SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:55 P.M. ET: 

A BRINKLEY MOMENT – I recall an edition of the old Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC, when David Brinkley announced that he had nothing to report that night because nothing had happened.  Nothing much is happening now as well.  The "reports" we see contain so much padding we could easily produce millions of comfy beds.  Cops found some more inoperative "bombs" today, and, increasingly, this week's big story – suspicious packages in famous mail boxes – looks more and more like show biz by a failed showman.  The fact is that the last two weeks of campaigning is sucking most of the air out of the news.  There is nothing that will shut down journalism faster than a member of Congress trying to keep his job, and pension.  On Tuesday we will hit the one-week mark, and the countdown will begin to what the mighty media is calling the most important midterm election of our time.  They seem to say that every four years.

ELLISON SINKING – FROM ROLL CALL:  Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison has fallen behind Republican Doug Wardlow in the race for Minnesota attorney general, a new poll released this week showed.  Wardlow flipped the race on its head, pacing Ellison by 7 points, 43 percent to 36 percent, according to the Star Tribune/MPR News poll conducted as the discussion surrounding an allegation of domestic abuse levied against Ellison by his ex-girlfriend heightened over the last month.  Ellison has forcefully denied the claim. His ex-wife has also taken the Democratic congressman’s side, saying that even though their relationship ended in a messy divorce, Ellison never struck her and is not the type of person to turn physically violent on a woman.  Roughly one in six of the 800 likely voters surveyed from Oct. 15 through Oct. 17 remained undecided, a considerable bloc this late in the race.  Sometimes there are stories that are morally uplifting.  This is one of them.

THE MARCH OF HYPOCRISY – FROM THE FEDERALIST:   The New York Times published a fictional essay fantasizing about President Trump getting assassinated the same week that explosive devices were sent to prominent political figures across the country.  After explosive devices were sent to prominent Democrats and liberal political figures — Maxine Waters, Joe Biden, George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Brennan, and others — New York Times opinion columnist Charles M. Blow blamed Trump for creating a “toxic environment” that led to these attempted acts of terrorism.  “Trump doesn’t operate on an intellectual plane, but an emotional one, and the emotions he has learned to manipulate in politics are the darker ones,” Blow wrote, adding a summary of Trump’s speech at a rally for Republican Sen. Ted Cruz in Texas during which the president said Democrats want to “destroy American communities.”  “This is the rhetorical backdrop as we await an investigation and answers about who sent bombs to Democrats and the CNN offices,” Blow wrote.  Here’s some of the rhetorical backdrop being painted by The New York Times. In a collection of fictional essays published Tuesday, one author fantasized about a Secret Service agent helping the Russians assassinate Trump.  Once a great newspaper.  No longer.  Of course, they aren't aware of their own hypocrisy.  They are too busy lecturing their readers on morality.

October 25, 2018