At first I thought this was a joke, no really, I did. Via Slate:

Dredge your overstuffed furniture. Scrape the bottom of your purse. Shatter your kid’s piggy bank. Do what ever it takes to find $500 for a ticket to the Churchill Centre’s Oct. 25 fund-raising dinner at the Willard so you can witness the presentation of the Emery Reves Award to Chris Matthews for lifetime achievement in journalism.

Well if Chris Matthews symbolizes journalism standards of today then we are in a whole heap of trouble. Oh well.

Here’s a bit of a refresher course from the Hillary Project: “Seven Things To Know About the Clintons”

An interesting read and one of the things I’d forgotten was how many on the Democratic side had in the past, made less than gracious comments about the former first couple:

Very little of this has escaped the notice of journalists and of Democratic leaders. Yet, after every scandal they forget their public denunciations of the Clintons. Here are some flavorous reminders. After the Clintons and their siblings were caught in the 42nd president’s last-minute pardon scandal, Jimmy Carter called them “disgraceful.” Robert Reich opined that “Clinton is utterly disgraced.” Al Hunt called Clinton the “albatross” of his party who should “drop dead.” Al Gore’s campaign manager, Donna Brazile wrote in the New York Times that “It’s time to let Bill Clinton go — go on and live the rest of his life and allow a new generation of Democratic leaders to renew their fight on behalf of working families in America.” New York Times columnist Bob Herbert affirmed that “Bill Clinton has been a disaster for the Democratic Party. Send him packing. It’s time for the Democratic Party to wise up. Ostracism would be a good first step. Bill Clinton should be cut completely loose….some of Mr. Clinton’s closest associates and supporters are acknowledging what his enemies have argued for years –the man is so thoroughly corrupt it is frightening.”

Looks like the Democratic party in Pennsylvania might have a bit of explaining to do.

Files seized from a Democratic House research office were laden with campaign and other political documents, according to a judge who reviewed them.

Contents of the 20 boxes were “overwhelmingly and patently non-legislative in nature,” said Judge Barry Feudale, who allowed the documents to be considered in a grand jury investigation into whether taxpayer-funded resources were used to run elections. The grand jury also is looking into whether state employees received substantial state bonuses for work on political campaigns.

I wonder, will this become a national story if the grand jury returns indictments?

For those who may have missed it, it sems Rudy Giuliani has a few enemies, and they reside in New York.

All presidential candidates have some element of hometown opposition—constituents angry about a factory closing, politicians spiteful about losing a bill or an election. But no candidate engenders as much local animus as Mr. Giuliani, whose terms as mayor were characterized by a series of spectacular running battles with various, mostly liberal constituencies.

For the first months of his candidacy for president, prominent progressives in New York mocked the notion that a pro-choice, immigration-friendly serial husband with a history of opposition to guns would have a shot at the Republican nomination.

But now, with Mr. Giuliani up nearly 10 percentage points in national polls and unexpectedly competitive in the early primary states of New Hampshire and South Carolina, a mixture of nervousness and disbelief is running through the ranks of his old antagonists.

Sometimes that which seems impossible is that which materializes. Could that be the case with Rudy?

And finally.

An interesting piece from Newsmax.

Call it “Bloggergate” — the subversion of the blogosphere by Democrat money.

To be more precise, Bloggergate is the subsidizing of left-wing bloggers with illegal Democrat campaign contributions, laundered through ostensibly “non-partisan” non-profit groups.

At a convention of left-wing bloggers last summer, Hillary Clinton announced, “We are . . . putting together a network in the blogosphere.”

Her remarks became public only three weeks ago, on Oct. 2, when an anonymous person posted a shaky, hand-held videotape of her speech on YouTube. In it, Hillary bragged that she had helped create “institutions” which had produced a left-wing “network in the blogosphere” capable of “matching” the alleged “advantage of the other side.”

Hillary’s claim raises troubling questions. On a practical level, just how exactly does a U.S. senator go about exerting her power to stack the blogosphere in her favor?

This article contains some very thought provoking information. Will anything come of the indiscretions mentioned, well, here are the authors’ thoughts:

It remains to be seen whether the IRS and the Federal Election Commission will blow the whistle on Hillary’s army of paid bloggers. Who knows? They just might. But I’m not holding my breath.

Indeed.

Hope you found something here that peaked your interest on this final workday of the week for most.

*Meant to mention earlier, ~J~ was a bit under the weather last evening so two of these articles she forwarded on to me. The Giuliani piece and the final piece on Hillary Clinton were of particular interest to her. In the interest of time, I hope she doesn’t mind that I slipped them into the fly-by as she might have devoted far more time to them.*