Toric Degenerations of GIT Quotients, Chow Quotients, and bar{M_(0,n)

We show that the moduli space of stable n-pointed rational curves can be flatly degenerated to a projective toric variety. We arrive at this by showing that the Chow quotients of the Grassmannians admit toric degenerations, which in turn, follows from a theorem that we prove for toric degenerations of more general Chow quotients. Along the way, we also argued that GIT quotient of a flat family is again flat. In particular, all GIT quotients of flag varieties by maximal tori can be flatly degenerated to projective toric varieties ([9] and [12]).