In the Oscar-nominated documentary Street Fight, which follows the Newark mayoral race of 2003, there's a scene where unassailably likable reform-minded challenger Cory Booker preps for a debate against legendarily corrupt, machine incumbent Sharpe James. Booker, hesitant to use any information he can't back up, is worrying over the specifics of a factoid when a consultant cuts in with a little political realism. "In a debate you can say anything and people will think it's true," she says.

Well, that may have been how things went down in the bronze age of 2003, but these days, some rigorously unbiased soul is always watching. Wrongs are righted (with a nice soundtrack) in this montage of bits from last Sunday's debate between New Jersey Senate candidates Robert Menendez (D) and Tom Kean Jr. (R).

[Perfectly Wrong]

The winner of our "Who Will Bail Bilge From the USS Reynolds" contest has come forward. Capital Confidential confirms our initial assertion: George Pataki will stand with anyone. The governor appeared with beleaguered Tom Reynolds, County Executive Joel Giambra, and Mayor Byron Brown in Buffalo this very afternoon "to provide briefing on the coordinated response to the snow storm." We congratulate Messrs. Pataki and Reynolds. Voters are sure to be impressed by local pols taking a strong, unified position on contentious issues such as snow removal. (And what does a congressman have to do with that? Perhaps Michael Brown has the answers.)

In other chilling news, both John "There's a Little Black Spot on the Sun Today" Faso and Eliot "Every Little Thing He Does Is Magic" Spitzer both spent a snowed-in night in Buffalo. Faso had to cancel appearances today in Rochester and Syracuse and instead is plowing his way to Watertown. Spitzer bedded down in the airport but is now home cupping a hot toddy and chuckling.

Reynolds Makes an Appearance [Capital Confidential]
The Snow in Buffalo [Empire Zone]

She's back in the papers! Back like a bolt of lightning, like a heart-attack, like … well, like an apparently unsuccessful Westchester district attorney. Today's Times has a piece undercutting Pirro's biggest issue (other than My Sufferings Are the Sufferings of All Mankind). The story asserts Pirro's math is a little fuzzy regarding the 111 sex-crimes convictions she claims to have made while in office. Far from being the iron fist of the law, Pirro was, in fact, unable to match the conviction records of district attorneys in nearby counties. This news comes two days before her first debate with Andrew Cuomo. Let's hear it for the vast political-media conspiracy!

In Sex Arrests Hailed by Pirro, Little Jail Time [NYT]

The race in the upstate Twentieth Congressional District between Republican John Sweeney and Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand has already produced two classic ads — Gillibrand's homage to Good Night, and Good Luck's sense of "decency" and Sweeney's deployment of Iraq-war mom Kathy Brown.

A month ago, the race was a twenty-point romp for Sweeney, a well-insulated four-term incumbent in what used to be a "Safe Republican" stretch of the Hudson Valley. But that's changed as Gillibrand has succeeded in tying Sweeney to the Party of Foley.

In a new ad, Gillibrand seeks to solidify the Sweeney-Foley connection. It alludes to a frat party Sweeney attended at Schenectady's Union College in April, where he was photographed looking at least a couple too many Milwaukee's Bests in while locked in an arm-on-shoulder 'I love you, man' jock hug with various ox boys. The campus newspaper reported that Sweeney seemed drunk, which he denied. But even if the spot is kind of a Mad TV reject reel, it takes realist guts to use young people in an ad that suggests your opponent shares a creepy streak with a guy who actually used young people.

Reports from the Spitzer-Faso debate are focusing on Faso's go-for-broke aggro style — attacking Spitzer, the grandstanding blowhard; his fear of treating unions the way he treats corporations; his daddy's money; his mother's combat boots, etc. And we applaud both Faso's try at making a little late-in-the-game hay and the news folks' valiant attempt to reconstitute it as something worth sitting through. But sadly, Faso never came through with a rhetorical Hail Mary.

What we instead got was a remix of their first debate, as if chopped and screwed by a cough-syrup-sipping Houston hip-hop D.J. — the content didn't change, it was just a little hazier, duller, somewhat meaner, and a lot darker (literally, thanks to Buffalo host station WNED's dyspeptically public-access-worthy lighting).

