It's worth remembering that the polling at this stage of the race is useless. Actually, it's probably worse than that, since the political press corps obsesses over this trivia at the expense of doing any actually useful reporting about the candidates.

I wanted to find a story from around the same time frame in 2007 to illustrate how misguided this polling can be. It didn't take long. Here's the lead of a June 7, 2007 Washington Post article:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York holds a solid lead over her rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination, while the contest for the Republican nomination appears even more unsettled than it did when it began five months ago, according to a new Washington Post/ABC News poll.

Clinton's lead remains steady over her two principal challengers, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, and the poll contains troubling news for both. Obama's support has softened noticeably, highlighting the challenge he faces in turning high interest in his candidacy into votes. Edwards, meanwhile, has lost ground nationally over the past few months.

Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani remains the leader in the GOP race, but the poll suggests that the surge in support he received after declaring his candidacy has stalled and that his backing of abortion rights and gay rights has caused more Republicans to turn away from him.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona runs second in the GOP race, but the poll results raise questions about his candidacy. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has spent millions on television ads already this year, has in some ways become an attractive alternative over the past few months, and former Sen. Fred D. Thompson of Tennessee shows the potential to quickly make the GOP contest a four-way battle.

The poll provides a revealing snapshot of the 2008 presidential race as the candidates gather this week for a pair of debates in New Hampshire, which will hold the first primary next year.

In 2000, President Bill Clinton released Air Force records on the U.S. bombing of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam. As Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan wrote (Walrus, 10/06):

The still-incomplete database (it has several "dark" periods) reveals that from October 4, 1965, to August 15, 1973, the United States dropped far more ordnance on Cambodia than was previously believed: 2,756,941 tons' worth, dropped in 230,516 sorties on 113,716 sites. Just over 10 percent of this bombing was indiscriminate, with 3,580 of the sites listed as having "unknown" targets and another 8,238 sites having no target listed at all.

Estimates of Cambodian casualties as a result of the U.S. bombing vary; in 1975, the Washington Post (4/24/75) estimated 450,000 dead and wounded.

So now the current secretary of state visited the country that the United States so ruthlessly bombed in the not-so-distant past. According to the report of the visit in the New York Times (11/2/10), Hillary Clinton expressed support for justice for the victims--that is, the victims of the horrific violence perpetrated by Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge, which rose to power in the wake of the U.S. assault on the country.  As the Times put it:

Mrs. Clinton repeated an argument that has been used by proponents of the trials, saying that "a country that is able to confront its past is a country that can overcome it."

Clinton's attitude stands in contrast to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, who readers are told believes the country should "dig a hole and bury the past." Clinton also said: "Countries that are held prisoner to their past can never break those chains and build the kind of future that their children deserve.... Although I am well aware the work of the tribunal is painful, it is necessary to ensure a lasting peace."

It is a remarkable testimony to the strength of our propaganda system that the Newspaper of Record can run a story like this with a straight face, with a top U.S. official urging accountability for atrocities in a country where the U.S. government committed so many. Those atrocities, apparently, have long ago been given the Hun Sen treatment.

And bonus irony: A few weeks ago Clinton introduced Kissinger before his address at a State Department conference on the U.S. war on Indochina (AlterNet, 9/28/10). Presumably she was equally concerned with the need to hold Kissinger accountable for his crimes, and is seeking a tribunal that will do the "painful" work necessary to build a future our children deserve.

Alas, "Scumbag spotted!" is Nolan's cry when writing that

Penn's latest (old, and none too insightful) "Microtrend" column is about "glamping"--glamorous camping. It ran last weekend. By Monday, according to an internal email obtained by Gawker, Burson was already trying to recruit companies from the industry featured in the column as clients.

Nolan goes on to remind us that "Penn was canned as Hillary Clinton's campaign strategist after it emerged that his firm was trying to get a contract to do PR work for the nation of Colombia—work that went against Clinton's own political position." It's particularly interesting to recall that scandal as "a story that the WSJ broke," considering how, as Nolan puts it, "moonlighting from his PR career has already screwed a politician," but "now he's screwing a newspaper the same way."