memeorandum: Blind people: Hybrid cars pose hazard (Ben Nuckols/Associated Press)

5:20 PM ET, October 3, 2007

Top Items:

Bush vetoes kids' health insurance expansion — WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush on Wednesday vetoed legislation expanding a children's health insurance program by $35 billion over five years. — Bush exercised the veto at 10 a.m. ET before leaving the White House for a trip to Lancaster …

Discussion: Power Line, Reuters, The Texas Blue, Taylor Marsh, Comments from Left Field, All Spin Zone, NewsBusters.org, The Gate, Burnt Orange Report, The Democratic Daily, Three Wise Men, McBlogger, The Politico, CQ.com, Wake up America and Right Voices

Jennifer Loven / Associated Press:

Bush vetoes child health insurance plan — WASHINGTON - President Bush, in a sharp confrontation with Congress, on Wednesday vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have dramatically expanded children's health insurance. — It was only the fourth veto of Bush's presidency …

Discussion: Captain's Quarters, The Huffington Post, Washington Post, MyDD, Pam's House Blend, The Opinionator, The Gun Toting Liberal™, the albany project, Daily Kos, The Democratic Daily, Left in the West, The Carpetbagger Report, Middle Earth Journal, Truthdig and Macsmind

Jonathan E. Kaplan / The Hill:

SCHIP slips as Dems trip over message — Democratic leaders on Tuesday moved quickly to shift public attention to President Bush's expected veto of a children's health insurance program from a surtax to pay for the war in Iraq. — Democrats had been reveling in their good fortune …

Discussion: The Swamp, Captain's Quarters and Right Voices

David Stout / New York Times:

Bush Vetoes Children's Health Bill — President Bush vetoed the children's health insurance bill today, as he had promised to do, setting the stage for more negotiations between the White House and Congress and sparking unusual dismay from some prominent Republicans.

Discussion: Time, Feministe, TalkLeft, Greg Mankiw's Blog, Daily Kos and Lawyers, Guns and Money

Shaun Mullen / The Moderate Voice:
S-CHIP Bill Vetoed Behind Closed Doors

Discussion: Firedoglake, AFL-CIO Weblog, The Van Der Galiën Gazette and BlueOregon

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy / The Huffington Post:
My Challenge to the President

Discussion: The Sundries Shack and Democratic Strategist

McClatchy Washington Bureau:
Bush veto strategy threatens Republicans

Discussion: The Carpetbagger Report and Brendan Nyhan

John Stossel / Real Clear Politics:
Control Your Own Health Care

Discussion: QandO, Liberal Values, The Glittering Eye, Blue Crab Boulevard and PrairiePundit

Reid Wilson / RealClearPolitics:

Exclusive: Paul Tops $5 Mil For Quarter — Texas Congressman Ron Paul, an anti-war libertarian making his second run at the White House, will report having raised $5.08 million in the third quarter. The number, which rivals those of John McCain and Bill Richardson, was boosted thanks …

Discussion: Captain's Quarters, The Politico, Hot Air and Outside The Beltway

The Atlantic Online:

Ron Paul Raises Five Times As Much As Huckabee — Oh me of little faith. Ron Paul cannot be dismissed as a gadfly; the chance for him to outperform expectations rises exponentially with additional million dollars he raises. 5.08m is real money. There must be, within the Republican Party, a vein of anti-war libertarian sentiment.

Discussion: The Van Der Galiën Gazette, race42008.com and eyeon08.com

David Weigel / Reason Magazine:

Ron Paul: Five Million Dollar Man — Ron Paul's campaign confirms that it collected $5,080,000 in the third quarter of fundraising. That's more than double the campaign's second quarter haul of $2.4 million; it's also as much as "comeback" candidate John McCain has reportedly raised.

