Last night, Ron Paul delivered an incredibly cogent and winsome interview on The Tonight Show. I like him more and more. My favorite line from the clip: Paul says, “There probably is a risk that I could win.” Republicans need more irony like that. Until I determine how to post video, you can watch the fabulous 8-minute interview here.

Hillary Clinton faltered in last night’s debate, and her opponents pounced.

John Edwards accused Clinton of dishonesty, saying voters “deserve a president of the United States that they know will tell them the truth, and won’t say one thing one time and something different at a different time.” She gave him ammunition against her during the debate itself, when she first defended driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants, then said, “I did not say that it should be done.”

Even Barack Obama said he was “confused” by Clinton’s answer. Pundits have been telling Barack Obama to toughen up, and it seems he listened. He questioned the fact that she locked up her private papers in her husband’s presidential library, and he called her secrecy a “problem:” “We have just gone through one of the most secretive administrations in our history.” He said Clinton is part of the political gridlock his campaign is trying to break: “Part of the job of the next president is to break the gridlock and to get Democrats and independents and Republicans to start working together to solve these big problems like health care or climate change or energy.”

Republican candidates Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani then joined the bashing. Mitt Romney said Clinton was “tap dancing so much that I thought I turned it to Dancing with the Stars.” Rudy Giuliani was almost impressed: “By the end of the night, she took different positions in front of the same audience. It was pretty amazing. I mean, in politics I’ve never quite seen that before.”

One candidate came to Clinton’s rescue, however: Bill Richardson, who said Democrats should stay positive.

In earlier times, public shaming was an accepted — and effective — deterrent for unsociable behavior. People caught stealing or in adultery, for example, were clapped in stocks in the public square.

Recently, I read where a Texas judge is sentencing convicted criminals to stand on street corners holding signs confessing their crimes. Now, in El Cajon, Calif., the police department is posting on its website the names, photographs, and case details of women arrested for prostitution. (more…)

More good humor from The New Yorker: “The 2008 Campaign Quiz.” Here’s the first question…

1. Two of these quotes are from Mike Gravel. Which one is from Mitt Romney?

(a) “I am prepared to tell you that Americans are getting fatter and dumber. I have no problem saying that.”

(b) “I think we at one point were fish coming out of the slime.”

(c) “Gosh, I love America!”

These days, it’s hard to tell the difference between satire and the real thing.  Take the quiz here.

In “Portrait in Evil: My Story,” a very, very short story, a jilted, hardened narrator that seems to be the fictionalized voice of Karl Rove, tells us:

It’s not easy being the bad guy. The public hates you, and no wonder, fed as they are a steaming stream of media bile that maliciously misrepresents all your plots and machinations. Adults, in turn, poison the minds of the young, who every day joyously play-act your murder. All you have is your minions, who do your bidding, sure, but out of fear and not out of respect or, dare I say it, love.

Another great satire, not only of Rove, but of the Rove image created by so much of the left. 

The Rev. Sam Childers has rescued more than 800 children from child-soldier recruiters and kidnappers, sheltering them in the orphanage he operates in Sudan’s Darfur region. Now the FAA says Childers owes the U.S. government $28,000. The Washington Times reports:

For more than a decade, he has transported needed supplies to operate the orphanage’s power generator in a clearly marked household plastic container. That is until April, when 3 quarts of motor oil, two bottles of diesel treatment and a can of spray lubricant in the crate were confiscated by airline screeners. Mr. Childers, president of World Missions Shekinah Fellowship, apologized in a subsequent letter to U.S. government officials, saying he was not aware the supplies were classified as “hazardous materials” and illegal to ship by commercial plane. The minister thought the matter was resolved, but six months later, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) notified Mr. Childers that he will be fined $28,000 for the transgression.

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So today is Halloween, and in my city, it’s the official “Trick-or-Treat” night. Although my daughter is still an infant, my husband and I have decided we will in future years abstain from the evenings festivities, opting instead to attend our church’s harvest party. But what to do about all those children who will still ring our doorbell tonight?

I had originally planned to turn off the porch light and ignore any such rings, but after reading a piece by Anthony Bradley, I began to rethink my plan. On Monday I purchased a massive bag of Tootsie Rolls and stopped by our local Christian bookstore to pick up some tracts. Tonight I will be handing both items out to any pirates, princesses, or pumpkins that stop by.  How will you be marking the night?

When should state authority trump parental rights?

That’s a question many are asking after officials in Nebraska seized a 6-week-old baby from his home after his parents refused, on religious grounds, to allow the baby to undergo a state-mandated blood test that screens for rare diseases.

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Is America actually winning the war on poverty? The latest data from the Census Bureau seems to say no. Forty years after Lyndon B. Johnson declared the beginning of his Great Society, the poverty rate has barely dropped from 12.8% in 1968 to 12.3% today.

The American Enterprise Institute paints a more promising picture, however, in The Long Term Story Behind the New Numbers. The AEI looked at the big picture, compiling income statistics from the last 40 years and dividing up the data demographically.

The Good News. As employment rises, poverty falls — and between 2005 and 2006, unemployment fell from 5.1 percent to 4.6 percent. Poverty among the elderly has almost disappeared, falling from 25% in 1968 to 9.4% in 2006. Poverty among single moms has also declined by 20% over the past 40 years, and more single women are working. From 2005 to 2006, their unemployment rate fell from 9.4% to 8.5%. African-Americans and Hispanics earned more between 1980 and 2004, something the AEI attributes to welfare reform and “broader economic and social forces.” The Hispanic poverty rate dropped from 30.7% to 20.6% in 2006.

The Bad News. Single moms and African-American men have made progress, but they’re still struggling. The single-mother poverty rate was 36% in 2006, and single-mother families were six times more likely to be poor than married-couple families. African-American men are still about two-and-a-half times more likely than white or Hispanic men to have zero income.

The AEI said liberals will see the numbers as proof that big government works, and conservatives will chalk the change up to education and hard work: “But the larger message is that … substantial (albeit uneven) progress has been made against poverty. That is good news for us all.”

Last night, the entire field of Democratic candidates really let in to Senator Clinton.   

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