The plot thicks yet again.

Korenna Kline, spokesperson for Rep. Jim Kolbe (R-AZ), abruptly resigned yesterday.

This comes just a few days after Kolbe issued a written statement about the Foley matter that contradicted in key respects comments Kline had already made about Kolbe’s knowledge of Foley’s problem with pages.

A staffer for a retiring congressman finding new employment before the term ends is not terribly unusual, but there is more going on here than simply new employment opportunities.

Is the Dem tide putting Sen. Menendez back on top?

You have to look long and far this season to find a Democratic candidate who is not exceeding expectations for their race. But one of the few has been right next door here in New Jersey, in the race between Sen. Bob Menendez (D) and Tom Kean, Jr. (R). (Menendez was a congressman appointed to serve by Gov. John Corzine (D) to serve the remainder of Corzine’s term in the senate.) Here’s our list of the polls in that race going back to July. The race has always been close and most of the polls, I think, have been within the margin of error. But the pattern is still pretty clear. Kean took the lead in September after being close behind for most of summer. But that lead now seems to have vanished. Seven polls have come out in October. Kean was ahead only in one, and that one was released ten days ago. If you toss out the Zogby poll which has Menendez up by ten points (I’m having less and less confidence in Zogby’s numbers), Menendez’s average lead is only like 3 or 4 points. The statisticians will note that that’s probably not a statistically signficant margin. But when all the polls are coming up with the same narrow margin, I think you can say that Menendez is now back on top.

Normally, an incumbent under 50% with that kind of narrow ‘lead’ is in trouble. But Menendez isn’t really quite the incumbent. And with the probable Democrat tide, I think that will be enough.

I’ll be curious to see how much the Republicans pour into this race over the next three weeks. It could end up being the race that decides who’s in the majority next year.

Rep. Chris “that ain’t torture, it’s sex” Shays (R-CT) has suddenly found his moral compass, blasting his own party’s campaign committee for distributing a flyer claiming his opponent wants to have coffee with the Taliban.

GOP grumblings about the White House not being prepared for a loss in November:

“They aren’t even planning for if they lose,” says a GOP insider who informally counsels the West Wing. If Democrats win control of the House, as many analysts expect, Republicans predict that Bush’s final two years in office will be marked by multiple congressional investigations and gridlock.

“The Bush White House has had no relationship with Congress,” said a Bush ally. “Beyond the Democrats, wait till they see how the Republicans–the ones that survive–treat them if they lose next month.”

A Democratic victory of any kind will be a rude welcome back to the reality-based world for Bush. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.

The federal corruption investigation of Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA) first reported yesterday by McClatchy has been confirmed by the Philadelphia Inquirer and the AP. h/t Laura Rozen.

Bob J. Perry strikes again. The GOP stalwart and financier of 527 groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in 2004 and the Economic Freedom Fund this year has donated $2 million to a 527 group called Americans for Honesty on Issues, according to a recently filed FEC report.

According to the New York Times:

The leader of Americans for Honesty on Issues is Sue Walden, a close ally of Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader who left Congress amid questions on ethics and fund-raising. Ms. Walden has also raised money for President Bush and served as an adviser to Kenneth L. Lay, the former chief executive of Enron who died in July.

The group has already spent almost $1.5 million in attack ads on Democratic candidates. MyDD has the rundown on which districts Americans for Honesty on Issues has targeted.

Update: FEC reports this past week show that Bob Perry has also contributed $1 million to the Free Enterprise Fund, which has begun running TV ads against Ned Lamont in Connecticut.

The LA Times interviews former White House political director and current GOP national chairman Ken Mehlman on his role in the Abramoff scandal:

“I was a gateway,” Mehlman said in an interview. “It was my job to talk to political supporters, to hear their requests, and hand them on to policymakers.”

Mehlman said he had known Abramoff since the mid-1990s and would listen to his requests along with those of other influential Republicans.

“I know Jack,” Mehlman said. “I certainly recall that if he and others wanted to meet I would have met with them, as I would have met with lots of people.”

Contrast that with Mehlman’s “Jack who?” defense earlier this year in Vanity Fair: “Abramoff is someone who we don’t know a lot about. We know what we read in the paper.”

