Last week, FOX News demanded John McCain stop using debate footage in a new ad. Rudy Giuliani's and Mitt Romney's website was covered in FOX News paraphernalia, then FNC finally applied their demand equally. Romney's campaign says to hell with it, they are going to use it anyway.

Rudy Giuliani

• Giuliani claims he doesn't remember being briefed on Bernie Kerik's ties to the mob, but now there's concrete evidence that it actually took place. Giuliani's connection to Kerik would destroy a political career under normal circumstances but IOKIYAR. September 11 changed everything... except Bernie Kerik's criminal record.
• Senator Kit Bond (R-Missouri) endorsed Giuliani but needs to read the Constitution: presidents serve eight years, Kit, not ten.
• Giuliani lies about healthcare statistics in ads (and continuing to use them) and lies about attacking Senator Joe Biden's (D-Delaware) foreign policy experience... the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee... no experience... said by a mayor. Oh, and there's audio of Giuliani attacking Biden. And despite attacking "gummint healthcare," Giuliani may have received his prostate cancer screening... through the government.
• Giuliani faces an investigation into the radios used on September 11 by the New York City Council.
• It seems Giuliani has a part-time job at his old firm and then there's this:

  Several of the firm's employees do volunteer work for his campaign. And Giuliani did not decide until mid-June, six months after he entered the race, to bill his campaign for the cost of the security detail traveling with him on campaign trips; before then, the firm paid the expense [...]

  Federal election laws prohibit Giuliani's firm from absorbing costs or providing services that legally should be covered by political donations, campaign experts said.

  "This is a lawyer's nightmare," said Republican political consultant Scott Reed, who ran the 1996 presidential bid of then-Sen. Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) but is not aligned with a presidential campaign in this race. "I don't think the vulnerability is with voters on the level of his commitment to the race. The concern is really about FEC violations and whether anything this corporation does to help him essentially is making a contribution to run for president in the form of staff time, materials, travel billing or security."

• David Dayen has taken several looks at the media and their continuingfailure.

Mitt Romney

• Yawn. Romney flip-flops again. This one is on immigration.

Fred Thompson

• FDT: The U.N. will take your guns away.

John McCain

• Speaking about torture, McCain says his military service informs his views, and because, you know, he was tortured by the North Vietnamese. Conversely, McCain points to the lack of military service among his top opponents, and their playing footsie with 'enhanced interrogation techniques.'

Ron Paul

• Paul raked in over $5 million last quarter and this is what he spent it on.

  I wrote that day:

  If Mitt Romney wasn't such a flip-flopper and devoid of any real political principle, I would have said this was the worst acting in a presidential ad all season.

Duncan Hunter

• When U.S. diplomats refuse to go to Iraq, Duncan Hunter suggested in a press release:

  Go to Walter Reed and Bethesda for New State Dept. Personnel

  ... State Department personnel who refuse deployment to Baghdad be replaced with wounded veterans at Walter Reed and Bethesda hospitals.

There's more...

In case you were wondering, the Republican field of candidates don't care about the wildfires raging in Southern California. (This is in, or around, Duncan Hunter's district, mind you.)

FOX News Debate

• TRF liveblogged the debate on FOX News and the candidates were taking some stinging potshots at each other. Conservative bloggers approvingly spoke of Mike Huckabee's car salesman-like qualities by "demonstrating same smooth, articulate, can-sell-snake-oil-to-a-merchant" and that he could "sell ice to Eskimos."


• John McCain released an ad that included footage from the FOX News debate, and FNC demanded McCain's campaign cancel the ad because of the logo. However, Rudy Giuliani's materials are covered in FOX News paraphernalia. McCain's people cut a new ad instead.

Rudy Giuliani

• While speaking to at a town hall in Iowa, Giuliani left the door open on waterboarding, questioning whether it really is torture.


• After bowing out of the race, Sam Brownback met with John McCain and Rudy Giuliani, however, Brownback says he is "more comfortable" with Giuliani's views on abortion.


• Giuliani is defending and protecting an accused child molesting priest that still works at Giuliani Partners.


