It's either the morning after, or the mourning after -- take your choice.

Last night, Democrats got well and truly shellacked once again in a midterm election. It was so bad, it's pretty hard for Democrats to even attempt to gild the lily or spot that elusive silver lining. Republicans are consumed with glee, which they've well earned this year.

Because this was a rather momentous election with a power shift in the Senate, there is a lot to talk about when contemplating the aftermath. I'm just going to dive in and present my snap reactions to the new political situation, in no particular order. I will likely return to each of these subjects later on (in future columns) in far more detail, I should mention. For now, here are my disjointed thoughts on the aftermath of the 2014 midterm elections. Oh, and I should also state up front that I called at least three (and possibly even five or six) Senate elections wrong in my pre-election prediction column, but I think my House predictions will be less than ten seats off (possibly only five), when all the results are in. So I didn't do so hot in the crystal ball department this time around. So it goes.

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Happy Election Day, everyone! It being an off-year election, there will be no presidential race to dominate the news tonight as the election returns come in. The biggest races will be in the Senate, with political control of the chamber hanging in the balance. On the House side, the only real question is how many seats the Republicans will pick up. But there are plenty of interesting down-ballot races to watch, while waiting for Alaska's returns to come in late in the night (or, perhaps, the recounting of West Podunk's ballots). I thought, as a preview/guide to tonight's returns, it'd be worth the time to take a quick look at some of the other contests we may be hearing about this evening.

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We are now officially down to the wire for the 2014 midterm elections. How well will the Republicans do this year? Will the Democrats hold the line in the Senate? Tune in tomorrow night....

Until then, however, I'm posting my own election picks. I've been doing this since 2006, because I have always felt that political pundits -- who, after all, make their living predicting what is going to happen in the political world -- should not only make solid predictions before elections, but also show their own personal record. I've been saying this all along, in fact, but I have been remiss in adding up my own past record for midterm elections so far this year.

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Welcome to our annual frightfest! Every year, we provide two tales of shrieking horror -- one for Democrats and one for Republicans -- so sit back and prepare to be terrified right out of your cheap cardboard costume!

As always, Hallowe'en falls conveniently just before the election, so there is no shortage of possible horrors for both sides to contemplate. We've carved Jack O'Lanterns for each story, as we've done in years past. This year's Texas flag came out a little fuzzy (and a little curved -- it's tough carving rectangles on a quasi-spherical pumpkin!), but it's close enough for government work (as they say). Oh, and for anyone who was expecting a "Friday Talking Points" column today -- have no fear, it will return on schedule next week.

But on this, the spookiest of nights, go ahead and crank up the insane organ music and cue the clanking chains and screaming sound effects! Because it is time once again for our eerie tales of fright and horror for both Lefties and Righties. Enjoy, and have a happy Hallowe'en everyone!

Democratic Nightmare -- The Silence Of The Veto Pen

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There will be no original column today, for two reasons. The first is that I have a lot to do to get tomorrow's Hallowe'en column together (in other words: "those pumpkins won't carve themselves!"). The second reason is the San Francisco Giants won their third World Series in the past five years last night, in an exciting seventh game where the outcome hung in the balance right up to the last out in the bottom of the ninth inning. Leaving your humble author somewhat under the weather today, after last night's celebration. Ahem. Also: Go Giants!

Today, instead, I decided to ramble down Memory Lane, and put together all my Jack O'Lanterns from years past. Here is a chronological review of my history of political pumpkin art, starting before I even began blogging.

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We have now entered the homestretch of the 2014 midterm election season, with less than a week to go before Election Day. Many Senate races remain incredibly close, and Democrats got some welcome news this week from far up north.

As always, I interpret these races individually without resorting to "probability modeling" the way some professional poll-watchers do, so I am not going to definitively state that one party or the other has anything like "a 52 percent chance of winning control." Instead, I take a close look at the most recent polling and then contemplate any other factors (which is a fancy way of saying "seeing what my gut tells me") before assigning a state to any particular category.

Feel free to disagree with my picks in the comments. And, for reference, here's what I had to say about the races last week. OK, let's get on with it, shall we?

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With one week to go until the 2014 midterm elections, almost all of the punditocracy world is absolutely chomping at the bit for this cycle to already be over, so they can concentrate on the much-more-fun 2016 presidential election season. This is pretty obvious, with some media now swooning over Jeb Bush's possible candidacy and the Clintons out stumping for other Democrats (and being covered more in the news than the actual candidates).

