And at the ballgame in today's October @ the White House Slideshow ...

From the White House pool report this evening:

POTUS and FLOTUS greet some of the 2,600 children and adults invited to trick-or-treat at the White House for Halloween. Highlights: FLOTUS as Cat Woman, Gibbs as Darth Vader, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice as Goofy.

Wall Street Journal adopts "death taxes" usage in news pages.

The DCCC's statement on what today's developments in the NY-23 mean is self-serving but also happens to be true: "Moderates are not welcome in the Republican Party and differing opinions will not be tolerated."

Andrew Cohen surveys the multiple Halloween Eve '09 revelations.

Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative Doug Hoffman have put out statements reacting to moderate Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava dropping out of the race in NY-23.

The NRCC is going to be officially getting behind Doug Hoffman, now that Scozzafava has been forced from the race.

Dede Scozzafava is suspending her campaign in NY-23.

Just to be clear, in effect, that means she's dropping out. Though her manner of doing it probably has a lot to do with her unhappiness at being forced out.

In her comments to the Watertown Daily Times Scozzafava explicitly referenced this morning's Siena poll as evidence she was likely too far behind to come back.

The San Francisco mayor has withdrawn from the California governor's race.

I'm not sure what to make of this. But, as you know, former NYC Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik is now in jail after his bail was revoked for violating the terms of a protective order (i.e., trying to release sealed trial documents). And at a pre-trial hearing today, Judge Stephen Robinson said Kerik was showing signs of risky behavior that had raised the judge's concerns about Kerik's safety.

Robinson said he'd been in contact with the jail's director of psychiatric services, Dr. Robert Mahler, who described behavior that put Kerik "at risk" and went beyond the normal stresses of incarceration. Said Robinson: "There were things, unexplained, described to me that were either said or done ... that raised the level of concern. I left the conversation with Dr. Mahler feeling this was an issue that cannot be ignored."

The courtroom exchange was very cryptic. And none of the parties would comment on whether Kerik had been relocated to the jail's psychiatric unit or been placed on a suicide watch.

In addition to the White House visitor logs, the looong-awaited FBI notes from its interview of then-Vice President Dick Cheney in the Valerie Plame case have also been released, by coincidence in a case unrelated to the visitor logs.

Just to add to the fun, the SEC a short time ago released the exhibits to the scathing SEC inspector general's report into how the commission missed the Bernie Madoff fraud for so long.

We've got a late Friday afternoon document dump from the White House, releasing months of White House visitor logs. We've got the story here. And if you're in a digging mood we've got an open thread here at TPMMuckraker for digging through and finding the best stuff.

Has the Public Option been made so emasculated and available to so few people that its premiums will actually end up being higher than private insurance premiums. Brian Beutler explains why the Public Option may end up being the insurance companies' best friend.

Christie and Giuliani hit the trail for the final stretch in New Jersey

If you're a longtime regular, you probably already know that we'll be here Tuesday evening bringing you live election results as they come in. And if you're new, well, we'll be here Tuesday evening, bringing you live election results until the last results come in, through the combined brainpower of TPM tech wizard Al Shaw and TPM election results kingpin Eric Kleefeld.

Let's quickly go through the races. We've got governors races in New Jersey (handful of new polls out today) and Virginia, the special election in NY-23rd district, the mayor's race in New York City (if you can call its that) and the marriage equality vote in Maine (i.e., "Question 1"). Those are the ones we'll be following closely.

So who do you think is going to win? Send me your educated guesses. The New York Mayor's race seems to have about the suspense of Newtonian physics. The Virginia governor's race, a bit more tension, but not much. But NY-23, NJ-Gov and Marriage-Maine, these could be late into the evening.

What are you expecting?

Looking for signs that Democrats will do well at the polls on Tuesday? Don't look to the White House, which is working hard to downplay the significance of a bad showing on Election Day.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was on Fox News this morning when they suddenly started asking him if the "death panels" were still in the new health care bills that have now been unveiled. Cornyn seemed a little caught off guard, so he didn't inhale the bait, he just nibbled around on it, like he'd forgotten his talking points from the hot days of August. I'm confident he'll be more on message next time.

That Nasa scientist charged with passing classified information to a FBI agent posing as a Mossad agent but who, as we've reported, may have really been spying for India, was also passing info to real Israelis, prosecutors now say. Confused yet? Justin Elliott explains.

In a classic segment, Jon Stewart demonstrates how Fox News carefully maintains its well-constructed Chinese wall between news and opinion. Watch.