Who wanted to "cut and run" from Somalia?  —  One of the central prongs in the right-wing effort to blame Bill Clinton for the growth of al-Qaida (and one of the central aspects of the general neoconservative mythology of how to fight terrorism) revolves around Somalia.

McCain Names Practices Detainee Bill Would Bar  —  Senator Says 3 Interrogation Methods Are Among the 'Extreme Measures' the Plan Would Outlaw  —  A Republican senator who played a leading role in drafting new rules for U.S. interrogations of terrorism suspects said yesterday that he believes …

Army Warns Rumsfeld It's Billions Short  —  An extraordinary action by the chief of staff sends a message: The Pentagon must increase the budget or reduce commitments in Iraq and elsewhere.  —  WASHINGTON — The Army's top officer withheld a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders …

Millions of Seniors Facing Medicare 'Doughnut Hole'  —  Millions of older Americans are confronting a temporary break in their Medicare drug coverage this month that will require them to pay the full cost of their prescriptions or face the painful prospect of going without.

Congress Is Winding Down, but Much Is Left Undone  —  A Congress derided as do-nothing has a week to do something, and the prospects are cloudy.  —  Procrastination, power struggles and partisanship have left Congress with substantial work to finish before breaking for the elections.

CAUGHT ON TAPE: Bush Ignores Intelligence, Misleads Public On Impact of Iraq on Terrorism  —  In April, President Bush received the National Intelligence Estimate, which "represents a consensus view of the 16 separate spy services inside government."  NIEs are "the most authoritative documents …

In Tiny Courts of New York, Abuses of Law and Power  —  Some of the courtrooms are not even courtrooms: tiny offices or basement rooms without a judge's bench or jury box.  Sometimes the public is not admitted, witnesses are not sworn to tell the truth, and there is no word-for-word record of the proceedings.

The Rise of Jihadistan  —  Five years after the Afghan invasion, the Taliban are fighting back hard, carving out a sanctuary where they—and Al Qaeda's leaders—can operate freely.  —  You don't have to drive very far from Kabul these days to find the Taliban.

Teammates: Allen used "N-word" in college  —  WASHINGTON — Three former college football teammates of Sen. George Allen say that the Virginia Republican repeatedly used an inflammatory racial epithet and demonstrated racist attitudes toward blacks during the early 1970s.

Mel campaigns for new movie, against war in Iraq  —Text+LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Mel Gibson has returned to the spotlight to promote his upcoming movie "Apocalypto," and to criticize the war in Iraq, according to the Hollywood Reporter.  —  Almost two months after he railed against Jews …

Women's rights campaigner shot dead in Afghanistan  —  A senior women's affairs official who has criticised the Taleban's treatment of women was shot dead outside her home in southern Afghanistan today.  —  Safia Ama Jan was getting into a car outside her house in the city of Kandahar when two gunmen on motorcycles opened fire.

Losing Afghanistan  —  We're not adequately fighting the war we should be fighting.  —  As we marked the fifth anniversary of the worst attack on American soil, there was enormous discussion of the lessons of 9/11.  But after the bagpipes stopped, and news coverage turned to other issues …

POLITICS: How Wrong Was Josh Marshall?  —  Plenty Wrong.  —  Now that it has been revealed that the main source for Bob Novak's column "outing" Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA employee was Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's right-hand man at the State Department and (like Novak) no fan of the Iraq War …

Rare Woodpecker Sends a Town Running for Its Chain Saws  —  Over the past six months, landowners here have been clear-cutting thousands of trees to keep them from becoming homes for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker.  —  The chain saws started in February, when the federal Fish …

'Troubled' By Election, Edwards Concedes  —  Congressional hopeful Donna Edwards (D) accepted defeat yesterday, saying 12 days after a deeply troubled primary election that she believes votes in the congressional district straddling Montgomery and Prince George's counties have been counted "to the extent that they will be."