MEGAN MCARDLE LOOKS AT the bright side.

TOM SMITH: “One small point I would add is that if it weren’t for the historically, epically awful job of the GOP establishment in Congress during the W years, we would not be in the position we are now, where we have every right to be concerned about the fate of our constitutional order, such as it is.”

ROBERT CHESNEY: The Jeppessen Decision and the Issue of Good Faith in Asserting the State Secrets Privilege.

COSTS OF THE HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE: “I’m Afraid To Date Because I’m $190,000 In Debt.” “I’m at a point in my life where I’d like to find a great woman and think about settling down and perhaps start a family in the not too distant future. Unfortunately, I have a terrible secret that is making it difficult for me to get close to women: I have $190,000 in student loan debt (no, I am not a doctor).”

WHY YOU SHOULD OWN A GUN: Shocking testimony reveals police inaction in Conn. horror home invasion. “Podunk local cops wasted more than half an hour assessing the Connecticut home invasion and setting up a vehicle perimeter — time the two attackers used to strangle the mother in her living room and set the fire that claimed the lives of the two girls upstairs, according to shocking testimony today.” Well, “Podunk local cops” is kind of unfair — plenty of local cops would have done better — but this is Columbine-level ineptitude. When seconds count, the police are only minutes away, but sometimes they may take half an hour to do anything once they show up.

NPR: “Who Is The Tea Party? There’s No Short Answer.”

Plus, how the Tea Party organizes without leaders.

In American politics, radical decentralization has never been tried on so large a scale. Tea party activists believe that their hivelike, “organized but not organized” (as one calls it) structure is their signal innovation and secret weapon, the key to outlasting and outmaneuvering traditional political organizations and interest groups. They intend to rewrite the rule book for political organizing, turning decades of established practice upside down. If they succeed, or even half succeed, the tea party’s most important legacy may be organizational, not political.

What an amazing phenomenon. Someone should write a book on it.

It’s like there’s some kind of a Third Great Awakening going on. . . .

FRED BARNES: Why Mike Castle Lost.

CHINA CONTINUES SATELLITE MANEUVERS.

PAUL RYAN vs. David Brooks.

OTHERS TAKE NOTE: How to gracefully acknowledge primary defeat.

JERI THOMPSON: Why Won’t They Do It For The Woman?

MARKDOWNS ON CELLPHONES AND ACCESSORIES. Still haven’t gotten around to upgrading mine, though I keep getting positive Droid emails from readers.

REUTERS: TEA PARTY REPUBLICAN HAS BIG LEAD IN FLORIDA. “Republican candidate Marco Rubio has opened a clear lead in a Florida Senate race, becoming the latest Tea Party favorite to benefit from voter anger at Washington, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found on Wednesday. Six weeks before November 2 congressional elections, Rubio leads state Governor Charlie Crist, an independent, by 40 percent to 26 percent among likely voters, the poll found. Democrat Kendrick Meek trails at 21 percent.”

So much for Kos’s mythical Meek Surge. Meek indeed . . . .

WAIT, I THOUGHT THE BIG THREAT WAS “CHRISTIANISTS:” Molly Norris, the “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day” cartoonist, is “going ghost.” “There’s a big Metafilter thread about it, which I’m reading after writing that. A surprising number of people are blaming Norris for bringing the death threats on herself.”

Blaming the victim is what people do, when they’re scared and don’t want to do anything about what’s scaring them.

MORE ELIMINATIONIST RHETORIC: Democrats unveil new logo: It’s a target.

UPDATE: Dems’ Earth-Shattering Announcement: “We Got A New Logo.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Jeff Brown writes: “It’s no fun when they are so easy. How long before that logo shows up with a red cross bar running from 10 to 4?”

BRAD O’LEARY: There’s No Mystery In The Tea Party Wins.

HARRY REID: Coons, ‘my pet,’ will win. The guy seems more and more like Montgomery Burns. . . .

And is Christine O’Donnell’s first TV ad now written?

UPDATE: “Sea of Love?”

SHOCK AUDIO: Facing ‘Obligations’ From Leadership, Democrat Congresswoman Leaves Voicemail for Lobbyist Cash.

INSTAVISION: A NOVEMBER TO REMEMBER: I talk with Scott Rasmussen about his new book, Mad As Hell: How The Tea Party Movement Is Fundamentally Remaking Our Two-Party System, and about how much to trust the polls. Plus, what went wrong for Obama. (Bumped).

Rasmussen’s — extremely timely! — book is well worth reading, for anyone who wants to understand what’s driving the Tea Party movement. And it’s interesting that he notes, both in the book and the interview, that voters aren’t as flighty as politicos claim. They keep voting for people who promise lower taxes and smaller government, and they keep seeing those promises broken.

DAVID HARSANYI: NO NEED TO GET PERSONAL. “If given a chance, politicos will almost always opt to personalize a debate.”

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN, RELIGIOUS WACKOS WOULD BE GETTING PEOPLE FIRED FOR BLASPHEMY. And they were right!

HMM: Sunspots could soon disappear for decades: study. “Sunspot formation is triggered by a magnetic field, which scientists say is steadily declining. They predict that by 2016 there may be no remaining sunspots, and the sun may stay spotless for several decades. The last time the sunspots disappeared altogether was in the 17th and 18th century, and coincided with a lengthy cool period on the planet known as the Little Ice Age.” I don’t like cold weather.

AUSTIN BAY: Can Turkey Remain Secular?

ANOTHER RECORD MONTH for North Dakota oil production.

DODD HARRIS: I Don’t Really Care If GOP Takes Back The Senate. “I’m a libertarian, but not one of the hard core that seems to exist mainly to make any perfect the enemy of every good. As such, despite his mushiness on some issues I care about, I could say that I had a mild preference for Castle and a GOP Senate over O’Donnell and no GOP Senate. But, as I’ve already said, nothing I’ve seen convinced me that Castle was the key to a GOP takeover. And there’s plenty to like in O’Donnell’s victory.”

Plus, O’Donnell has raised half a million three quarters of a million dollars since yesterday, which is something I doubt Mike Castle could have done.