Here is your Morning Brief for the morning of October 11, 2012. Give us your feedback below and tune in to The Chad Hasty Show for these and many more topics from 8:30 to 11 am.

Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images
Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images
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1. VP Debate

The Vice Presidential debate is tonight at 8pm Central time and if you are like me, you will be watching and hoping for a good night from Paul Ryan. Republicans are trying to lower expectations ahead of tonight's debate and I don't blame them. Everyone I speak with seems to think that Ryan will wipe the floor with Biden. I hope it happens, but remember this isn't Biden's first debate.

So who has the most pressure riding on tonight's debate? In my opinion, the Democrats. The Obama campaign is hoping that Joe Biden, the gaffe machine, will stay on message and not say anything stupid. They are counting on Biden to stop the Romney/Ryan surge. All Paul Ryan has to do is sound smart, but not wonky. He has to be able to relate to everyone which I believe he can do.

Will you be watching tonight? What do you hope to hear from the candidates tonight?

2. Romney in the Lead (link)

Investors.com has some good news for Mitt Romney and his campaign. Romney now leads the President by 5 points.

Mitt Romney widened his lead to 5 points over Barack Obama in the latest IBD/TIPP tracking poll as the full effect of the challenger's win in last week's debate became clearer.

The latest release of the poll results shows Romney at 48.7%, Obama at 43.7% and 6.1% unsure. Romney's lead was 2 in the prior day's reading.

The tracking poll is a trailing average calculated daily. The latest reading is based on data collected from Oct. 4, the day after the first presidential debate, through Oct. 9. The prior day's 2-point spread included polling done before last Wednesday's debate, in which Romney was widely seen as the victor.

"The jump from 2 points to 5 is because the days prior to the debate were removed from analysis," explained Raghavan Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, IBD's pollster. "The impact of the debate is fully reflected in the latest data."

That impact has been dramatic. Obama enjoyed leads of 3 to 7 points in most polls during the last two weeks of September, but he has fallen behind by 2 to 4 points in polls done during and after the debate. IBD's 5-point spread is the widest yet.

It, along with a 4-point Romney advantage reported by Pew Research in its polling, have pulled the average of national polls tracked by the widely followed RealClearPolitics website into Romney's favor for the first time.

"The 5-point lead is driven by two things," said Mayur. "One is enthusiasm among Republicans, and the other is independents breaking for Romney in huge numbers."

The breakdown is pretty interesting as well. For instance, of those in the 18-44 age range, Obama only gets about 50% of their support while Romney receives 44% with 6% undecided. Romney also leads Obama in every household income level except for those under 30k. You check out the rest of the breakdowns here.

3. UT & the Supreme Court (link)

The Supreme Court is taking a look at race in college admissions. Their main focus yesterday was how to define "critical mass" according to the Texas Tribune.

How to define a “critical mass” of minority students was the question of the day on Wednesday during a heated Supreme Court oral argument on the consideration of race in the University of Texas at Austin’s admissions processes.

Nine years ago, in the case Grutter v. Bollinger, the high court upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s practice of considering the race of applicants to guarantee a “critical mass” of minority students — so long as there were no quotas, and that the practice was narrowly tailored to consider all other factors ahead of race.

The court is now reconsidering the role of race in admissions in the case of Abigail Fisher, a white student who was denied admission to UT in 2008. Claiming that minority students with less academic and extracurricular achievement were accepted over her, she sued the university on the grounds that it violated the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

“There was no effort in this case to establish a target for critical mass,” Bert Rein, Fisher’s attorney, said of UT’s admissions policy. “Absent of the use of race [in admissions decisions], can we establish a critical mass” of minority students?

What do you think the Supreme Court will do?

4. Tapper & Henry Want Answers (link)

When it comes to reporters or correspondents, Jake Tapper from ABC News is one of my favorite. He is one of those reporters that will go after both sides and that is something rare these days. Yesterday, Tapper got into a back and forth with White House mis-information director, Jay Carney, about the attack in Libya. According to Hot Air:

If you’ll recall, in the immediate wake of the breaking news of the riots in Cairo and Benghazi in September, the biggest question on the mainstream media’s collective mind was not anything in the vein of, Is any of this related to terrorism and has the Obama administration adequately protected our security interests?, but rather, Did Mitt Romney get ahead of himself by issuing a statement that criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the situation?

President Obama ran with the media’s spin, positing on 60 Minutes that America doesn’t need a president who would “shoot first and ask questions later,” but given the ensuing fallout (from this-wasn’t-terrorism to this-was-clearly-terrorism, and what with sending out Ambassador Rice to paint a false narrative to the American people and deriding a “disgusting, reprehensible” internet video in front of the United Nations, etcetera)… wasn’t it maybe President Obama and his administration who actually jumped the gun on this whole thing? ABC reporter Jack Tapper put the question to White House press secretary Jay Carney this afternoon:

TAPPER: President Obama, shortly after the attack told “60 Minutes” that regarding Mitt Romney’s response to the attacks, specifically in Egypt, the president said that Romney has a tendency to “shoot first and aim later.” Given the fact that so much was made out of the video that apparently had absolutely nothing to do with the attack in Benghazi, that there wasn’t even a protest outside the Benghazi post, didn’t President Obama shoot first and aim later? …

CARNEY: Right. I’m not disputing that there was a protest, but what we said at the time was that the intelligence community assessed that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo, ok? Again, this is a moving picture, and people who, on the night of an attack, or the day after, claim they know all the facts without making clear that what we know is based on preliminary information aren’t being straight. In some cases trying to politicize a situation that should not be politicized.

You can check out the video and a video of Ed Henry of FOX News getting into an exchange with Carney in the link above. It's great stuff.

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These and many more topics coming up on today’s edition of The Chad Hasty Show. Tune in mornings 8:30-11 am on NewsTalk 790 KFYO, streaming online at kfyo.com, and now on your iPhone and Android device with the radioPup App. All guest interviews can be heard online in our podcast section after the show at kfyo.com.

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