links for 2010-10-25

An aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid repeatedly lied to federal immigration and FBI agents and submitted false federal documents to the Department of Homeland Security to cover up her illegal seven-year marriage to a Lebanese national who was the subject of an Oklahoma City Joint Terror Task Force investigation, FoxNews.com has learned.
++++++
An October surprise?

Read it all

Is it cutting-edge voter mobilization, or just a bit creepy?

The California Democratic Party unveiled a new tool in its kit of get-out-the-vote operations Monday: a first-of-its-kind Facebook application that sifts through a user’s friends list, matches it with the friends’ party registrations and voting histories and pops out a list people who vote Democratic but don’t regularly vote.

It then encourages users to tell their non-voting friends to cast a ballot Nov. 2.
+++++
Creepy – yes it is

For all of the ink and airtime devoted to criticizing Republican Meg Whitman's stock deals, she's not the only top-of-the-ticket candidate who benefited from early access to initial public offerings, or IPOs.

At least twice during her political career, U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer turned quick profits on IPOs that were unavailable to the general public, records and published reports show [PDF]. The transactions, which were made public in 1994 and 2000, allowed her exclusive access to several lucrative investments.
++++++
Boxer tries to profit from everything she does

The list of the top 25 papers by weekday circulation, for April through September 2010 and 2009, is below. Circulation figures are followed by last year’s figures and the percent difference:

WALL STREET JOURNAL 2,061,142 … 2,024,269 … 1.82%
USA TODAY 1,830,594 … 1,900,116 … -3.66%
NEW YORK TIMES 876,638 … 927,851 … -5.52%
LOS ANGELES TIMES 600,449 … 657,467 … -8.67%
WASHINGTON POST 545,345 … 582,844 … -6.43%
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS 512,520 … 544,167 … -5.82%
NEW YORK POST 501,501 … 508,042 … -1.29%
++++++
Read it all
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS 477,592 N/A
CHICAGO TRIBUNE 441,508 … 465,892 … -5.23%
HOUSTON CHRONICLE 343,952 … 384,437 … -10.53%
PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER 342,361 … 361,481 … -5.29%

The number was 600,449 for the six months ended Sept. 30, an 8.7 percent drop from a year earlier. Sunday circulation was 900,000 901,119 down 8 8.4 percent. At least the percentage drops were not in the double digits, as happened once more with the SF Chronicle. That paper reported an 11.2 percent drop, which brings its circulation down to a stunningly low 223,549
++++++
Read more here: http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/25/newspaper-circulation-falls-broadly-but-at-slower-pace/

But today the conventional wisdom about Palin is being revised again, nowhere more so than within the ranks of professional Republicans. Among two dozen senior strategists and operatives with whom I’ve spoken in recent days—including many of those responsible for securing the nomination for the party’s last three standard-bearers—there is a growing consensus that Palin is running or setting herself up to run. All agreed that her entry would radically and fundamentally transform the race. Most averred that if she steps into the fray, she stands a reasonable chance of claiming the Republican prize. Indeed, more than one argued that she is already the de facto front-runner.
++++++
Read it all