This is because the punditocracy knows full well that the outcome of the upcoming election isn't going to matter all that much, in the grand scheme of things. Also, they know the public's pretty bored with midterms in general, and more than a little disgusted with Washington as a whole. Whether Harry Reid or Mitch McConnell is running the Senate, not a whole lot is expected to get done in the next two years. It'll either be stories of "House passes Republican bill, Senate passes Democratic bill, no compromise seen possible," or it'll be "Senate Democrats filibuster Republican House bill on floor, no compromise seen possible," or perhaps "Obama vetoes his 119th bill this year, no compromise seen possible." In terms of real-world outcomes, there is not a whole lot of difference between any of those, but those are really the only three possible results. This means that Washington might as well just shut down and go home for the next two years, and it also means the most exciting political storylines are going to come from the next presidential election.

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About a month ago, a debate erupted when Apple and Google announced they were going to start providing encryption services for smartphones that could not be cracked by anyone -- including the police. James Comey, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, was horrified at this prospect and began a public-relations push to convince the companies (and the public) that this was a terrible idea. He tried to get the companies to change their decision to (as he put it) "market something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law."

This was a heavy-handed attempt to put forth a novel idea: law enforcement is entitled to all your data, even if you try to encrypt it. Scary warnings accompanied this reasoning, about murderers and kidnappers (and worse) going free because law enforcement wouldn't be able to decrypt crucial data in time to foil the bad guys' plots. My response, at the time, can be summed up as: "Tough." Tough luck for the cops. In more detail: nowhere in the Constitution does it say that every citizen's private papers must be readable by the government. Quite the opposite, in fact. Why would Thomas Jefferson have had (and assumably used) cipher wheels if he thought governments had a right to read everything he wrote?

Sad to say, the California Highway Patrol just made the most convincing argument to date as to why the F.B.I. is wrong and Apple and Google are right to offer strong encryption to the public. A woman who was pulled over and arrested by a California Highway Patrol officer for drunk driving happened to notice that, after she got out of custody, her smartphone had sent photos to a number she didn't recognize. She was only able to figure this out because she had a tablet synced to the phone. The record of having sent the photos had been deleted from the phone, but it appeared on her tablet.

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A program note, before we get started: there will be no Friday Talking Points column next week. We have to make room for our traditional Hallowe'en column, where we try to scare the pants off of everyone across the political spectrum with spooky tales of what the upcoming election might mean (plus, we get to show off our politically-inspired Jack-o-lanterns). So don't miss that, but the Friday Talking Points column won't be back until after the election.

Campaign season has reached its peak, and is getting downright frenetic in all the big battleground Senate races. One of these is Kentucky, where first Democrats thought their candidate didn't have a chance, but then Alison Lundergan Grimes got some good polling numbers so the money is now flowing back in. Maybe some of it should go towards exposing what is supposed to -- no, really! -- be a pro-Mitch McConnell ad. An organization called the National Association of Realtors Congressional Fund tried to give McConnell a boost with a mailer. The only problem? Well, it's how they chose to present their message:

In large letters, you see "Mitch McConnell."

Below that, a sign with even larger letters: "FOR SALE."

Check the link out for the image of the mailer -- it's (pun intended) priceless!

A reader of ours in Kentucky also pointed out pointed out that the black line under the words "FOR SALE" is a flap on the mailer -- when you lift it up the word "SOLD" appears.

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That title, by my own standards here, should really be: "From The Archives -- Interview With Betty Medsger, Author Of The Burglary." I am reprinting the following interview I conducted earlier this year with a woman who was a young reporter in Ben Bradlee's newsroom around the time of Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. Since Betty Medsger is the only one I've ever personally been in touch with who knew and worked with Ben Bradlee, I thought it would be appropriate to mark his passing. Bradlee was a lion of the newspaper publishing industry, and deserves all the praise that is currently being heaped on him, and more. If you didn't read the series when I first published it this spring, follow the links to the two-part book review, and (once again) I highly recommend this book to one and all. The story of the Media, Pennsylvania burglary of the F.B.I. office is one that is not well known, but that doesn't make it any less important in today's debate over secret surveillance by government agencies.

Originally published March 26, 2014

Earlier this week, I wrote an extensive book review of former Washington Post reporter Betty Medsger's The Burglary (2014, Alfred A. Knopf). This book chronicles a break-in at the Media, Pennsylvania, branch office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 1971, and the subsequent release to the public of files proving the F.B.I. was spending something like 40 percent of its time spying on and harassing political groups and individuals that J. Edgar Hoover didn't approve of. The burglars, who operated under the name "Citizens' Commission to Investigate the F.B.I.," were never caught, despite a five-year F.B.I. manhunt involving more than 200 agents. None of the burglars had ever even been publicly identified before Medsger's book was published.

This was a historic burglary, to put it mildly. It was also the first time modern newspapers were faced with the ethical question of whether to publish news stories which had as their sole source stolen government documents that arrived anonymously in the mail. The Washington Post broke the story forty-three years ago this Monday, while both the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times (the other two newspapers who received the files) missed the scoop.

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