For this episode of On The Record, we speak with Russell Langley, an attorney and political consultant.

The first big newspaper endorsements are out, and on the GOP side they are a tad surprising. The Democratic endorsements split between the top two in the top tier — the Boston Globe endorsed Barack Obama and the Des Moines Register endorsed Hillary Clinton. The Republican endorsement from the Globe? John McCain. For the Register? John McCain. What's going on here?

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott waited until the last minute and the very best (read: least covered) part of the news cycle to issue his opinion on Tom Craddick's behavior during the last session and how powerful the Speaker actually is. That opinion largely avoided those topics, instead agreeing with Craddick on procedural matters. You can catch the pdf here and Harvey Kronberg's updates here.

This Mailbag deals with figures we've seen often in the news this week, such as Chris Comer, Dana Perino, and Mike Huckabee.

If the Republicans played nice on Wednesday, the Democrats took it to the next level of nice in yesterday's debate.

Well, it's about that time: today is the last Democratic debate before the Iowa caucuses. After yesterday's, um, "calm" Republican debate, many are wondering if we'll be seeing the same today.

The debate will be airing in just a few minutes, at 1 p.m. Central time, on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, C-SPAN 3, some PBS stations, and Bob's Crab Shack and Auto Repair. OK, I kid about that last one. Tune in, or follow along here as I update this thread with our up-to-the-minute play-by-play you've come to expect of our debate coverage. EDIT: As before, our analysis follows.

Remembering that Iowa voters have a history of being turned off by negative, direct, rhetorical fist-on-face contact, the Republican field (now with more Alan Keyes!) debated for the final time before the Iowa caucus yesterday afternoon and took it nice and easy on each other.

There's an all-out war erupting between Congress and the White House over the appropriations bills which are to fund government for the next year.

You've done the advance work. You've called everyone. You've invested campaign time and campaign money into putting together several days' worth of events.

Source: ahhyeah's photostream, flickr

Then an ice storm ruins everything. Now what?

All my rowdy friends are coming over to see Phil King rule that the state doesn't have jurisdiction over this business-to-business dispute. Jerry Jones and Roger Goodell, Commissioner of the NFL, were in Austin yesterday to make their respective cases about whether the NFL Network should be available on basic cable or if it should be some sort of premium charge.