The Swamp reports today that “on the last day of September, the national debt hit $10 trillion plus,” as the “gross national debt as a percentage of the gross domestic product has, under the Bush Administration, hit a 50-year high. The debt grew the fastest under supply-siders Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and George W. Bush:

The debt was $5.7 trillion when Bush took office; the bailout legislation passed by the Senate last night would raise the debt ceiling further to $11.315 trillion. The Wonk Room has more.

Yesterday during an interview with Fox News’s Carl Cameron, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) astonishingly claimed that he has not had any complaints with the way the media is treating him or his campaign:

MCCAIN: I do not comment on the media treatment of me or Sarah. Complaining about something we are doing voluntarily that we want to do and get done I think would just not be productive. [...] But I do not complain about the media and I will not complain because that’s not appropriate for me to do so and frankly it doesn’t do me any good if I did.

Watch it (beginning at 1:15):

Anyone paying any attention to anything in recent weeks knows that this claim is beyond absurd. In fact, McCain himself just recently railed against “gotcha journalism” when CBS News’s Katie Couric asked about Sarah Palin’s recent claim that the U.S. should “launch cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan to, quote, ‘stop the terrorists from coming any further in‘” — a position that McCain opposes and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) supports.

The McCain campaign has been waging a well-known and well-documented war against the media for what they consider to be biased coverage. Some of the battles:

– McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer blasted a recent interview Couric conducted with Palin as “a series of trapdoor questions.”

– Top adviser Steve Schmidt accused the media of being “on a mission to destroy” Palin by displaying “a level of viciousness and and scurrilousness” in pursuing questions about her personal life.

– Schmidt attacked a New York Times article about how Palin was vetted before becoming the Republican vice presidential nominee as “a complete work of fiction.”

– Schmidt said of the Times: “This is an organization that is completely, totally 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate. It is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside it’s journalistic integrity to advocate for the defeat of John McCain.”

– During her speech at the Republican National Convention, Palin hit the media, saying “if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.”

– McCain himself recently canceled an interview with Larry King because a CNN reporter conducted a challenging interview with campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds.

– The McCain campaign demanded that the media treat Palin with “deference.”

Also, just today, McCain complained that PBS’s Gwen Ifill would be moderating today’s Vice Presidential debate because she is writing a book that is perceived as favorable to Obama.

In May, controversial former Justice Department official Hans Von Spakovsky withdrew his name from consideration for the Federal Election Commission, following months of opposition from lawmakers and civil rights groups. Since then, Spakovsky has busied himself by writing opinion pieces for conservative news outlets like the Wall Street Journal and National Review.

In an article for the right-wing Human Events today, Spakovsky criticizes efforts by Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) presidential campaign to get attack ads by the “American Issues Project” off of TV, saying that the “actions should cause every American to ask, can Obama be trusted with the powers of the Justice Department.” Spakovsky claims that the Justice Department under Obama would be “partisan and politically-biased”:

There is no threat against television stations or a demand by Obama to criminally prosecute NARAL or other liberal organizations that are no different from AIP or the NRA except, of course, that they have spent millions of dollars for independent ads attacking John McCain and supporting Obama. This dichotomy provides a frightening example of just how partisan and politically-biased the Justice Department and other federal agencies would be under an Obama administration, criminally prosecuting political opponents while turning a blind eye to supporters like NARAL.

Spakovsky’s worries are ironic given that six of his former Justice Department colleagues wrote to the Senate Rules Committee in June 2007, claiming that he “injected partisan political factors into decision-making” when he ran the Voting Section of the DoJ’s Civil Rights Division. Critics say Spakovsky used every opportunity “to make it difficult for voters — poor, minority and Democratic — to go to the polls,” including pushing through Texas re-districting that violated the Voting Rights Act.

Additionally, Spakovsky neglects to mention that he has reason to hold a personal grudge against Obama. In Oct. 2007, Obama “derailed” a vote on Spakovsky’s nomination, which eventually led to Spakovsky’s withdrawal from his nomination. In an op-ed explaining his opposition, Obama wrote that Spakovsky had “amassed a record” of “putting partisan politics above upholding our civil rights.”