Looking for coverage of the second debate, held January 29? Go to this link.

I think my first reaction to tonight's debate was that if this is what we have to look forward to in the Republican primary, political fact-checkers are on the gravy train. There was so much unsubstantiated he said/she said in this debate that there will likely be a feeding frenzy over parsing the "facts" the candidates were throwing out.

That being said, I'm going to have to give the win in the debate to Senator Hutchison. I'll tell you why in a second -- but first I have to say that I *want* to give the win to Debra Medina.

You know, if there's anything I've learned from watching Texas politics for the last couple of decades, it's that how the field looks before filing starts doesn't tend to have much in common with how it looks by the end of the filing period. So I tend to save prognostications for after some of the inevitable mayhem has hit the fan.

And now some of it has. Ross Ramsey, of Texas Weekly fame and now with the Texas Tribune, is reporting that gubernatorial candidate Tom Schieffer will be dropping out of the race this afternoon and endorsing Bill White.

Over the past week, the Texas Democratic Party has released a Top Ten list of the biggest blunders of Governor Rick Perry's tenure. You could go to their site to check out all ten -- or you could get the executive summary of Perry failures in their under-two-minute YouTube clip:

The speech is being called by many one of the best of his career. Watch the full speech here, courtesy of MSNBC, along with our take on what it means for health care reform and for his presidency.

Multiple news sources are reporting that Senator Edward Kennedy, Teddy to his family and Ted to most of us, passed away early this morning after a long struggle with brain cancer. He was 77.

As nice as it would be, we don't always have time to catch every big story that hits during a week. So here's a roundup of the notable events of the week.

CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite passed away yesterday at the age of 92. Dubbed "The Most Trusted Man in America," the Edward R. Murrow recruit made a name for himself, among many other things, by having the courage to report, against the U.S. military's line, that the Vietnam War was unwinnable. Glenn Greenwald at Salon speaks to why Cronkite's passing is such a tremendous loss, and why no one in the mainstream media grasps the enormous irony of their eulogizing him. His article is an absolute must-read. If you want the takeaway, you can get the general idea from the two quotes he uses to lead off his article:

The New York Times is reporting that CIA director Leon Panetta has informed the House and Senate intelligence committees that the CIA hid from Congress a secret counterterrorism program by direct order of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

I've always believed that forced arbitration agreements are one of the most stark displays of unchecked corporate power beating down The Little Guy. The idea that companies that are big enough and that supply services that one will nearly inevitably need -- for example credit card companies, cell phone companies, home builders, and other such industries that are never very popular with consumers -- can by merit of their size and the standards of their profession avoid all accountability in the judiciary, the one institution designed to be the protector-of-last-resort of the rights of the few, is appalling to me. But I was left numb by the idea that it was even possible that forced arbitration be enforceable in a rape case.