Page 1 Consider (10/05)

Has It Come to This? This makes the old "not beating my wife anymore" somehow seem respectable: Rep. Don Sherwood, a Republican fighting for re-election in northeastern Pennsylvania, says in a TV ad that he is "truly sorry" for cheating on his wife(!) but denies ever abusing(!) the woman he had the affair with. Maybe Mark Foley should have tried something like this. "I'm truly sorry for jerking off a teenager, but I swear I never rubbed him the wrong way." (AP)

Half-Price (That's All She Ever Heard): Drop what you're doing and get to the Beverly Hilton -- Cher's auctioning off her crap! (AH)

A Dick Army: So now Rep. Barney Fag Frank is weighing in on the Mark Foley scandal. Many people think Frank had a similar incident with a page back in the 1980s, but that was actually Gerry Studds (how's that for a built-in screen name), who back in '83 admitted to banging a 17-year-old boy. Frank was the one who "unknowingly" had the male prostitution ring being run out of his townhouse by the hooker (Steve Gobie) he'd hired through the personals. (Newsweek)

Washington Rules: Hewlett-Packard spies on its employees' communication -- which is conducted using company equipment -- and it leads to indictments by the California attorney general of five people including the former Chairwoman Patricia Dunn. President Bush violates the constitutional rights of all Americans and Congress repeatedly rewrites the law to give him carte blanche to do it forever more. I really don't get why those people even go to work (oh, to have access and power that they can abuse). (AP)

RIP: Johnny Apple of The New York Times died on Wednesday. Thanks for all the great stories. (WP)

Play of the Day: David Wright and the Mets beat the Dodgers 6-5 in Game 1 of the playoffs, but it's the bizarre double play that everyone's talking about. (AP)