• In August 2001, Giuliani reportedly told his gay roommates that if same-sex marriage became legal, he would marry them first. Earlier this month, when speaking to Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, Giuliani said he would support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage if states started to legalize it.

Mitt Romney

• Romney employs about a dozen college-aged kids to sit at computers and watch a wall of television screens with news reports in a dark room for "rapid response." I call them the Mitt Floppers; An Army for One.


• A South Carolina baptist pastor retracted his endorsement of Romney. Pastor Don Wilton said he gave his support to use his name locally, and didn't believe it would be used nationally. (And by nationally, I think he means under the nose of the I.R.S.)


• In discussing Barack Obama, Mitt Romney nearly called the senator "Osama bin Laden." Romney's campaign maintains that the governor "misspoke" but anybody remember the sign Romney was holding up approvingly? It said "Obama Osama" and Romney was campaigning in South Carolina, the site of this incident.


• This is no surprise: Romney has no idea what he's talking about.

Fred Thompson

• FDT articulated "almost sane views" on executive power.


• Thompson dodged questions on the latest exodus of staffers leaving, to which FDT replied, those questions are for the campaign. David Dayen reminds him, "You ARE the campaign!"


• FDT locked up the Bill Frist endorsement, completing the "creepy doctor,""Klansman" and "global warming denier" trifecta. Fred Phelps' endorsement is in a league of its own.

John McCain

• McCain told a gun manufacturer that if elected president, he would "shoot bin Laden with your products." McCain later said it was a joke and he wouldn't personally shoot bin Laden. You call that leadership?

Mike Huckabee

• Ramesh Ponnuru is not sold on Huckabee.


• Read up on Steve Benen's incredible takedown of Jonathan Alter's whitewashing of Mike Huckabee's "wacky right-wing things."


• Huckabee is a smooth talker but is that all he is?


• At the debate, Huckabee said "most" of the founding fathers were clergymen. That all depends on your definition of "most." In actuality, only one of 56 was a member of the clergy. Using Huckabee's definition of "most," most of the U.S. Senators are independents, and most of the U.S. states are not part of the mainland.

Ron Paul

• Paul is moving up in New Hampshire and the campaign's increasing spending in the state shows they believe so, too.


• The debates among Republican candidates show the base to be adamantly opposed to any kind of withdrawal from Iraq as they incessantly boo Ron Paul's foreign policy views. However, polling shows that the majority of Republican Party caucus goers in Iowa favor withdrawing from Iraq within six months.

Tom Tancredo

• Tancredo wagered his presidential campaign against that of Mitt Romney on the World Series the day after Boston handed Colorado a 13-1 loss in Game 1. Makes you think, maybe Tancredo is trying to lose?

There's more...

CNBC Presidential Debate

Mitt Romney

Rudy Giuliani

Fred Thompson

John McCain

Mike Huckabee

Ron Paul

Tom Tancredo

Alan Keyes

Duncan Hunter

There's more...

(The Week in Review was off last Saturday, so enjoy the double-stuffed edition this week. --Matt)

In the last two weeks, the top Republicans avoided Tavis Smiley's All-American Presidential Forum at the historically black college, Morgan State. (Instead, they went to fundraisers and campaign events with white people.) They also joined President Bush in support of his veto of the S-CHIP reauthorization. Newt Gingrich ruled out running for president to continue to head up a non-profit no one has ever heard of.

The GOP candidates were united, even in messaging, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York. (Although some of the candidates took it an extra step farther, like seeking to revoke Columbia University's funding.)

Former White House Counsel John Dean gave his outlook on the current state of the GOP. He said Rudy Giuliani would "go even farther than Bush and Cheney in their worst moments."

Asked what GOP candidate he thought was "not quite as frightening as Giuliani," he answered with a laugh, "Ron Paul," saying "there's no chance he's going to be president."

Third Quarter Fundraising: Here's how the money shakes out, via Latest Politics.

