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- The Minnesota state Canvassing Board voted unanimously to ask county officials to identify and count improperly rejected ballots, giving a boost to the Al Franken campaign. Meanwhile, Norm Coleman will "ask the state Supreme Court to halt any counting of rejected absentee ballots from the U.S. Senate election until the justices can rule on the campaign's request that they order counties to follow a standard procedure in identifying wrongfully rejected ballots."
- The Forth Worth Star-Telegram reports that former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk is in the running to be secretary of transportation in the Obama administration and Sam Stein writes that blue dog Rep. Sanford Bishop is being considered for agriculture secretary.
- Last night the top strategists for the Obama and McCain presidential campaigns met at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard for a post-election autopsy moderated by Gwen Ifill. Among the tidbits of information were the admission by David Plouffe that if Florida had not been stripped of its delegates for holding an early primary, the primary race would have been much different and the acknowledgment by Rick Davis that the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate was based solely on political calculation. Unsurprising, but refreshing to hear it acknowledged by the campaign.
- Congress has applied the Saxbe fix, reducing the salary for Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton to avoid a Constitutional fight, and contra to yesterday's reports, Dick Lugar has said that Bill Clinton will not be called to testify at the confirmation hearing, saying that the agenda is in the hands of incoming Foreign Relations Committee chair John Kerry.
- The Washington Post has a convincing front pager on the distance between Barack Obama and Rod Blagojevich: "Long before federal prosecutors charged Blagojevich with bribery this week, Obama had worked to distance himself from his home-state governor. The two men have not talked for more than a year, colleagues said, save for a requisite handshake at a funeral or public event. Blagojevich rarely campaigned for Obama and never stumped with him." Meanwhile, The Chicago Sun-Times asks whether Rahm Emanuel is the Obama adviser referred to but not identified on the tape recording where Blagojevich asks what the quid pro quo is for appointing Valerie Jarrett to Obama's Senate seat.
- In Vanity Fair, Joseph Stiglitz identifies the five key decisions since the Reagan administration that led to the financial crisis in and argues for a structured chapter 11 bankruptcy claim for the big three automakers in the Financial Times.
- Pro Publica has "Bush by the Numbers," and for the most part, they're not pretty. My favorite: the number of FOIA requests increased by a factor of ten since 2000 while the number of officers assigned to processing the requests decreased by 11.
--Mori Dinauer
