PALMETTO SCOOP will be liveblogging tonight’s debate.

UPDATE: Some people have already declared a winner.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Sister Toldjah will be on the job, too. And there’ll be more at Heading Right.

So will TigerHawk.

MORE: I’m watching, but not liveblogging. InstaDaughter’s take: “They’re all wearing the same suit.”

The only one she liked was Romney, though she was grading them on presentation, not substance.

STILL MORE: Debate drunkblogging, from Stephen Green.

Two gems: “Already I don’t miss Chris Matthews. I bet I’m not the only person to say that – tonight or any night.”

“Ron Paul was just asked if he was running for the nomination of the wrong party. Why didn’t he just say ‘Maybe,’ then smile at the camera for the rest of his time? It would’ve been perfect.”

Plus, good news/bad news for Mike Huckabee: “Best line of the night so far: ‘Spending money like John Edwards at a beauty shop.’ It’s from one of those interchangeable guys wearing a dark suit and red (or maybe blue-ish) tie.”

More liveblogging here.

QUICK REACTION AWARD: The McCain people have already — 5 minutes after the debate ended — sent me this YouTube video of McCain’s response on Campaign Finance “Reform.” Nice effort, but my use of quotation marks demonstrates that I remain unconvinced.

MY PICK for winner tonight: Rudy, with an assist from Ron Paul.

Plus, what went unnoticed in the coverage. (But not entirely).

ALMOST AS QUICK: The Giuliani people with this YouTube video of Giuliani’s response to Ron Paul.

The Hotline blog gives it to McCain, says Rudy did well, says Romney didn’t.

Stephen Green comes back with this wrap: “Rudy won tonight, if for no other reason than the well-deserved bitch-slapping he administered to Ron Paul. Everybody else lost, Paul doubly so.”

And reader Amit Singh emails: “No offense, but the libertarian movement is going nowhere with Ron Paul as the face. His comments about 9/11 are comparable to Rosie O’Donnell.”

Well, maybe not quite. But they did reveal a cluelessness about what the terrorists’ actual thinking and motives are that is distinguishable from his philosophical position.

And Second Amendment scholar Don Kates emails that Romney “blew it” with this statement: “I support the Second Amendment, but I also support a ban on assault weapons.”

I agree.

Best post-debate line tonight: “You know what ethanol is? The chemical compound that results when you mix corn and tax dollars.”

I’VE SAID BEFORE that Alberto Gonzales was managing to turn John Ashcroft into a retrospective hero. More evidence for that proposition.

UPDATE: John Hinderaker has reviewed the Comey testimony and says there’s less to this story than generally reported: “It’s an interesting story. But, based on what we know, it is not clear that there is anything discreditable anywhere in it.”

AS TODAY’S FRED THOMPSON VIDEO DEMONSTRATES, BREITBART.TV is really taking off. Here’s some background on how it works. And here’s some of Breitbart’s original programming.

RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION: A Keith Henson update.

ANOTHER WORLD WAR TWO BOOK FOR KIDS: A good review for Number the Stars, which is a favorite of the InstaDaughter’s.

DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE, at CNN.

POPULAR MECHANICS POSTS another response to Rosie O’Donnell’s 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Somebody send Rosie some reading material.

MSNBC MISTAKES WHITE HOUSE PARODY PAGE for the real thing. Reality, parody — who can tell? To be fair, I sometimes suffer the same confusion when watching Keith Olbermann.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll: “Thank God for Big Media’s armada of editors and gatekeepers!”

MAX BOOT: “There is a serious and widening disconnect between the timetables that commanders are using to guide their actions in Iraq and those being demanded by politicians in Washington.”

The commanders’ timetables are driven by a desire to win. The Washington politicians’ timetables are driven by a cowardly desire to have the war off the table before the 2008 elections. I guarantee, however, that they will not accomplish that goal, however hard they try.

STONEWALLING the “rightroots.”

“A MENTAL INSTITUTION, MICHAEL: Might be something you ought to think about.” Fred Thompson responds to Michael Moore.

If this is a foretaste of a Thompson campaign, it’s pretty potent. As Bob Krumm notes, it’s all about the OODA loop.

UPDATE: Mickey Kaus thinks this is more than just PR:

More important, I think: quite apart from its advantages as a campaign tool, the video is itself evidence of Thompson’s actual presidential qualifications. You can’t make a quickie spot like this unless a) you know what you think (or have a really fast pollster) b) you can react to new situations quickly, and c) you have some sense of theater. Those are all extremely important things for a president to have.

Yes, the Bush Administration has lost a lot of ground due to the lack of (b) and (c). And sometimes (a).