Faso leavened his feints of rage with flourishes of smarm, adding a get-a-load-of-this-joker smirk to his digs on Spitzer, as if he were debating Barney Fife. His main rip went like this: Alan Hevesi, Alan Hevesi, Alan Hevesi, you totally wanna make out with Alan Hevesi. He repeated the scandal-tweaked yet little-known comptroller's name at least five times. He also twice rewound to an allegation from the first debate that Spitzer got a plane ride from an out-of-state Indian tribe. He trotted out these leftovers with the studied gusto of a summer-stock actor who can't admit he's a night shy of Labor Day. Overripe though they were, the "jabs" got Spitzer spitting tacks. He harrumphed, guffawed, and a couple of times turned a full 90 degrees to give Faso a look of blazing blue-eyed decimation that must reduce folks in the attorney general's office to little puddles of fear. (The quasarlike pulse of that forehead — it's so intense!)

Yet, by the hour's end, the event's uneventyness seemed to weigh on both men, especially the hard-charging challenger. Last time out, Faso clamored for more debates, and pundits agreed that Spitzer was adopting a rose-garden strategy before he'd even received a vote. Tonight, when we got to the predictable moment when Faso should have clamored for more holy screen time with Saint Eliot he offered not a peep of protest.

Who can blame him? Short of producing IMs between Spitzer and local Boy Scouts that say "I AM SOOOO HORNY FOR BIG TAX HIKES," there's nothing left Faso can do.

Faso Jabs Sharply at Spitzer, Who Assails 'Angry' Tone [NYT]

• Faso busts out B-List meanness in final debate with Spitzer .[NYT]
• In case you weren't fact-checking at home... [NYT]
• Mark Warner pulls out of the '08 race; Republicans sensing a Hillary walk, dance in the streets. [NYDN]
• Alan Hevesi's wife's driver to be making a stop at the D.A.'s house. [Albany Times Union]
• Page-program overseer narks out the people who stuck him with lousy page-overseeing job. [NYP]
• Experts expecting nothing but bruising good times at Cuomo-Pirro debate. [NYDN]
• It's McCain and Kissinger versus Clinton and Obama in New Jersey. Apparently, they're also having a Senate race there. [NYT]

Ignore official documents:
Joe Negron is not Mark Foley.

An October day that passes without a little falling Foley-age is not a day worth enduring, and today, thanks to the New Republic's the Plank, there is fresh Foley news. Apparently, the deposed Florida congressman wanted to preemptively auto-depose himself two years ago. A man of broad ambition, Foley was planning on leaving the House to become a lobbyist but was dissuaded by a Republican administration fearful of losing the House.

(Note: Because we respect your intelligence, we didn't go for the joke about how being a lobbyist is the second sickest thing you can do in D.C. after sending dirty IMs to teenagers. Anyway, moving on …)

It's somewhat odd that GOP higher-ups didn't consider simply ratting Foley out in the summer of 2005, looking like good cops on the beat, and finding another patsy to take his place. Any local hardware-store owner or mattress inspector would have sufficed in rosy red West Florida.

The GOP is running Florida state representative Joe Negron in Foley's besmirched place. Seems like a fine specimen. Married, goes to church, breeds. For the regular guy in you, he plays golf and shoots the occasional game of hoops, For the PBS-me-ASAP in you, he lists "courthouse architecture" as a personal interest. (Not sure if he restores them or just likes looking at them. Anybody?)

As pure as Negron's background may be, his victory is all but impossible unless Floridians vote in spite of an overwhelming sense of revulsion. Foley may not be in the race, but he's still on the ballot. Negron entered the race after ballots were printed, so Floridians looking to elect him will technically be voting for the disgraced Foley. The only way this seemingly perfectly okay Negron fellow has any chance is to go around Palm Beach telling people to "vote Foley." Hope he has an armored car.

How Rove Twisted Foley's Arm [TNR's The Plank]

As you can see from the photo that accompanies the article, Hillary has firmly mastered the hand gesture that signifies, "Here, inside this space between my hands, that's where the truth is." One can imagine her and Bill workshopping that one deep into the night — "Okay, honey. Yeah, that's about it — put those little paws about six inches apart. Now make the Truth Face. Ya got it! Time to watch Cheers."

