Bush's 'Axis of Evil' Comes Back to Haunt United States  —  Nearly five years after President Bush introduced the concept of an "axis of evil" comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the administration has reached a crisis point with each nation: North Korea has claimed it conducted its first nuclear test …

Allen's Undisclosed Stock Options Were Worth Up to $1.1 Million  —  Oct. 10 (Bloomberg) — Stock options that Senator George Allen described as worthless were worth as much as $1.1 million at one point, according to a review of Senate disclosure forms and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

Dynamic Capitalism  —  Entrepreneurship is lucrative—and just.  —  There are two economic systems in the West.  Several nations—including the U.S., Canada and the U.K.—have a private-ownership system marked by great openness to the implementation of new commercial ideas coming from entrepreneurs …

Former pages surveyed in Foley probe  —  WASHINGTON - Lawmakers, following a request from the House ethics committee, are surveying aides and former House pages to find out if any of them had knowledge of ex-Rep. Mark Foley (news, bio, voting record)'s inappropriate conduct toward male pages.

Google To Acquire YouTube for $1.65 Billion in Stock  —  Combination Will Create New Opportunities for Users and Content Owners Everywhere  —  Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through …

Streisand Has Outburst at NYC Concert  —  It was an evening that elicited tears, standing ovations, raucous laughter and shouts of joy from the audience _ and was just in the first few minutes.  —  Yes, Barbra Streisand's return to touring after a 12-year absence was the extravaganza that it promised to be.

What it means to be a liberal  —  For most of the past four decades, liberals have been in retreat.  Since the election of Richard Nixon in 1968, Republicans have controlled the White House 70 percent of the time and Republican presidents have made 86 percent of the U.S. Supreme Court appointments.

Help You, Help Me: The First Blegburst  —  I guess I wasn't paying very close attention, but at some point yesterday I cracked a million visits on ye olde Sitemeter, a good chunk of which came from this post that took me longer to upload than create.  —  I think this a milestone of some sort …

Republicans Want to Turn Over a New Page  —  The Foley scandal is no "October surprise"  —  Leading Republicans, with the support of conservative media outlets, are charging that the Mark Foley scandal was a plot orchestrated by Democrats to damage the G.O.P.'s electoral prospects this November.

Tucker Carlson to Evangelicals: Duped  —  Tucker Carlson gets honest about what he says the Republican elites feel about the Extreme Christian Right.  —  Video-WMP Video-QT  —  Duncan:

Mexico May Take Fence Dispute to U.N.  —  PARIS — Mexico's foreign secretary said Monday the country may take a dispute over U.S. plans to build a fence on the Mexican border to the United Nations.  —  Luis Ernesto Derbez told reporters in Paris, his first stop on a European tour …

Gibson: Run golden-oldie ads, get golden-oldie viewers  —  Want younger viewers for the evening news?  Ditch the geezer ads, says ABC World News anchor Charlie Gibson.  —  If networks are serious about luring pre-Social Security eyeballs, they should replace commercials for adult diapers …

F.B.I. Struggling to Reinvent Itself to Fight Terror  —  Last February, top F.B.I. officers from across the nation gathered in a high-security auditorium for the latest plan to reinvent the crime-fighting agency to take on terrorism.  —  Philip Mudd, who had just joined the bureau …

NO MORE TROOPS  —  WITH 26 American troops dead in Iraq in the first nine days of October, the combination of bad news and pre-election politics has those on one bench arguing for bailing out immediately and those on the other bench frantic to pile on.  —  Neither position is realistic.

Bad News In The Polls  —  Well, the media has been able to create the impression Mark Foley represents the GOP in some recent polls out.  The range of lead for the Dems is between 13 and 23 points (A href="http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/ images/10/09/rel24a.pdf">CNN, USA Today/Gallup, ABC News/WaPo, CBS News - H/T TCP).

Woman: Saddam Guards Buried People Alive  —  BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Prison guards under Saddam Hussein used to bury detainees alive and watch women as they bathed, occasionally shooting over their heads, a former female prisoner testified Monday in the genocide trial of the ex-president.