KEYES TO RATINGS Alan

For a brief moment at the start of yesterday's Republican debate, political junkies across the land collectively paused to contemplate a single question: What the crap is Alan Keyes doing on stage?

This brain-buster, made more vexing given that fellow basement-dwelling candidates Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich have been banned from today's debate sponsored by the same folks, can be unraveled only by combing through the eligibility guidelines established by the Des Moines Register, one of the nations most prominent and widely read ... Registers. The guidelines required, among other things, that candidates who receive at least 1 percent in an October poll conducted by the Register are to be included. Scoring a hefty 2 percent, Ambassador Keyes, who ran for president in 1996 and 2000 (and was arrested while protesting his exclusion from a debate during his '96 run), cleared that hurdle with room to spare.

• Murdoch Officially Takes Dow Jones
• Runway Snoozer Creeps Toward Slow Death