In meeting with the editorial board, Hillary served up a piping-hot plate of The Way It Is.

"I believe that if President Bush woke up tomorrow and said that he would substitute Jim Baker or Colin Powell or Brent Scowcroft or somebody who actually knows how to do things in the real world for [Donald] Rumsfeld, I think the entire world would say 'OK, you've got another chance, we want to listen to you again.'"

She took the words right out of the world's mouth. All those pro–Jim Baker demonstrators teeming through the streets of Cairo and Paris and Beijing — finally, they have a voice. The Scowcroft wing of the German Green Party, they might get a little something out of this too. When nuanced realism replaces blinkered stay-the-course-ism, everybody maybe sorta wins. Hillary's got the whole world in her hands.

Hil: We've Got 90 Days [NYDN]
Sen. Hillary Clinton: Where I Stand on Iraq [NYDN]

Democrats who fear a Hillary run for the White House can hang their burdened heads even lower on this gray day — her path to nomination just got a whole lot wider.

After spending a pleasant weekend with his family, former Virginia governor Mark Warner has decided not to run for president in 2008. Though he was only polling in single digits, Warner was heralded as the great-southern-centrist-white hope among Democrats looking for a not-Hillary who could connect with those elusive "folks" who enjoy "NASCAR" and "Wal-Mart."

Warner, a co-founder of Nextel, was also embraced by some tech-savvy liberals. At the end of August, he was the first politician to govern in a virtual world, leading a "town-hall meeting" in Second Life, a 3D online fantasy world. Bloggers who find this act to be the equivalent of King's "I Have a Dream" speech can still purchase "Warner for President" bumper stickers and Mark Warner ringer Ts at Demstore.com. Pour some out.

Warner Won't Run For Presidency in '08 [WP]

"I got so much action my name should be a verb," Big Daddy Kane once rapped. That eighties hip-hop great (whose nom de flow, by the way, stood for King Asiatic Nobody's Equal) never got to be a different part of speech. That honor, instead, has been bestowed upon incumbent state comptroller Alan Hevesi, a man surrounded by much unwanted attention of late.

The Urban Dictionary, that YouTube of the common tongue, has added this new definition to its peer-built lexicon of up-to-the-minute slang

When it comes to being down, legendary hip-hop MCs just can't touch hustlin' comptrollers, especially ones who get their p.i.m.p. on like our boy A-Hev. And yet, bad and down as Alan is, it is possible that this neologism is less an authentic representation of contemporary slang than the work of those who want to take him down (in the polls, of course). The entry was created by Urban Elephants (no relation to the dictionary), a blog for New York City–based Republicans.

The Chris Callaghan campaign, often championed by Urban Elephant, denied creating the coinage. "We did not have involvement in that in any way," campaign spokesman John Callaghan told Early and Often. "Though we do believe it to be completely accurate."

Wednesday night, not long after Yankees' pitcher Cory Lidle and another person died when their plane crashed into an Upper East Side building, Governor George Pataki issued a statement praising emergency responders for a job well done.

If only Pataki responded so quickly and thoroughly. It took today's tragedy, more than five years after planes destroyed the World Trade Center, to prompt the governor to request that the FAA keep private aircraft from flying uncharted over the city. "New York's airspace should enjoy the same kind of protections, as our Nation's Capital [sic]," he declared in a statement issued Wednesday night.

Uh, yeah. Mayor Bloomberg, a licensed pilot himself, presumably knew the shaky rules. The city can never be perfectly protected from airborne attack, of course: Terrorists are unlikely to file honest flight plans, and the nation's air-traffic-control system is dangerously overloaded. But Lidle, who in life was primarily a starting pitcher but also earned two saves out of the bullpen, may end up making his biggest save with his sad ending.

Read Gov. Pataki's statement.

