Some Al Qaeda affiliates are endorsing John McCain. “Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,” said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said McCain would continue the “failing march of his predecessor,” President Bush.
Reflecting recent comments made by Joe Biden, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said “terrorists may see the change to a new U.S. president over the next six months as a prime chance to attack, no matter who wins the White House.”
Yesterday, Senate Democrats subpoenaed Attorney General Michael Mukasey for “testimony and documents about the Justice Department’s legal advice to the White House on detention and interrogation policies since the 2001 terror attacks.” The Justice Department “blasted the subpoena as a partisan move.”
A new video of Rep. Randy Kuhl speaking in August shows the New York Republican saying that Democrats want “the American public to suffer and to hurt so that they can make some political gains at election time.” Kuhl is the latest conservative to use incendiary fear-mongering rhetoric against progressives.
13 days to go: Senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden are in Virginia and will be meeting with their Senior Working Group on National Security. John McCain is scheduled to begin his day meeting voters in Manchester, NH, and then heads to Ohio. Sarah Palin will spend the day campaigning in Ohio.
“More than 2 million children in the United States who have no health insurance of any kind have at least one parent who gets employer-provided medical coverage,” according to a new report in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Typically, these parents have coverage through work, but “cannot afford the extra thousands of dollars that may be needed for a plan that also covers their children.”
Contrary to convention wisdom, a new study finds that long wait times and overcrowding in the hospital emergency rooms are not caused by “uninsured people with minor ailments who want free treatment.” The study’s lead author, Dr. Manya Newton of the University of Michigan, said that the nation’s 46 million uninsured “are actually underrepresented in the emergency department.”
“In a sign of growing unease with the proposed security agreement between the United States and Iraq,” the Iraqi cabinet said yesterday that it would demand changes to the deal because many senior Iraqi officials worry “that the agreement left too much leeway for the Americans to stay in Iraq beyond the scheduled deadline for withdrawal in 2011.”
A state ballot measure to ban gay marriage in California — Proposition 8 — is gaining momentum, “with polls showing almost even odds of it passing after trailing by double digits a month ago.” “Initial polling showed that a majority of Californians were likely to vote against Proposition 8,” but now “the measure is favored 48% to 45% among likely voters questioned in an Oct. 17 poll by Survey USA.”
And finally: South Park Republicans are more than just a political theory. New Nielsen data show that “South Park” is, in fact, the show that most engages Republicans, followed by “Cash Cab” on the Discovery Channel and “Damages” on FX. For Democrats, “The Colbert Report” was no. 1, beating out Discovery’s “Deadliest Cash.”
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