South Carolina Republicans moved their presidential primary to January 19, creating a chain reaction among other early primary states. Get ready - you might see the first votes in 2008's presidential election cast in 2007.

We've reached that part of the summer where not much is shaking. The Lege is out of session (and not yet in a special session, if that's going to happen), and it's the wrong summer for much campaign news to be happening outside of the presidential variety. In the last few days, though, there have been a few developments here at home concerning some state rep races and Senate District 10 in Tarrant County, where Republican State Senator Kim Brimer might be vulnerable.

If you were waiting for fireworks at last night's debate or hoped to see some interesting changes to the candidates' overall strategies, well, you got what you were looking for.

It's a little early for any endorsements to come out, but you may not hear of many (or any) labor endorsements during the primaries, no matter who wins tonight's AFL-CIO debate at Soldier Field in Chicago, which George will be liveblogging. Join him tonight from 6:00 PM Central. Join us below for some pre-game talk about NAFTA and endorsements.

The junior Senator was in El Paso yesterday, talking about the need to increase border security and saying that the key isn't a big border fence. Which is weird, because he voted for a big border fence. Now he is backing off of that assertion, or at least he engaged in a little quibbling and quantifying about it when he was in front of the El Paso Chamber.

The biggest news over the weekend, more or less, is that Senator Clinton had a decent welcome at Yearly Kos.

This week's mailbag has a little bit of everything, from yuks to some kind of serious examination of why a multi-party system, while democralicious in other nations, just isn't happening here at home.

Congress is getting ready to pack it in and hit the road, so there's been a lot of action on bills this week. Since the Senate passed the ethics reform bill on to the White House yesterday, we will now learn the truth: will George Bush completely veto ethics? Forever?

Forget what the polls about Congressional approval tell you — House Democrats are all set to roll over any GOP challenge in 2008.

The Senate is arguably the world's most exclusive club, but it is not immune to scandals and setbacks. Senator Ted Stevens (R - Alaska) might be in trouble.