— Chris Smith

• Hillary explains her Iraq position, makes everything all better. [NYDN]
• With daily good-deed quota lagging, Spitzer goes after nasty power plant. [AP via amNY]
• Crazy old lady with wacky "new world order" conspiracy theory steals show at Faso fund-raiser. [NYT]
• McCain gets harsh on Hillary for Clinton-era North Korea policy. Hillary responds, "Honey, I wasn't even the damn room." [Newsday]
• A tentacle of the Foley scandal gently caresses another upstate race. [Times Herald Record]
• A Star Is Born: Spitzer, the Early Years. [NYT]
• A fun game for the whole family: "Find Joe in Row E." [NYT]
• Schumer and Cuomo field questions on Jeanine Pirro with "no comment," playful smirk. [NY1]

Three decades ago, it was Richard Nixon's eighteen and a half minutes — the empty stretch of tape through which a presidency fell, dragging a disillusioned nation with it. Today, technological advances mean longer spans of political chicanery.

As the dogged GOP blogger Urban Elephants reports, Republican state-comptroller candidate J. Christopher Callaghan today accused his opponent, incumbent Alan Hevesi, of ordering a state employee to erase the hard drive of a computer Hevesi had loaned out to family members. In a letter to the State Ethics Commission, Callaghan said he had called Hevesi's fraud hotline on October 4 to report the unauthorized use of a state laptop. After his call, the hard drive was "scrubbed clean."

"It has been suggested that the recent complaints I've made about Mr. Hevesi to your office, to that of the Albany County District Attorney, and to that of the New York State Board of Elections are politically motivated and timed to damage my opponent's chances of reelection. That's very true but also irrelevant," Callaghan wrote.

Callaghan's probing questions took a sharper tone in a huffy press release also issued today: "It appears that the Comptroller, instead of looking into the matter I had called his hotline to report, may have skipped to the last step and simply eliminated the evidence. What are they trying to hide, and did they force an unsuspecting civil servant to hide it? This is a legitimate question for the Ethics Commission, I believe."

What was on that laptop? A book report? Photos of the family dog? A Hevesi family playlist? The public has a right to know. This state needs people like Chris Callaghan, who places petty calls to fraud hotlines and admits that his actions are politically motivated and timed to damage Hevesi's chance of reelection.

Callaghan Press Release: Hevesi Hard Drive Wiped Clean [Empire Newswire]
Callaghan's Letter to the State Ethics Commission [Empire Newswire]

Tom Reynolds's sinking ship has a high-profile jumper. John McCain abandoned an October 20 Reynolds rally (and black-tie Erie County GOP dinner) and will be replaced by — cue scary Halloween music — Karl Rove. Boo!

Beloved war hero and leading candidate for president in 2008 out (Graham Greene's The Quiet American with a sweet 7 a.m. tee-time smile), Machiavellian schemer and character assassin in.

Of course, the widening maelstrom of the Foley-Reynolds scandal may soon force Rove to follow McCain's lead and slink over the side as well, begging the question: Is there anyone left on USS Reynolds who'll hoist high the slop bucket and keep bailing? George Pataki will pretty much play any room not occupied by Jeanine Pirro. "Miracle" Mike Bloomberg likes a challenge. You could go for seasonal shock value: a Michael Brown–Tom Delay double bill? The scheduling won't be an issue. How about Bill Weld? Or KT McFarland! Fortunately, upstate Republicans aren't all that choosy.

McCain Bails Out as Local Speaker; Rove to Pinch Hit [Buffalo News]

Rep. Christopher Shays believes the House Government Reform
Committee can beat you up.Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

This year, Farrell has mounted an even heartier campaign, tying Shays to the Iraq War, which he supported — though he did call for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation last week. Farrell is up 46-41, but it's still a close enough race to call on the party's prime-time faces. So last week, Democratic inspiration Teddy Kennedy appeared at Farrell's side.

Keep in mind that Farrell (like many Democrats) wants House speaker Dennis Hastert to resign and wants Shays to return any funds raised by the tainted Foley. A tired, irritable Shays fought back with this: "I know the speaker didn't go over a bridge and leave a young person in the water, and then have a press conference the next day."

Can we get a "Oh, no, you didn't!" from the gallery? Perhaps a "You did not just go there"?

Shays was, of course, referring to Chappaquiddick, the 1969 incident in which Kennedy's car ran off a Massachusetts bridge, killing his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, and burying Kennedy's chances of reviving his family's presidential legacy.