“Congress Approval Down to 29%; Bush Approval Steady at 33%”

A new Gallup Poll finds continued low levels of public support for both Congress and President George W. Bush. Twenty-nine percent of Americans approve of Congress, down slightly from last month’s reading (33%) and this year’s high point of 37%, while Bush’s approval rating is holding steady at 33%. Both the ratings of Congress and the president are slightly lower than their respective 2007 averages.

Congress’s ratings are now lower than before the elections. Via Capt. Ed, who comments:

How bad is it? Even Democrats mostly disapprove of Congress. Only 37% of the majority party’s voters think that Congress has performed well; Gallup doesn’t mention the percentage that disapproves, but it seems almost certain that it outstrips 37%, unless more than 26% are clueless. Congress gets its worst ratings not from Republicans (25%), but from independents (24%). That should get the attention of leadership in both chambers, who owe their majorities to those independents.

Read the whole thing.

BOY SUSPENDED FOR having short hair.

JERRY FALWELL has died.

DRINK UP FOR GOOD HEALTH!

Researchers have long known that people who drink moderate amounts of alcohol appear to be less likely to develop heart disease. Much of the benefit has been attributed to the higher levels of HDL cholesterol — often referred to as the “good” cholesterol — found in moderate drinkers. The lipoproteins in this kind of cholesterol are believed to help the body fight off heart disease.

But a new study suggests that alcohol may play another role in cholesterol and health. Moderate drinking may encourage the formation of larger lipoprotein particles in both HDL and LDL, the “bad” cholesterol associated with cardiovascular problems.

Larger particles in HDL, the researchers wrote in the online edition of The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, have recently been found to appear better at fighting off heart disease. And larger particles in LDL appear to be less effective at causing it. In that case, the higher the number of large LDL particles, and the lower the number of small ones, the better the chance of avoiding heart disease.

If this could be sold as a pill, it would be getting a lot more attention.

HOW TO SURVIVE A NINE-METER DIVE into a kiddie pool. There’s video.

NANOTECHNOLOGY BOOTCAMP, courtesy of the ASME.

POPULAR MECHANICS names its favorite tool, the Loggerhead Bit Dr. Looks pretty cool, though I can’t help but retain my old-fashioned preferences.

DARFUR UPDATE: StrategyPage has the latest.

ARE MEDIA AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES adding to psychological stress among police even when they act properly?

UPDATE: Good point:

The media add psychological stress to everyone. There’s a growing sense of unreality in the news and in society in general. The public perception is that “nothing should ever go wrong”. And when it does, someone has acted evilly, is guilty, and must be punished. . . .

The unreal standard of perfection leads to all manner of psychological stress. When something is consistently imperfect, the new way of dealing with it is to invent paranoid conspiracy theories to explain it. It’s easier than determination or resigned longsuffering endurance.

Folks need to be encouraged to simply not watch the news or read newspapers. It’s the most beneficial thing most people can do for their mental health.

Indeed.

CRITICISM OF YOUTUBE’S “partner program.” “Right now YouTube has a three tiered system, the top, or big media, the middle, indie content creators with audiences, and the bottom, random user submissions that get small numbers of views. . . . The middle is where our site lives, the indie content creators. This is the space that YouTube could just own, if they invested really heavily in terms of ad splits and career development. The terms that YouTube offers to these middle players will set the floor for what every other site has to offer the talented upstarts that create fun and entertaining shows.”

IT’S NOT PAID VIDEO, BUT ADVERTISING, that will drive online video services, according to Forrester. That sounds plausible to me. I’ve watched more ad-supported video than I’ve watched paid video — in fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever paid for a video download.

CARROLL ANDREW MORSE has thoughts on the Interstate Voting Compact.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Drunken sailors in the Senate:

Buried in section 4010 of the Water Resources and Development Act on pages 315 and 316 is an earmark directing the secretary of the Army to conduct a feasibility study for a project on flood control of the San Francisco Bay’s south shoreline, restoration of the bay’s salt ponds and “other related purposes, as the secretary determines to be appropriate.” No amount of federal tax dollars are authorized for the project. The 4010 earmark is not unique, however, as there are 35 other earmarks in Title IV of the WRDA, 27 of which similarly do not specify an amount of federal tax dollars to be spent. The bill — which mainly concerns the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers — was reported to the Senate by its Environment and Public Works Committee, chaired by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

The fact that no specific spending amounts are specified for these earmarks makes many of them essentially blank checks that senators are being asked to approve, in effect while wearing legislative blindfolds. . . . Being open-ended, these earmarks make a mockery of the official estimate of WRDA’s cost at approximately $15 billion. The truth is nobody, least of all the senators voting for it, knows the actual cost of the bill.

Read the whole thing.

MORE COMPLAINTS about burying stories at Digg.