Every day we ask influential politicos to send us their top three bullet points that are driving the day's conversation inside and outside Washington.

RedState.Com Editor Erick-Woods Erickson:

– The President goes to Texas. Will he announce disaster assistance for the fires?

– John Boehner draws a line in the sand on the debt ceiling. But will he move the line like the House GOP did on spending cuts?

– Forget politics for just a minute - pray for the folks along the Mississippi River. You know it's bad when even snakes are seeking higher ground.

Senior Political Columnist for TheDailyBeast.com John Avlon:

– Pakistan Scrutiny Intensifies: Talking to OBL’s three widows is a small concession given the intensity of questions Pakistan will be facing going forward. The divisions between the ISI, the military and the elected government are clearer than ever – and the USA’s long-term strategic alliance with India just got stronger. Predator drone strikes into Pakistan have quieted – for now – but they will ratchet back up with actionable intelligence from the OBL HQ. Two of the many open questions: how much cooperation will the USA’s billions in aid get us; and how secure are their nukes?

– NY-26 Special Election Heats Up: The fight is on in Jack Kemp’s old district and Democrat Kathy Hochul seems to be doing surprisingly well in the polls. In part, this is a measure of the aging population and the backlash against Medicare Reform proposals put forward by Paul Ryan. Sadly, Medi-scare still works. John Boehner sees the race as an important enough bell-weather to campaign personally for GOP nominee Jane Corwin, but a Tea Party candidate running as an independent, Jack Davis, is polling north of 20%, dividing the center-right vote. Can anyone spell Scozzafava?

– Newt Announces: The GOP 2012 field just got more crowded and contentious but no clearer. Fresh on the heels of a NYT front-page piece on his wife Callista, the architect of the 1994 Republican Revolution is making a final stab at history and announcing a presidential run on Wednesday. But what we’ve really got is a Tale of Two Newts: the thought leader and the base-panderer. For the clearest example of this year’s Newt, contrast his ‘red-white-and-blue agenda’ 2007 book ‘Real Change’ with his ‘Kenyan anti-Colonial’ rhetoric from earlier this year. Sadly, it seems as though he’s calculated that irresponsibility is the clearest path to this year's GOP nomination.

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