this, perhaps she wouldn’t be in politics now.

With the actual polls in South Carolina closing at 7:00 p.m. ET, it might seem a bit late to look at what Mark Blumenthal wrote at Pollster.com about the uncertainty of the pre-primary polls.  Plenty of folks already blogged about it in the conventional way, wondering whether we could be in for the sort of surprise we got in New Hampshire.  Yet Blumenthal’s analysis is compelling on a different, more general level as well.

Ben Smith and Carrie Budoff Brown write a piece about a smear email that the Obama campaign have been trying to rebuff, and in the process, make this interesting comparison:  The e-mails aren’t a well-funded, faux-grassroots smear like the attacks on John Kerry’s war record.    So, once again, we’re led to ask, what about the Swifties’ claims regarding Kerry’s record constituted a smear? 

That damned Bush screwed everything up: A former Russian top spy says his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $500 million from the U.N.’s oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Sergei Tretyakov, who defected to the United States in 2000 as a double agent, says he oversaw an operation that helped Saddam’s regime manipulate the price of Iraqi oil sold under the program—and

Well, it’s not right if Obama’s kept this: The Obama campaign says it has given away more than $85,000 in Rezko-linked contributions since Rezko was indicted on federal fraud and extortion charges in the fall of 2006. An ABCNews.com review, however, has identified an additional $100,000 in contributions made to Obama from Rezko’s associates that have not been returned, including $19,500 in contributions from Rezko’s wife and employees of Rezko’s business enterprises. The ABCNews.com

Which of the movies based on a character first introduced in an SNL skit is the absolute worst, and why?

This is pretty interesting.  Turns out Romney is my candidate.  Well yeah, now that Teh Fred is out.

about a candidate evah.

In the L.A. Times, Jonathan Chait — previously the author of “The Case for Bush Hatred” — joins the growing band of left-liberals souring on the Clintons: Something strange happened the other day. All these different people — friends, co-workers, relatives, people on a liberal e-mail list I read — kept saying the same thing: They’ve suddenly developed a disdain for Bill and Hillary Clinton. Maybe this is just a

Karl’s got an important post coming, so I’m going to just throw out this hilarious post from Freep: The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a $1.4 million fine against 52 ABC Television Network stations over a 2003 broadcast of cop drama NYPD Blue. The fine is for a scene where a boy surprises a woman as she prepares to take a shower. The scene depicted “multiple, close-up views” of the woman’s