When you think about it that way, Shays is right. Dennis Hastert and Ted Kennedy have absolutely nothing in common.

Shays Hits Hard in Page Scandal [Hartford Courant]

For decades, the Democratic party and its fellow travelers have complained they were the victims of vicious, unfounded attacks at the hands of a vast, shadowy, well-funded Republican hate machine. They've seen their candidates compared to terrorists, they've nominated war heroes who are later denounced as cowards, they've been called friends of criminals, enemies of family, flag soilers, and God besmirchers. All the while, sitting idly by, mumbling sheepishly into their elite East Coast lattes: "Man, those Republicans got it goin' on."

With the Foley scandal, the Democrats have a chance to take a whack at one of the sweetest hanging curve balls ever wafted across the slime-caked plate. It's time to give this whole politics-of-personal-destruction thing a ride.

Jack Davis, the self-made millionaire gunning for Tom Reynolds's congressional seat, has released his first ad since Le Affaire Foley, an ever-widening debacle in which upstate representative Reynolds plays a major supporting role as the Man Who Knew Too Much, Did Too Little, and Blamed It All on His Boss.

Pitch. Swing. Whiff. It would seem the target for this ad is people who plan to vote but consume no news. All the information that blurs by in an easy-to-follow flurry of headlines is stuff anyone who's walked past a radio in the last two weeks already knows — that Reynolds falsely claimed not to know about Foley's e-mails, that he urged him to seek reelection, that as RNCC head he took Foley's contributions to fund Republican House races. Terrible stuff, indeed, but a feast of filth we've already savored and digested. Set against Reynolds's jarring and creepy but memorably "emo," straight-talking mea culpa that ran last week, it's a waste of Davis's money. He paid for the same Happy Meal twice.

Hey, David ad people — would it really have been such a hassle to track down a picture of Foley and Reynolds smugly shaking hands and superimpose it over a frolicking young boy? Would it have put you out that much to reenact a smutty IM being sent? Or to soft-focus on a pile of tainted campaign cash or, better yet, the face of a worried mother sending her teenage son off to D.C. for his first summer internship? C'mon fellas, get in the game. There's a lot up for grabs here. It's man time! Well, actually, it's 16-year-old boy time. But anyway, you get the idea.

Davis on Air [The Daily Politics]

This week's issue of New York Magazine examines some of the country's most contentious races in "The Mud Report." In compiling some exemplary campaign spots from these exciting contests, we've learned to translate the ad idioms that vary from state to state. And we found that mischaracterizations, overreaching rhetoric, and folksy hokum are essential ingredients of every American campaign.

Turning our attention to Montana, we find Democrat John Tester working on similar empathies in hope of unseating Senator Conrad Burns. This ad highlights Burns's suggestion that outsourcing would allow working moms to stay at home with their kids.

Anti-mom, anti-kid. These Republicans have got to go. But who will replace them? Let's hope not an Al Qaeda–loving loon like Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown, who's gunning for the Senate seat of staunchly pro-America incumbent Mike Dewine.

No matter who is in power, it looks like the Senate is doomed. So how are things in the House?

Lastly, it isn't always an opponent that can hobble your candidacy. Sometimes a seemingly innocuous ad can come back to haunt you. Here's all the proof you need that Indiana Republican representative John Hostettler is little more than a puppet of the mighty "emergency-band radio" lobby. Will Hoosiers stand for another two years of having their best interests set aside while Big Emergency-Band Radio holds the state hostage? Democratic challenger Brad Ellsworth hopes not.