Giuliani: $10.5 million ($16 million cash on hand)
Romney: $10 million raised, plus $8.5 million of his own money ($9 million cash on hand)
Thompson: $9.3 million ($7 million cash on hand)
McCain: $6 million ($3.6 million cash on hand and $1.5 million in debt)
Paul: $5 million ($5.3 million cash on hand)

Mitt Romney: In New Hampshire, the former Governor has ran over 10,000 commercials pimping his candidacy. Romney has a new ad going up in the state, and later Iowa, attacking Republicans as "acting like Democrats." Speaking of new ads running, the Log Cabin Republicans, the faction of Republicans that are openly gay, endorsed Romney for governor in 2002, have a new ad going up on Romney. With their new ad, Ben Weyl asks, "Buyer's remorse?"

Did you know that Mitt Romney lives with his biggest contributor? Himself.

As the great TBogg notes, this really is like someone sending themselves flowers at work to prove to everyone in the office how desirable they are. Romney's personal contributions to his campaign now exceed $15 million dollars, which is also the amount of money John McCain sees skipping over to him dressed in a slinky outfit in a nightly dream.

Recently, Mitt Romney made the case for divestment from Iran. He, himself, has plenty of investments in the country.

John Gizzi of Human Events noted the words of a Michigan attorney at Mitt Romney's speech at the Michigan Republican Leadership Conference:

"I fell asleep during Mitt Romney's speech today, and I wasn't even up late last night."

Rudy Giuliani: Earlier this week, Rudy said that the GOP lost in 2006 because of spending, and going on to claim he pushed 23 tax cuts while mayor of New York. He's wrong.

Giuliani has now adopted part of Mitt Romney's messaging.

Conservative leader Richard Viguerie has launched a petition drive against Giuliani's candidacy, joining other base conservatives in opposing a pro-choice Republican nominee.

A poll showed as many as 27% of Republicans willing to vote for a third-party candidate if Rudy is the nominee.

The mutiny of religious conservatives over Rudy's potential nomination obliterates Giuliani's claim to be "electable."

It turns out that Giuliani's campaign has all kinds of connections to the initial attempt by Republicans in California to divvy up the state's electoral votes by Congressional district. Giuliani, who has pushed his electability to Republican primary voters, recently released projected electoral maps showing him with 210 electoral votes locked up against Hillary Clinton, including California and New York listed as "swing states."

Giuliani compared Hillary Clinton to George McGovern, the Democratic nominee in 1972. Giuliani voted for McGovern in 1972.

The "surprise phone call" from his wife, Judy, has happened over 40 times on the stump. Apparently, it annoyed the hell out of the National Review's Lisa Schiffren. Giuliani's reason for doing so? You guessed it, 9/11.

Giuliani's hyper-partisan message is costing him independents.

Fred Thompson: FDT has made it a habit to not only forget crucial details, he's coming up with all new ones.

Thompson recently said that Saddam had WMDs, despite reports all concluding to the contrary. (VIDEO)

In 2005, FDT helped usher John Roberts into the Supreme Court. While giving a stump speech, FDT told the crowd that the Democrats were in control of the Senate -- in 2005. (VIDEO)

Continuing on the theme that Grandpa Freddie doesn't know what he's talking about, in a radio interview, FDT referred to Russia as the "Soviet Union." He also said he wasn't aware of a landmark decision by a judge on the death penalty.

Despite the fact that FDT doesn't know anything, he recently said being president ain't very hard.

While on the stump in Iowa, Fred Thompson was reduced to asking for an applause from the small assembled crowd. (VIDEO) The New York Times had four slides of FDT speaking with an Iowan about social security and appear to be in some disagreement. The caption noted that the man later said he was voting for Romney.

FDT pissed off the Iowa press corps by skipping out to meet with them after the Iowa Christian Alliance dinner.

In Florida, FDT is taking a lot of flack for suggesting he would abolish birthright citizenship.

John McCain: With his campaign floundering, John McCain is drinking the crazy juice from the tall cans.

In an interview with Beliefnet, McCain stepped in it several times. He suggested he would not vote for a candidate who was not a Christian, and then proceeded to say that the U.S. Constitution established the U.S. as a "Christian nation." (McCain isn't taking to kindly to the response his comments have earned.)

McCain recently said that the nation's biggest mistake after 9/11 was telling people to go shopping instead of enlisting. (Biggest mistake since 9/11? Hardly. A mistake, yes, but not the biggest.) McCain also contends that if Bush asked people to enlist today, they would.

