SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 10:52 P.M. ET:

THIS'LL SOLVE THE PROBLEM – Brilliant officials in Chicago are mulling a so-called "violence tax" on guns and ammunition.  They say the funds will be used to fight the vast increase in city homicides.  Murders are up 25% in Chicago this year.  As we all know, the cause of this increase is the lack of sufficient taxes paid by legitimate, law-abiding gun owners.  Slap the tax on, the murders stop.  Right?  Wrong.  New York reduced its murder rate by 80% without adding a single penny to taxes on guns or ammo.  Maybe New York understands that people commit crimes.  The bullets don't fire themselves, although of course an untaxed bullet might.

MORE GOOD NEWS FOR MITT – The respected IBD/TIPP poll, which started its tracker yesterday, reports Mitt Romney leading by five percent among likely voters.  The poll has him at 48.7%, with Obama at 43.7.  We caution again that polls are snapshots in time.  This one, although carefully taken, has a wider lead for Romney than other polls, but all major polls show movement in Romney's direction.  Karl Rove predicted this evening that the Romney bounce would continue to grow over the next few days.

FROM A CBS REPORTER – We don't normally associate CBS News with sharp criticism of the Obama administration, but the Obamans got it big time from Lara Logan, the CBS foreign correspondent who was beaten and sexually assaulted recently by a mob in peace-loving Cairo.  Logan, in a speech, called the Obama line that the Taliban was being defeated in Afghanistan a "major lie."  Logan also said she hoped the U.S. would exact revenge for the killing of our ambassador in Libya.  Tough lady with some very politically incorrect views. 

OKAY BY THEM – The Romney camp has not raised objection to ABC's Martha Raddatz moderating the vice- presidential debate tomorrow night, after it was revealed that a young Barack Obama was a guest at Raddatz's wedding in 1991.  She wed a man who is now an Obama appointee to the FCC.  The Romney position is correct.  The wedding was 21 years ago, the marriage broke up, Obama was actually a guest of the guy Raddatz eventually tossed out, and who knows what she actually thinks of these guys.  Judge her by the job she does.

October 10, 2012