Virginia Senate: Allen's Lead Shrinks After Controversial Remark  —  Allen (R) 47%, Webb (D) 42%  —  Senator George Allen's alleged slur of an opposition campaign worker of Indian descent, recorded on video, has provoked a furious controversy in the state.

Israel Re-Enters Lebanon, Battles Hezbollah  —  Helicopter-borne Israeli commandos raided a Hezbollah stronghold in the Bekaa Valley early Saturday in what Lebanon called a "flagrant violation" of a fragile six-day-old cease-fire.  —  Hezbollah, which battled the Israeli military for 33 days until …

Oy  —  I don't know how we go from: … To: … The point is that the amount of money that has come from "progressives" to Lamont is a drop of the bucket in the grand scheme of things and most of it is "found money" and not diverted money.  While the Lump of Campaign Cash fallacy is popular it's one of the more annoying ones.

Verdict Against Iraq Contractor Overturned  —  Occupation Authority's Murky Status Cited  —  A federal judge threw out a $10 million jury verdict against an American company accused of overcharging on an Iraq reconstruction contract after concluding that the now-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority was not a U.S. government entity.

AP Probe Looks at Recruiting Misconduct  —  More than 100 young women who expressed interest in joining the military in the past year were preyed upon sexually by their recruiters.  Women were raped on recruiting office couches, assaulted in government cars and groped en route to entrance exams.

Mutiny on Flight 613  —  Passengers refuse to allow holiday jet to take off until two Asian men are thrown off plane  —  British holidaymakers staged an unprecedented mutiny - refusing to allow their flight to take off until two men they feared were terrorists were forcibly removed.

TD Blog Interview with George Lakoff  —  George Lakoff is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, a senior fellow at the progressive think-tank Rockridge Institute, and is the author of "Whose Freedom: The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea" …

Iraqi group uses Michael Moore film to mock Bush  —  BAGHDAD (Reuters) - An Iraqi militant group has produced an elaborate video of what it said were attacks on U.S. troops, in the latest example of the increasingly sophisticated propaganda war being waged by Iraqi insurgents.

Officer Called Haditha Routine  —  Marine Said Deaths Didn't Merit Inquiry  —  The Marine officer who commanded the battalion involved in the Haditha killings last November did not consider the deaths of 24 Iraqis, many of them women and children, unusual and did not initiate an inquiry …

Hollywood "Zionists" Under Attack After Anti-Terror Ad Release!  —  Hmm... I didn't know Bernie Mac, Don Johnson, Serena Williams and Vivica Fox were Zionists?  —  Remember the story about this anti-Hamas, anti-Hezbollah, anti-terror ad that was published in the Los Angeles Times on Thursday …

Fight fear-mongering with fear-mongering?  —  Slate's John Dickerson offers Dems some advice in responding to Republicans' election-year fear-mongering: fight fire with fire.  With the GOP telling voters, "Vote for Democrats and more Americans will die," it's the only reasonable approach.

OLD HANDS AT FAKERY  —  Some time ago, Richard Landes, a Professor of History at Boston University, and Pedro Zúquete made a film about the Palestinians' use of staged and faked video "bites," and the credulous international news agencies that fall for them.  Or, perhaps, collaborate in them.

Democrats = Traitors?  —  Hugh Hewitt: "Any vote for any Democrat is a vote against victory and a vote for vulnerability."  —  Steven Taylor: "[T]he last time I checked, the Democrats may be the partisan opponents of Republicans, but they aren't the enemies of the state."  —  Discuss.

A CULTURE OF FREE SPEECH: Just a final thought that bears on the context of the recent Dartmouth imbroglio, as well as the possible larger implications of the story.  This is the College's recent history of actually punishing students for speech of which the College disapproves.