National

Sen. Bernie Sanders “is uninterested in going through the motions of typical debate practice,” Politico reports.

“While CNN is billing the event as a showdown, Sanders’ team sees the first Democratic debate as a chance to introduce a fairly niche candidate to a national audience. So his team intends to let him do what he’s been doing. Far from preparing lines to deploy against Clinton — let alone O’Malley, Lincoln Chafee, or Jim Webb — Sanders plans to dish policy details, learned through a handful of briefings with experts brought in by his campaign.”

I think that would be a good thing. A detailed filled debate. No personal attacks. Quite a contrast to the GOP.

Josh Marshall makes an important point.

The only thing amazing about this is how it took a momentary remark by McCarthy to suddenly make what everyone knows into an acceptable point of public discussion: namely, that the Benghazi Committee was not only a transparently political exercise (that's hardly unprecedented) but just a complete crock by every definition. Without McCarthy's clumsy remark, DC's establishment press apparently didn't realize this was the case or didn't think it was an acceptable point of discussion. That's amazing.

Your "liberal media" everybody... Fair and balanced!

THE ERA OF BIPARTISAN POLITICS IS OVER

On the bright side, if anyone can inform Coons, Carper, and Carney that they may now drop their lapdog devotion to fraudulent bipartisanship, it is Celia.

Not that it was much of a secret, since she attended the Jamboree in Sussex County (it is pretty rare for upstate politicians to do that unless you are running for something) and it has been rumored that she would run for some time. But now there is official paperwork. The News Journal says this will shake up the Lt. Governor race. I say it ends it. But DD, there are now six candidates!?! How can you say it is over? Well.....

Nate Cohn: “Vice President Joe Biden has less support in the polls than Bernie Sanders and hasn’t raised a single dollar for a presidential campaign. Yet if Mr. Biden does decide to seek the presidency, he will pose a greater challenge to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.” I agree. Sanders draws big crowds, and he polls well in New Hampshire, a state he might win. But Sanders is polling behind Biden in every later contest (see polling inside). Biden seems to have the better electability argument on his side, at least in Florida (see polling inside).

Early Saturday evening, an 11 year-old boy from Jefferson County, Tennessee, took his father’s unlocked shotgun and shot and killed, with premeditation, his 8 year-old neighbor, McKayla Dyer, from inside his house – because she wouldn’t show him her puppy. According to the local news station WKRN-TV (video below), the boy had a history of bullying the little girl. Her mother, Latasha Dyer said: “He was making fun of her, calling her names — just being mean to her…I had to go the principal about him, and he quit for a while, and then all of a sudden yesterday he shot her.” The boy, whose name is being withheld by authorities, has been charged with first degree murder, but a judge is to decide in the coming days whether or not to transfer the case to adult court.

We need to stop calling these incidents accidents.

The New York Times reports today that Hillary Clinton is organizing “leadership councils” in every state, comprised of dozens of top Democratic state officials and super-delegates to the nominating convention…

First it was the Charm Offensive with Saturday Night Live. Followed up by a Town Hall aired live on NBC and MSNBC. Where she was fiesty, on the attack and compassionate and sweet at the same time. And now she is out with a pretty great ad.

I know Delaware Online.com comment sections are cesspools of idiocy and ignorance, but this current top comment wins the day on this article about the threats of violence to local colleges and universities:

[this is] "Why firearm NO CARRY zones are becoming the MOST DANGEROUS public spaces."

Um, not really.

According to Politico, it was Joe Biden himself who first talked to Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, “painting a tragic portrait of a dying son, Beau’s face partially paralyzed, sitting his father down and trying to make him promise to run for president because ‘the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.'”

“It was no coincidence that the preliminary pieces around a prospective campaign started moving right after that column. People read Dowd and started reaching out, those around the vice president would say by way of defensive explanation. He was just answering the phone and listening. But in truth, Biden had effectively placed an ad in The New York Times, asking them to call.”

First, I am not sure if that is more or less crass than if someone else relayed the story or if the Vice President himself did it. Second, I do not believe that exact quote ever escaped the mouth of Beau Biden. I could see "Dad, you should run. You must run." But not "The White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values." I mean, really? When this story first came out back in August, I chucked that quote up to a hyperbolic fabrication or paraphrase on the part of Maureen Dowd, because she is known for that. But if Vice President Biden was the source of the story and quote, whoa boy. That means those words are Joe Biden's creation. And that tells us that he is running and he is going to go extremely negative on Hillary. And that will be a devastating end to his career. If this whole story is true in the first place.