Today's installment of campaign-related news items from across the country.
* Confronted with evidence he lied about his ties to a controversial supplement maker, Ben Carson said yesterday, "[T]hat obviously comes from someone on that debate stage. That’s a submarine that’s sent by them." I'm not entirely sure what that means.
* In the new national Quinnipiac poll, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, 53% to 35%.
* On a related note, the latest statewide poll in South Carolina shows Clinton cruising to an easy win in the early nominating state, where she leads Sanders, 71% to 15%.
* In the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, Clinton enjoys modest leads in hypothetical match-ups against Marco Rubio, Donald Trump, and Jeb Bush. She ties Ben Carson, however. (The match-ups were similar for Bernie Sanders, but the poll didn't include identical head-to-head scenarios, making direct comparisons difficult.)
* Trump has managed to remain a top-tier contender without airing any campaign ads, though that's about to change. The New York developer will hit the airwaves in early nominating states this week. "We’re going to start some ads over the next, I think, two days," he told Fox News last night. "Certainly in Iowa, we’re going to start ads and in New Hampshire, and I think in South Carolina too.... I feel guilty because I’ve spent nothing, because we haven’t need it. But we are going to start spending a little bit of money over the next three or four weeks.”
* Republican presidential hopeful John Kasich is the latest GOP candidate to announce his plan to eliminate a cabinet agency. The Ohio governor says he wants to scrap the Commerce Department.
* Speaking of the cabinet, Jeb Bush doesn't want to eliminate the Department of the Interior, but he apparently wants to move it from Washington, D.C., to a Western state. He said the move would encourage "better" management of federal land in those areas.