Not a great night for McCain

I wasn't going to post during the debate. But I dozed off, and woke up to watch McCain and Romney going at it on the timetables McCain says Romney advocated to withdraw from the war in Iraq. McCain seems petulant and petty tonight, his contempt for Romney barely disguised. McCain's not telling the truth about Romney, and he all but admitted it, justifying it by pointing to the millions of dollars Romney spent on negative ads aimed at McCain and Huckabee.

Responding to a question about whether Romney was qualified to be commander-in-chief, McCain made a crack about Romney's experience selling and buying companies and eliminating people's jobs.

Huckabee's whining incessantly about not getting equal time. He's lucky he's up there. It's not as if anyone has voted for him lately. And Ron Paul is even luckier.

Ron Paul's ghostwriter

Julian Sanchez and David Weigel, writing at Reason Online, say the identity of the person who authored racist, homophobic screeds in Ron Paul's newsletters is an open secret. They identify him as Llewellyn Rockwell Jr., Paul's former congressional chief of staff, who promoted a strategy aimed at fusing the libertarian right with paleoconservatives.

Rockwell denied the allegation when contacted by The New Republic, and he refused to talk with Reason. But Sanchez and Weigel have gathered a lot of material. And as they say, Paul's "new supporters, many of whom are first encountering libertarian ideas through the Ron Paul Revolution, deserve a far more frank explanation than the campaign has as yet provided of how their candidate's name ended up atop so many ugly words."

The truth about Ron Paul

In my latest for the Guardian, I take a look at Ron Paul's past association with racist, homophobic newsletters, as well as persistent rumors that he continues to dally with some of the more fragrant elements of the extreme right. What is the truth? It's time for the major media to dig in and find out.