Rep. Bob Ney would be the fifth member of the Republican House leadership to resign this year. He has said he will remain in Congress though he is pleading guilty to corruption charges, but GOP leadership can't want someone who is going to jail for over two years to keep his seat.
Also, doesn't it seem any time someone does something wrong that person heads to alcohol rehabilitation?
Meanwhile, "Five conservative nonprofit organizations, including one run by prominent Republican Grover Norquist, "appear to have perpetrated a fraud" on taxpayers by selling their clout to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Senate investigators said in a report issued yesterday."
The Tennessean: At least three Chattanooga City Hall staff members discussed Bob Corker's U.S. Senate campaign using government e-mail accounts, according to documents obtained by his opponent.
... "Even if no code has been violated, the head of city audits for the state said he did not think politicking on city time is a proper use of city funds."
Patriot News: "National Republican leaders... might have already written off [Sen. Rick Santorum's campaign] if their checkbooks are any indication."
Neither the NRC nor the NRSC has reserved any air-time on Pennsylvania TV stations for ads supporting Santorum.
In a new Survey USA poll, Sherrod Brown leads Sen. Mike DeWine by a 14-point margin.
Rep. Sherrod Brown and Sen. Mike DeWine will debate tonight at 8 PM ET in Dayton. You can watch the debate live on C-SPAN.
The Nation: "Immediately after the Mark Foley scandal broke, some anti-Republican gay-rights activists composed a memo containing the names of closeted gay Republican Congressional staffers and sent it to leading Christian-right advocacy groups. Based on The List's contents, [the founder of one group, the American Family Association] is convinced that a secretive gay "clique" boring within the Republican-controlled Congress is responsible for covering up Foley's sexual predation toward teenage male House pages."
The Washington Post: The NRCC has apparently given up on a number of races, having determined they are un-winnable.
In recent days, it "has given back television time it had reserved in Democratic-held districts in West Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio -- apparently concluding that those races are beyond reach unless something dramatic changes the national political environment in the 25 days before the Nov. 7 election."
Stamford Advocate: Rep. Christopher Shays (R), running for re-election in Connecticut's 4th district said in a debate Wednesday "Abu Ghraib was not torture." It was a "sex ring... But it wasn't torture."
Tom Ashbrook interviewed John Yoo yesterday on On Point. Yoo basically thinks - and he wrote the legal justification for torture, hugely expanded presidential wartime powers, and surveillance without court approval. "The US Constitution is very flexible in wartime," he said. He believes that neither the courts nor the Congress should effectively be able to challenge the president during wartime; the only check on his power is being voted out of office.
Newsweek has interviews with both Claire McCaskill (D) and Sen. Jim Talent (R), in the tight Senate race in Missouri.
The most recent Survey USA poll has McCaskill up by nine points.
Countdown With Keith Olbermann obtained an advance copy of David Kuo's new book "Tempting Faith." Kuo is a self-described conservative Christian, who served as special assistant to the president from 2001 to 2003: "He says some of the nation's most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as "the nuts."
"National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as 'ridiculous,' 'out of control,' and just plain 'goofy,'" Kuo writes."
Washington Post's E.J. Dionne: "Bush Republicanism is not for [New York Republicans]."