No they wouldn't.

Ron Paul: The libertarian nearly outraised the former front runner, John McCain, with $5 million in the third quarter.

Mike Huckabee: You would think a serious presidential contender would have one of these already, but the former Arkansas governor is in the market for a national finance chair. Perhaps that would help those sagging fundraising numbers?

Tom Tancredo: The Colorado congressman refused to vote in favor of a House resolution commemorating the Muslim holiday of Ramadan. He said that if they were to do the same for Christians or Jews, it would be crossing some "non existent line" between church and state.

Tancredo voted in favor of a resolution celebrating Christmas.

There's more...

Another week, more Republican debauchery.

Mitt Romney: The big news this week was Blackwater USA, the private military firm hired to provide security to U.S. diplomats, was ordered out of the country by the Iraqi government following the shooting deaths of 11 Iraqi civilians. Just four days later, Blackwater was allowed to operate on a limited basis. Romney's counterterrorism policy advisory group's head is Blackwater Vice Chair Cofer Black. Romney has kept increasingly mum about it. I think this is a perfect opportunity to use Romney's gimmick "Ask Mitt" to ask him: What are you thoughts on Blackwater? Private contractors, in general?

Speaking of user-interaction with the Romney campaign, Slate took up Romney's offer to supporters, of creating his next campaign ad. Check it out.

Campaigning at a Florida retirement community, Romney took the opportunity to align the Democrats with terrorists, claiming "al-Qaeda would be dancing in the streets" with Barack Obama as president.

It seems that when Romney held a press conference in front of St. Vincent's Hospital in Manhattan to denounce HillaryCare 2.0, he did so without their consent (the campaign didn't ask at all) and was physically blocking where ambulances enter and exit.

Rudy Giuliani: Seriously what hasn't 9/11 changed for Rudy? This week, he claimed that September 11th changed his views on the Second Amendment (Giuliani was notorious in Republican circles as the most anti-gun Republican in the country; in 1995, he called the NRA "extremists") and fees in national parks. I kid you not.

Giuliani adviser and Congressman from New York, Peter King, says "there are too many mosques" in this country. King stands by what he said, claiming it was "taken out of context" by The Politico, but you have got to read his "explanation."

Rudy says he's the fourth or fifth most well known American in the world.

David Dayen says Rudy is running the Biden '88 campaign.

Fred Thompson: FDT has developed a habit of answering questions with "I don't know" since he announced for president. This week was no different. When asked about the six black students that were arrested and charged with attempted murder in Jena, Louisiana, Thompson said, "I don't know anything about it."

Also, FDT said he would jail women who have abortions in their second and third trimesters.

If you ever wondered what "Ask Mitt" looks like if you produced it with your dad's video camera, check out "Ask Fred" as he answers a question from the internet and says "we can do better."

John McCain: Boasting better fundraising numbers last week, a friend to the campaign put it rather bluntly when speaking to the Washington Times this week. The McCain camp shot for $4.5 million, but with just over a week to go this quarter, McCain has only raised $3.7 million, and has $2.5 million to $3 million in campaign debt. Said the friend: "He's done for."

Also, in Michigan, the heir apparent to the GOP nomination for Governor in the state, Mike Cox, has withdrawn support for McCain's candidacy. Apparently he wants to associate with a winner, and McCain ain't it.

Tom Tancredo: This isn't so much news as it is a reinforcement of everything you think about Tancredo:

Tancredo blamed illegal immigrants for rising crime -- "90 percent of the murder warrants in LA are for illegal immigrants" -- as well as the rising cost of health care and the economic decline in the housing market.

Tancredo contends that illegal, and legal, immigrants are harming the nation because many of the newcomers "refuse to assimilate."

Even many legal immigrants fail to learn English or embrace American culture, choosing instead to keep their old customs and religion, he said. "The American melting pot is broken."

He asserted that such practices are destroying the cultural ties that long bound Americans together. The crowd roared in agreement when Tancredo shouted, "I'm tired of pressing '1' for English, and '2' for Spanish!" [emphasis added]

So don't be fooled when Tancredo or his enablers claim this is about illegal immigration. He's hates the legal ones, too.

There's more...