Discussion: blog.ronpaul2008.com, All Spin Zone, National Review and RealClearPolitics

Chris Cillizza / The Fix:
Huckabee's Money — UPDATE, 2:15 pm: Huckabee's numbers seem …

Discussion: The Caucus

Washington Post:

Clinton Widens Lead in Poll — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has consolidated her place as the front-runner in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, outpacing her main rivals in fundraising in the most recent quarter and widening her lead in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Sam Youngman / The Hill:
Edwards says Obama using stolen ideas

Discussion: The Politico, New York Times, Des Moines Register, The Van Der Galiën Gazette, Taylor Marsh, Hot Air, CNN Political Ticker, The Carpetbagger Report, Outside The Beltway, The Swamp, The Caucus and Air America Radio

Richelieu / Weekly Standard:
Media Blasphemy — Another day, another blasphemy …

Discussion: The Corner and The Fix

Eric Pianin / The Fix:

Sen. Pete Domenici Expected to Retire — Veteran Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) is expected to announce tomorrow that he will retire from the Senate in 2008, according to several informed sources, a decision that further complicates an already difficult playing field for Republicans next November.

Discussion: RealClearPolitics, Daily Kos, AMERICAblog and Cliff Schecter

Patrick Ruffini:

Kos Traffic Numbers Inflated by 60% — Yesterday, I had the good "fortune" of being frontpaged on Daily Kos. The post sat atop the site for two hours. According to Google Analytics, the link produced 1,164 visitors yesterday. — For the traffic behemoth Kos is portrayed as, that seems low …

Discussion: techPresident, Yourish.com, Riehl World View, Hot Air, GINA COBB, Outside The Beltway, Clayton Cramer's BLOG, Personal Democracy Forum and Instapundit.com

Kevin Drum / Washington Monthly:

MERCS....Max Boot makes some sensible comments about Blackwater and other private contractors in Iraq: … At this point, we really have only two options. First, we could try to dramatically reduce our reliance on military contractors. This would require massive restructuring of our command …

Discussion: Los Angeles Times, Comments from Left Field and Majikthise

James Gordon Meek / NY Daily News: Blackwater to guard FBI team probing it

Maureen Dowd / New York Times:
Sinking in a Swamp Full of Blackwater

Discussion: Commentary and Alternate Brain

Satyam / Think Progress:

White House Retaliates Against UK For Withdrawal: 'British Forces Have Performed Poorly' In Iraq — This week, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that he would reduce British presence in Iraq from 5,500 troops to 4,500 by Christmas. The Guardian reports today that Brown will cut …

Discussion: The Independent, Guardian, Telegraph, Dependable Renegade and Oliver Willis

Jonah Goldberg / The Corner:

The Drug War, And Other Problems — Yesterday's brief discussion of the drug war is still eliciting lots and lots of email, as it always does. It's funny, I'd say the biggest source of my own self-censorship isn't political correctness, fear of controversy, or even aversion to copious hate mail (I get that any way).

Andrew Sullivan / The Atlantic Online:
A Conservative Approach — I'm always bashing the Cornerites …

Discussion: The Moderate Voice

Darin Murphy / The Huffington Post:

Weak Has a Face, and It's Pelosi's — If there was any doubt before, which there wasn't, it's gone now. Watching Nancy Pelosi on The View yesterday morning provided the final proof that the backbone of the House is only as strong as its speaker. Her body language said it all.

New York Times:

From Errand to Fatal Shot to Hail of Fire to 17 Deaths — It started out as a family errand: Ahmed Haithem Ahmed was driving his mother, Mohassin, to pick up his father from the hospital where he worked as a pathologist. As they approached Nisour Square at midday on Sept. 16 …

Discussion: The RBC, bustardblog, Firedoglake, Majikthise, Middle Earth Journal, rubber hose, The Atlantic Online, Three Wise Men and Brilliant at Breakfast

Fred File:

Fred Thompson on Harry Reid's attacks on Rush Limbaugh — Congressional Democrats are trying to divert attention from insulting our military leader in Iraq and pandering to the loony left by attacking Rush Limbaugh. He is one of the strongest supporters of our troops, yet Democrats claim he is not being strong enough.

Discussion: The Swamp, National Review Online, Redstate, RushLimbaugh.com Home, JustOneMinute, Wake up America and NewsBusters.org

Ben Nuckols / Associated Press:

Blind people: Hybrid cars pose hazard — BALTIMORE - Gas-electric hybrid vehicles, the status symbol for the environmentally conscientious, are coming under attack from a constituency that doesn't drive: the blind. — Because hybrids make virtually no noise at slower speeds when they run solely …

Discussion: The Van Der Galiën Gazette and Moonbattery