Remember the good old days when someone like Mehlman could get busted for such a baldfaced lie and there would be serious adverse consequences, personally and politically?

We’ve been beaten up pretty good around here at TPM for what some perceive as our insufficient levels of enthusiasm for Ned Lamont and of loathing for Joe Lieberman.

I won’t speak for Josh, but my second biggest dread about the November election (the biggest being the GOP retaining both chambers) is that control of the Senate comes down to Lieberman–and he defects to the GOP.

Now you may think that’s because legions of Lamontites–and several personal friends–will have my neck if that happens. And it’s true that I don’t relish the I told you so’s. But the prospect of Joe Lieberman continuing to play a central role in our national politics after what he has said and done in this campaign fills me with a worse dread than simply having been wrong about Joe staying with the Dems.

Here’s Joe’s latest weasel:

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a lifelong Democrat and student of politics, blanked when asked if America would be better off with his party regaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives.

A Democratic victory would immeasurably boost the influence of two Connecticut friends, U.S. Reps. Rosa L. DeLauro and John B. Larson, and provide a counterbalance to the Republican Senate and White House.

“Uh, I haven’t thought about that enough to give an answer,” Lieberman said, as though Democrats’ strong prospects for recapturing the House hadn’t been the fall’s top political story.

He was similarly elusive about the race for governor. Is he voting for John DeStefano Jr., a Democrat and mayor of the city where Lieberman has lived since the 1960s?

“I’m, uh, I’m having,” he stammered, then laughed and said his decision would remain private.

Joe, Joe, Joe . . . more here.

Didn’t President Bush, in a much ballyhoed press conference in September, declare that the CIA’s secret prisoners were being transferred to Gitmo for trial by military tribunals? That is what he said, right?

So what’s this about?

A suspected al Qaeda leader, accused of being involved in September 11 and planning the 2004 Madrid train bombings, has been imprisoned in a secret U.S. jail for the past year, Spain’s El Pais newspaper reported on Sunday.

Mustafa Setmarian, 48, a Syrian with Spanish citizenship, was captured in Pakistan in October 2005 and is held in a prison operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Pakistani and European security service officials told El Pais.

A spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Spain declined to comment on the report.

Setmarian’s 2005 capture was reported in May of this year after the United States put a $5 million bounty on the head of the alleged founder of al Qaeda’s Spanish network.

A photograph of the red-haired Setmarian has been removed from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Intelligence’s most-wanted Web page.

Not that making it to Gitmo guarantees any sort of due process, as this NYT piece today makes clear:

Mr. Ginco, a college student living in the United Arab Emirates, had gone to Afghanistan in 2000 after running away from his strict Muslim father. He was soon imprisoned by the Taliban, and tortured by operatives of Al Qaeda until, he said, he falsely confessed to being a spy for Israel and the United States.

But rather than help Mr. Ginco return home, American soldiers detained him again. Nearly five years later, he remains in the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — in part, it appears, on the strength of a propaganda videotape made by his torturers.

Sigh.

In-depth profile of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) in today’s Lexington Herald-Leader, a taste of what we have to look forward to if the GOP retains control of the Senate and if, as expected, McConnell becomes the new majority leader:

In the early 1970s, Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr., a young and intense Republican lawyer, strode into the political science class he taught at the University of Louisville.

He didn’t introduce himself to his students. He went straight to the chalkboard and scribbled.

“I am going to teach you the three things you need to build a political party,” he said, and backed away to reveal the words: “Money, money, money.”

. . .

“He’s completely dogged in his pursuit of money. That’s his great love, above everything else,” said Marshall Whitman, who watched McConnell as an aide to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and as a Christian Coalition lobbyist.

. . .

Some senators shy away from fund-raising duties because of ethical concerns. Top donors tell senators what they want from upcoming votes, and top donors get special treatment, said retired Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo. Their calls to Senate offices are returned first, Simpson said, and their wishes are a priority when action is taken.

“I didn’t enjoy it at all,” Simpson said. “I just felt uncomfortable.”

Yet McConnell never blinks, Simpson said.

“When he asked for money, his eyes would shine like diamonds,” Simpson said. “He obviously loved it.”

Not a flattering profile.