Australian leader: Al-Qaida wants Obama  —  SYDNEY, Australia - Australia's conservative prime minister slammed Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) on Sunday over his opposition to the Iraq war, a day after the first-term U.S. senator announced his intention to run for the White House in 2008.

Don't ruin economy over tiny temp rise  —  Our Thought For The Week comes from the Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman: "I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny.  Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers …

Rumors of War  —  Jalal Sharafi was carrying a videogame, a gift for his daughter, when he found himself surrounded.  On that chilly Sunday morning, the second secretary at the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad had driven himself to the commercial district of Arasat Hindi to checkout the site for a new Iranian bank.

Breaking: US "Reveals Iran Evidence"  —  And as expected, it falls far short of a "slam dunk" case.  The anonymous briefing at which no recording devices were allowed involved a lot of claims and not a whole lot of actual evidence.  —  Here's the Reuters story. … And the BBC's version:

Kristol: Obama Is 'The Opposite Of Lincoln,' Would Have Been Pro-Slavery  —  Yesterday, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) announced his candidacy for president in Springfield, IL, where Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous "House Divided" address.  In his speech, Obama reiterated his call to redeploy U.S. forces out of Iraq by March 2008.

Cheney's To-Do Lists, Then and Now  —  RETURNING to the White House after the Memorial Day weekend in 1975, the young aide Dick Cheney found himself handling a First Amendment showdown.  The New York Times had published an article by Seymour M. Hersh about an espionage program …

McCain Taps Cash He Sought To Limit  —  Just about a year and a half ago, Sen. John McCain went to court to try to curtail the influence of a group to which A. Jerrold Perenchio gave $9 million, saying it was trying to "evade and violate" new campaign laws with voter ads ahead of the midterm elections.

Victory Is Not an Option  —  The Mission Can't Be Accomplished — It's Time for a New Strategy  —  The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war.  Victory, as the president sees it …

Is it an accident that Genuine John Edwards has chosen this moment to emerge?  —  They want you to be so cautious it makes it hard to say anything'  —  In the fall of 2005, John Edwards sat down with a pad and pen and scrawled out three simple words: "I was wrong."

Iran's Obsession with the Jews  —  Denying the Holocaust, desiring another one.  —  On December 12, 2006, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad personally brought to a close the infamous Holocaust deniers' conference in Tehran.  A strange parade of speakers had passed across the podium …

The Build-a-War Workshop  —  It took far too long, but a report by the Pentagon inspector general has finally confirmed that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's do-it-yourself intelligence office cooked up a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda to help justify an unjustifiable war.