Outside the Beltway

Are people actually being influenced to vote based on robo-calls? And, if so, what percentage of people are being influenced to vote against the candidate on behalf of whom the calls are made?

Fast Internet access is becoming a necessity for modern life. Should we subsidize it by eliminating the Postal Service?

Thanks mostly to Virginia Thomas’s decision to place an early Saturday morning phone call to Anita Hill, a woman who had remained silent since 1986 appears in the press to claim she can corroborate the charges that Anita Hill made nineteen years ago.

Newsweek’s latest poll shows a boom in support for President Obama and the Democrats. It’s the only poll showing that, however.

In what is being described as the largest leak of secret documents in U.S. history, Wikileaks has made public more than 400,000 documents related to the seven year long Iraq War.

Nancy Pelosi is irritating some party stalwarts by funneling money into the campaigns of Democratic incumbents running ads against her.

The firing of Juan Williams from NPR has led many conservatives to call for an end to government subsidies. As is often the case, they’re right but for the wrong reasons.

The biggest outside spender in 2010 isn’t the Chamber of Commerce but the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.

The Pentagon has reinstated Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell under procedures that will make the discharge process more difficult. Which is good because it doesn’t look like DADT will be repealed any time soon.

Virginia’s answer to Joe Biden has put his foot in his mouth once again. It won’t prevent him from getting an 11th term.

The Tea Party movement doesn’t seem to have a coherent view on foreign policy. Which means that a Tea Party victory will just mean more of the same Republican neo-conservatism.

John Cole is ashamed that some House Democrats are running against Nancy Pelosi, given her effectiveness. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Apparently Juan Williams is really, really, really important.

While the displacement of poor blacks from their neighborhoods by affluent whites may be lamentable, it’s better than the alternatives.

Sarah Palin is causing headaches among fellow Republicans regarding her 2010 endorsement activities.

Mickey Kaus quips, “Andrew Sullivan has “small staff of four people to help him handle the blog” says NPR. Er, what’s a “big” staff for a blog? . . . In ten short years Sullivan’s created a bloated blog bureaucracy! “

NPR says it fired Juan Williams for remarks that were “inconsistent” with its editorial standards. In reality, it appears that Williams was the victim of the same convenient editing that cost Shirley Sherrod her job earlier this year.

While the American economy languishes, China is booming again.

NPR has fired Juan Williams over controversial comments about Muslims.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is once again the law of the land.

Tonight’s topics: The foreclosure mess, low GDP growth, and the world-wide Tea Party.

Jonah Goldberg observes, “It took 410 days to build the Empire State Building; four years to erect the Golden Gate Bridge. The Pentagon took two years; the Alaska Highway just nine months. These days it takes longer to build an overpass.”

Andy Borowitz suggests “Three Things to Do When Clarence Thomas’s Wife Calls You.”

President Obama is reportedly avoiding a visit to India’s Harmandir Sahib, or Golden Temple, for fear that he’ll be accused of being a Muslim.

Voters head to the polls in thirteen days, and current indications are that they’ll be handing a big victory to the Republican Party.

Lisa Murkowski, who lost the Republican primary, may be on the verge of winning re-election as a sore-loser write-in.

Sarah Palin and the Tea Party aren’t as clueless as their detractors think.

Recklessness.

Nineteen years after they ended, the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings are back in the news thanks to a voicemail that Thomas’s wife left for Professor Hill.

The story about the private security guards who “arrested” a journalist at a Joe Miller campaign event just keeps getting stranger by the day.

Actor Tom Bosley, best known for his role as Howard Cunningham on TV’s “Happy Days,” had died at 83.