President Discusses War on Terror and Operation Iraqi Freedom  —  Fact Sheet: Strategy for Victory: Clear, Hold, and Build  —  THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all.  (Applause.)  Thank you all.  Please be seated.  Sanjiv, thanks for the introduction.  He called me on the phone and said, listen …

Did Marines Commit Crime in Iraq Civilian Deaths?  —  Prompted by Video and Magazine, Military Investigates Incident in Which 15 Iraqis Died, Including Children  —  WASHINGTON, March 19, 2006 — A bloody videotape shot by a local Iraqi journalism student has prompted the Pentagon to launch …

The New New Gore  —  Five years ago, Al Gore was the much-mocked pol who blew a gimme with his stiff demeanor and know-it-all style.  Today?  C'mon, admit it: You like him again.  —  The most important speech of Al Gore's post-non-presidency was neither well-covered nor particularly dramatic.

How to spot a baby conservative  —  Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints?  Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.  —  At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids …

GOP Struggles To Define Its Message for 2006 Elections  —  Republican efforts to craft a policy and political agenda to carry the party into the midterm elections have stumbled repeatedly as GOP leaders face widespread disaffection and disagreement within the ranks.

SMALL GOVERNMENT CONSERVATIVES....Atrios is right.  Andrew Sullivan is just being incoherent here in his defense of his own conservatism: … Bush's tax cuts haven't touched Social Security or Medicare taxes (and both programs run surpluses anyway).  They've been solely cuts in personal …

David Duke Claims to Be Vindicated By a Harvard Dean  —  A paper recently co-authored by the academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government about the allegedly far-reaching influence of an "Israel lobby" is winning praise from white supremacist David Duke.

THE WANKERY WILL NEVER DIE.  I enjoy my job, but because the Lord has decreed that everyone should hate Monday mornings irrespective of such things, he's given Cokie Roberts a Monday A.M. segment on NPR where she's usually found peddling the most egregious bits of conventional wisdom available.

My Ideal War  —  How the international community should have responded to Bush's September 2002 U.N. speech.  —  Up until now, I have resisted all urges to assume the mantle of generalship and to describe how I personally would have waged a campaign to liberate Iraq.

Soldiers and civilians  —  I understand that Operation Swarmer was hyped, but the air war is real — something the hundreds of Iraqi families who fled Samarra on the first reports understand all too well.  —  Last week, Knight-Ridder reported a fifty percent increase in U.S. airstrikes in Iraq over the past five months.

Thou Shalt Not Debate Public Issues at Yale  —  It gets even weirder - Yale has now refused to put on a once-planned debate over the presence at Yale of Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi - the former Taliban.  John Fund reports: … But Rahmatullah is not just some student from the Midwest …

The third anniversary...sacrifice, fear and hope.  —  It has been three years since 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' began and for three years we debated whether the decision was right or wrong and until this moment we have different feelings and opinions about where this operation brought us and where its aftermaths are going to lead us.

Best job market in 5 years for grads: report  —  WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. college graduates are facing the best job market since 2001, with business, computer, engineering, education and health care grads in highest demand, a report by an employment consulting firm showed on Monday.

Peace just a breath away, says Sharon Stone  —  A peaceful co-existence between the peoples of the Middle East is but a breath away, Hollywood star Sharon Stone said after a highly publicized visit to Israel.  —  "It feels to me that we have an opportunity ... to choose understanding in a new way …

FEAR FACTOR  —  Bill O'Reilly's baroque period.  —  During what you could call Bill O'Reilly's classical period, the first few years of "The O'Reilly Factor"—which débuted in 1996, at the same time as Fox News—O'Reilly seemed to be a recognizable member of the conservative-talk-show-host species …

A 'Third Term' for Bush  —  Condi Rice, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove need new jobs.  —  It's time for President Bush to think about a third term.  No, he doesn't need to overturn the Constitution.  He can start the equivalent of his third term now, by filling his presidential staff and cabinet …

Man Alive  —  Is The New York Times still pro-choice?  You wouldn't know it from reading the op-ed page.  —  A liberal, poet Robert Frost once quipped, is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.  Nowhere is this truer than at The New York Times today on the subject of abortion.

Pass the Spittoon, Pension Reform Edition  —  For the trouble of having to wade through all of the details of the pension reform bill now being gutted in House-Senate conference, Mary Williams Walsh gets a Voxy.  I remember working on the early stages of this reform effort while at CEA.