Politics

"President Bush's political allies are raising millions of dollars for an election-style campaign to promote private Social Security accounts, as Democrats and Republicans prepare for what they predict will be the most expensive and extensive public policy debate since the 1993 fight over the Clinton administration's failed health care plan," reports Jim VandeHei.

The 2004 presidential race was the most expensive in history. While Republicans did outspend Democrats -- $1.14 billion to $1.08 billion -- the difference wasn't that much. "Despite their fundraising success, Democrats simply did not spend their money as effectively as Bush," the Washington Post's Thomas Edsall and James Grimaldi report.

In Kuwait, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was asked why soldiers "had to dig through landfills to find scrap metal to up-armor vehicles." The soldier who asked the question discussed it beforehand with an embedded reporter. In an email to colleagues at the Chattanooga Times Free Press, reporter Lee Pitts explained, "I was told yesterday that only soldiers could ask questions so I brought two of them along with me.

"When Jon Stewart 'busted' Spin Alley [the post-debate media feeding frenzy where campaign officials talk up their candidates for journalists] for in his famous confrontation with the Crossfire people (the most downloaded video clip ever, at the time) he was hitting on a practice that had grown more and more disreputable. As a designated spot for the practice of spin, the Alley only fell from legitimacy when an alternative practice rose up and called out to conscience of the press.