New national poll: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in dead heat. That and other political news of the day in today’s Election Central Morning Roundup.

Breaking: Libby gets 30 months.

Update: Libby has also been fined $250,000 and will face two years of probation after he completes his prison sentence. We have video up here.

You may know Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) as Mr. Internet tubes or one of the senate’s resident porkmeisters. But in today’s episode of TPMtv we try to figure out why VECO Corporation, a major oil services corporation in Alaska at the center of a major bribery scandal, was in charge of renovating the senator’s house …

Late Update: For a summary of today’s episode, click here.

Yet another bogus Hillary story.

Matt Drudge flacks a Boston Herald story that reversed the order of two photos of Hillary in order to suggest that she’d had “work” done on her face.

You may have seen yesterday, we showed video of Fox News Channel running video of Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) while discussing the indictment of Rep. Bill Jefferson (D-LA). We heard Fox was running an ‘apology’ at 1:15 PM this afternoon.

But it was pretty feeble.

The Fox anchor didn’t note that they’d shown video of one African-American congressman (Conyers) in place of another (Jefferson). They just said they’d “mistakenly run the wrong video” with no explanation of what the mistake was. I’m not sure what an ‘apology’ means one way or another. But it seems like a clarification was in order that the guy they showed, Conyers, actually didn’t get indicted for anything.

It is convenient for some to try to tarnish Conyers though since he’s played a lead role in investigating the Attorney Purge.

Late Update: Fox’s screwup was first reported yesterday by Josh Gerstein of The New York Sun.

Late Video Update: Here’s Fox’s ‘apology’:

Rep. Jefferson (D-LA) asks for leave from committee assignments.

The news today is all-Libby, all-Jefferson all the time, as it should be. But that’s not all that’s going on today. This afternoon, Bradley Schlozman is going before the Senate Judiciary Committee along with Todd Graves, the canned former US Attorney from Kansas City who Schlozman apparently played a key role in getting fired. Schlozman replaced Graves under the Attorney General’s extraordinary powers under the USA Patriot Act.

Schlozman’s testimony is key because he was a central figure in the Bush Justice Department’s efforts to use bogus ‘vote fraud’ charges to limit voting by African-Americans and Latinos in key swing states across the country.

TPMmuckraker.com will be reporting directly from Capitol Hill.

Wow. The testimony in the US Attorney Purge story hearings has occasionally been a little combustible. But there’s never been anything remotely like the exchange going on right now between Bradley Schlozman (chief minority vote suppressor and serial dissembler) and Sen. Leahy. I’m not sure I’ve seen anything like it. We’re going to have running updates and video. But it’s on CSPAN 3 if you want to watch it in real time. Schlozman is … well, you’ve just got to see it.

Late Update: Here’s a taste, with Leahy pressing Schlozman on the ACORN indictments he brought in Missouri just days prior to the 2006 elections:

Hearing Update: Brad Schlozman tries to dodge Sen. Leahy’s (D-VT) questions about why he violated DOJ guidelines in bringing a rushed (and bogus) vote fraud case in time to affect the November election.

Rep. John Conyers’ (D-MI) office not happy about Fox News Channel’s substituting video of Rep. Conyers in place of video for indicted Rep. Jefferson of Louisiana.

Just out from the congressman’s office …

Yesterday, Fox News Channel broke the story of Rep. William Jefferson’s indictment with video of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers greeting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at a recent Judiciary Committee hearing. The network apologized on-air for airing the wrong video; however, they did not personally apologize to Mr. Conyers or describe the video they aired the previous day. Chairman Conyers responded today:

“Fox News has a history of inappropriate on-air mistakes that are neither fair, nor balanced. This type of disrespect for people of color should no longer be tolerated. I am personally offended by the network’s complete disregard for accuracy in reporting and lackluster on-air apology.” – House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI)

Here’s the original video …