In an interview last Thursday with Reno, Nevada, station KTVN, Ann Romney said her chief concern with her husband winning the presidency would be his "mental well-being," adding, "I have all the confidence in the world in his ability, in his decisiveness and his leadership skills, in his understanding of the economy, in his understanding of what's missing right now in the economy - you know, pieces that are missing to get this jumpstarted. So for me I think it would just be the emotional part of it."

Obviously, in context, she was not suggesting her husband couldn't handle stress well, just that she knows the presidency is a stressful job and would be emotionally taxing on the man she loves. But to MSNBC's Martin Bashir, it was an opportunity to run a segment on his October 1 program where he strongly suggested that Romney may not be mentally fit for duty as president. [MP3 audio here; video embedded at bottom of post]

After having already used her appearance on Wednesday’s The View show on ABC to defend author Joe McGinniss’s claim that Sarah Palin was acting like a Nazi trying to intimidate him, Joy Behar again defended McGinniss on the same day’s Joy Behar Show on HLN, and suggested that Palin is responsible for making her children into targets for daring to let the public see her family – as most politicians do – while she was running for Vice President. Behar: "The other thing is that isn`t she the one who put her kids in the spotlight in the first place? I mean, they, at the convention, when they were passing that kid out more than a joint at a Grateful Dead concert. Remember that? I mean, she started it, as far as I can tell."

Guest Lizz Winstead, co-creator of the Daily Show, then chimed in that Palin had already written about her "dumb life": "She already wrote a book about her own dumb life anyway, and, as far as I can tell, when Joe McGinniss writes about Sarah Palin, he doesn`t go into her personal life. He`s writing about whether or not she has a modicum of skill to run anything."

Don't be surprised if McCain '08 campaign adviser Nicolle Wallace passes up future chances to vent for Rachel Maddow.

Wallace did not appear on the Maddow show, agreeing instead to go on the record off-camera with her criticisms of Sarah Palin's new book, "Going Rogue: An American Life."

Maddow told viewers of her MSNBC show Tuesday that John McCain held a conference call Nov. 13 and asked that if they wanted to respond to Palin's book, to "at least avoid being interviewed about the book on TV," Maddow said --

The left has gotten a lot of "giggles" over the term "teabaggers" in describing Americans who attend the tea parties. For those of you who don't know, teabagging is a perverse sexual term. It is interesting to me that the left not only knew the term, but seemed very comfortable using it. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised.

Those having the most fun have been CNN's Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC and frequent guest pundit Ana Marie Cox. Last week I posted about tweeting with Ana marie Cox where she promised me she would stop using the term if I donated to a charity she was sponsoring for research in colon cancer in memory of Tony Snow. I donated $100 and was her top contributor. She thanked me and promised she would stop. She even asked if "teabaggist" would be cheating, and I said yes it would be.