• Hillary's mom gets the upstairs bedroom. [NYDN]
• Behind the comptroller: A heart-nuzzling history of Alan "If the Slipper Fits" Hevesi. [Newsday]
• Cuomo agrees to debate Pirro twice, "but only if she talks the whole time and I don't have to show up." [NYT]
• At Faso event, Giuliani warns that massive Spitzer tax hikes will doom us to a future of foie gras school lunches, free plastic surgery, and glassy smooth driving experiences. [NYS]
• Seeking cash, Pirro turns to two titans of American Democracy, Dan Quayle and the Swift Boat guy. [NYDN]
• Spitzer offers glimpse of future administration with list of top aides, including finance chief Spiderman, education czar Wonder Woman, and energy secretary the Green Lantern. Observers surprised Hawk and Apache were shut out of major appointments. [NYS]
• Lamont now only in race so he has an excuse to "blow a little cash and get out of the house now and again." [Hartford Courant]

In this corner, Bob Adams, aka Connecticut Bob(Courtesy Bob Adams)

Yesterday, one of our own, a blogger named Connecticut Bob, completely flipped the script and busted a guerrilla journalistic cap in the ass of a Connecticut Blob named Joe Lieberman. Bob not only gets right up in a sitting U.S. Senator's face and — boo-ya! — catches him in a lie (Lieberman denied calling the Foley mess a partisan frenzy), but fluidly strings together the evidence to back it up and gets it online with lightning speed. It's an amazing example of "People Powered Media" getting a jump on the MSM. One MSM-er even had the guts to admit it, though the rest of the green-visor-wearing fossils in the print graveyard failed to rattle even a bone of acknowledgment.

They're scared, of course. And for good reason: Rarely has a guy recording his interview on a camera-phone broken down a major politician so effortlessly. Sure, it was a pretty minor lie. And, okay, it's hard to see how it could impede Lieberman's lead (50-40 against Ned Lamont as of Oct. 5). And, yes, even if it did, making Joe Lieberman look like a fool isn't exactly a Watergate-level scoop.

We don't know Connecticut Bob, but we assume Friday was a big day for him. Maybe he puffed up his chest and went out for a drink. He met his pals at Bloggies, the packed house yelled "Bob!" and the drinks flowed, uh, liberally, deep into the night. Bloggers in Hammel On Trial T-shirts high-fived bloggers in Bruce Cochburn T-shirts. And a girl came in. But seemed like she was looking for another place, so she left. Which is okay. Because when you're feeling that great, when you're riding that high, who needs the pressure? Not Connecticut Bob, the man who made your laptop shake.

Meet Connecticut Bob.

Republicans are hoping that North Korea's nuke test will divert attention from the Mark Foley scandal and move it right back into a comfortable campaign theme: the ever-present threat of total obliteration. Call it the politics of "Hope You Don't Die in a Massive Blast of Radiation."

If a recent Newsweek poll is any indication, the Republicans should be sending Kim Jong Il thank-you notes. Bush's approval rating is 33 percent (a record low for his presidency), and 53 percent of Americans want to see a Democratic Congress in November. What could be better for the GOP than a threat to national security?

Some Washington insiders claim Bush blew it on North Korea, but New York's own Democratic senator Chuck "I Love Sundays" Schumer helped Republicans shift the agenda. Schumer called Bush's response to the test "sober, somber, appropriate" and then went back to his familiar chorus of port-security funding. What a waste of a good dig.

In Jeanine Pirro's new ad, all that's missing is the Joan of Arc costume and the CGI flames. In just 30 seconds, she effortlessly transitions from victim to avenger — call it a Pirro-uette.

A couple of Pirro's claims are sketchy — the Feds have not commented on the status of their ongoing investigation, and the notion of Andrew Cuomo offering "amnesty to criminals" is not accurate. But as the Real World-esque spot goes, this is Daytime Emmy material. Pirro won't apologize for anything; in fact, it's you the viewer who should be apologizing for even thinking about counting her out.

That said, the massive stack of paperwork behind her is kind of daunting. Hope that isn't DNA evidence she never found time to look over while she was off bugging the family boat.

