vacuum, without access to a bank of TV screens tuned to various pundits predicting outcomes.

After a long legal fight, the records of two abortion clinics are now in the hands of the Kansas Attorney General.

The state attorney general said Tuesday night that his office has received the records of 90 patients from two abortion clinics and is reviewing them for possible crimes, the culmination of an effort that prompted concerns over patient privacy.

Now here's the b.s. The Attorney General says he wants the records to go after sex offenders, rapists and abortion doctors.

How many women provide a rapist's or sex offender's name when going for an abortion? Doesn't he really mean he's doing this just to go after doctors who performed the procedure?

Smoke and mirrors, folks. Once again.

Talkleft reported on the legal fight here. More from Feministing here, and on how this same Kansas attorney general wanted to require healthcare workers to report evidence of teen make-out sessions here.

The New York Times reports that Colorado has become "the new frontier" politically.

Despite a Republican edge in registration, Democrats are discovering the Mountain West — and Colorado in particular — to be a new political frontier as the party benefits from a potent mix of changing demographics, anger over the war in Iraq, resentment toward conservative social initiatives and millions of dollars’ worth of advocacy advertising.

What's behind the shift? Independent voters. We have a lot of them, and due to dissatisfaction with Republican policies, including the war, they are increasingly likely to vote Democratic.

Colorado Democrats could show big gains next Tuesday.

The number of wrongfully convicted persons is not just a problem in the U.S. Even China recognizes that mistakes can happen. While it would be preferable for China to abolish the death penalty altogether, this news is encouraging:

China's highest court must approve all executions under legislation enacted Tuesday, prompting human rights activists to express hope that the country will reduce its use of the death penalty.

The amendment to China's capital punishment law follows reports of wrongly convicted people being executed and criticism that the death penalty has been imposed arbitrarily by lower courts.

What is the Bush Administration doing? You guessed it. Nothing. And don't cite the watered-down version of the Innocence Protection Act. That ended up with almost all funds going to test old rape kits to catch perpetrators, with a very small percentage going to test or re-test DNA in cases showing innocence.

Here is how the NYTimes and the Washington Post reported the Kerry distraction:

For at least a few hours on Tuesday, President Bush had a chance to relive his victorious campaign of 2004, taking a break from a bleak Republican campaign season as he attacked Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts over the war in Iraq.

Mr. Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who was Mr. Bush’s opponent in 2004, is not running for office this year. But the president seized on what he said were Mr. Kerry’s disparaging remarks about the troops — and what Mr. Kerry insisted was a botched joke aimed at Mr. Bush — as he sought to make Mr. Kerry the face of the Democratic Party this fall.

In the process, Mr. Bush brought renewed attention to the war in Iraq, which he defended with vigor while campaigning in Georgia, at the very moment that a number of Republican Congressional candidates, following the advice of party strategists, were stepping up their efforts to distance themselves from the White House on the war as the campaign enters its final days.

Not bad at all for Democrats from the Times. WaPo is a different story.

I thought Bush went to war in Iraq to destroy its non-existent weapons of mass destruction, bring democracy to Iraq and dethrone Saddam.

The Pentagon, in releasing the names today of the latest U.S. troops to die in Iraq, says they died while supporting the "global war on terror."

Marine Sgt. Luke J. Zimmerman, 24, of Luxemburg, Wis., died Oct. 27 from injuries suffered while conducting combat operations in Iraq’s Anbar province. He was assigned to 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Army 1st Sgt. Ricky L. McGinnis, 42, of Hamilton, Ohio, died Oct. 26 in Balad, Iraq, when a roadside bomb detonated near his dismounted patrol in Muqdadiyah, Iraq. McGinnis was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 9th Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

How transparent. Now that there's no support for the war in Iraq and civil war is rampant, Bush thinks he can change the name and fool us into thinking we're fighting in Iraq to destroy amorphous terrorists.

Last week we wrote about two border agents sentenced to 11 and 12 years respectively for shooting a pot smuggler and an ensuing cover-up at the border.

In an unrelated case today, a federal judge sentenced two veteran border patrol agents to six years each for bribery in an immigrant smuggling scam.

Mario Alvarez and Samuel McClaren released smugglers and their customers from jail while working on a prisoner transfer program with the Mexican government. They once released a prisoner in a Wal-Mart parking lot for a fee of $6,000, according to court documents.

The agents, based in El Centro, once smuggled two illegal immigrants across the border themselves in a government vehicle and released them for cash, according to court documents. They turned over the location of surveillance cameras and other Border Patrol intelligence to smugglers.

Total amount of the bribes received by the agents: $180,000.00. According to the Justice Department:

Another jury got it wrong. Another innocent man languished in prison. And another DNA test set him free.

You've heard the story before. (If you haven't, check out TalkLeft's innocence cases link.) This man's name is Larry Fuller. He served honorably in Vietnam before he served two decades for a rape he didn't commit.

The woman looked at two photo lineups, both of which included Fuller. She picked him in the second one, even though Fuller was bearded in the picture and she said her attacker had no facial hair.

The police contributed to Fuller's misidentification by including his photo in two photo arrays. The unduly suggestive tactic (I know I've seen that face before) all but assured that the victim would pick Fuller. (TalkLeft explores identification procedures in more detail here.)

Fuller has consistently asked for the DNA evidence to be retested, but the Dallas County prosecutors didn't agree to retesting until this year. Remarkably, Fuller is the tenth Dallas County prisoner to be exonerated by DNA testing in the last five years.