• Crappy pen pal Al Sharpton writes Lieberman an "open letter" accusing him of — wait for it — race baiting! [NYDN]
• Pirro on probe: This is way, way worse than my alien abduction. [amNY]
• Guy who (allegedly) covered up pedophile scandal cancels appearance at (alleged) fund-raiser for guy who (allegedly) strangled his girlfriend. [Newsday]
• At the Columbus Day parade, Cuomo gets Clinton, Pirro gets cops. [NYS]
• Hevesi won't set time for comptroller's debate, citing "a ton of comptrolling I need to get done." [NYDN]
• Ever smooth, Hill and Bill cook up slick non-position on same-sex marriage. [NYP]
• Hillary and Chuck go ballistic over North Korean bomb tests. [NY1]

One of the odder scenes, among many, at today's Columbus Day parade on Fifth Avenue: the dozen or so Jeanine Pirro campaign workers wearing "Vote for Pirro" T-shirts in the exact style of Napoleon Dynamite's "Vote for Pedro" T-shirts. Give her points for a sense of humor, but does the embattled Republican state attorney general really want to be identifying herself with a monosyllabic Mexican teen, even one who scores an unlikely win in the election for student-council president? Pirro grinned when asked if she's a fan of the movie. "Well, I don't know if I'm part of the cult," she said, standing on the corner of 44th Street and clutching a cup of deli coffee. "But the movie appeals to a lot of people!" Maybe that's the way she can make the scandals go away: Some sweet dance moves.

— Chris Smith

Unless he finds Osama hiding in his toolshed sometime before November 7, representative Tom Reynolds may have to get a real job. Reynolds and challenger Jack Davis were brawling within the margin of error on September 28, but a new Zogby poll shows Reynolds trailing by fifteen.

We bet Mrs. Hevesi gets whatever sharpener she wants.Courtesy of Staples Inc.

For his part, Republican Christopher Callaghan is stingy with his spouse. As Saratoga County Treasurer, Callaghan once denied his wife, who worked in the county clerk's office, an electric pencil sharpener. "I think she may have eventually got one," Callaghan conceded, "but the first answer she got was no."

Contrast this degree of asceticism with incumbent comptroller and inveterate wife spoiler Alan Hevesi, who famously hooked up his old lady with a taxpayer-funded chauffeur to the tune of about 5,000 electric pencil sharpeners. (Assuming Mrs. Callaghan had her eye on the X-ACTO Helix 1900, retailing for $15.99 at Staples.)

It's hard to see how this bodes well for a Callaghan administration in Albany. Treat your wife anyway you want, bub, but don't deny an office drone an automatic pencil sharpener. What's next, a paper-clip-tracking program?

GOP Pins Hopes on Callaghan [NYDN]

"Looking back, more should've been done, and for that I am sorry." So ends Tom Reynolds's first post-Foley ad, which began running in his Buffalo district over the weekend. Though it's no "Morning in America," it is the latest in a new genre of campaign spot: Real World confessional.

In 59 seconds, Reynolds goes from resolute to wronged to confused to contrite, playing with facts and blaming his Housemates, all to mealy unsympathetic effect. Don Sherwood, a Pennsylvania congressman embroiled in his own sex scandal, released one exactly like Reynolds's last week.

The genre has roots in Nixon's "Checkers" speech. But there's no lovable dog or devoted wife in the frame to humanize Reynolds, just some liberally applied tanning spray and the truth-extracting eye of the camera. If Bill Clinton had given this a throw during Monica, he would have had a 400 percent approval rating. A nasally backbencher from Buffalo, not so much.

• Kirk Fordham going as a rat for Halloween. [NYT]
• Tom Reynolds still workshopping story, lies. [Buffalo News]
• Pending gig as Wal-Mart greeter means Denny Hastert can't honor commitment to attend Bloomberg's big GOP fundraiser. [NYP]
• Spitzer's second banana hard to hear through muzzle. [NYS]
• Clinton to Bon Jovi: Take my hand; we'll make it I swear. [NYP]
• Spitzer's vow of selflessness allows Faso to call him a spoiled rich kid. [NY1]
• The farther you get from ground zero, the more Rudy is "9/11 Man". [NYT]
• Two hospitalized after New Jersey Senate debate. [NYT]
• But even in Jersey, brutal attacks will only get you so far. [AP]
• Hillary parachutes into another electoral war zone. [Hartford Courant]

Stephen Colbert removes his face.Photograph by Naomi Harris

Crib Sheet: The Midterm Elections.

Unbuilding Karl Rove.

Jim McGreevey is not David Letterman's plaything.

Dragging Tom Reynolds through Mark Foley's mud, gently.

Your faithful Ferrer, the widows' and orphans' friend.