AP: Vilsack to end White House bid  —  DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Democrat Tom Vilsack is abandoning his bid for the presidency after struggling against better-known, better-financed rivals, a senior campaign official told The Associated Press on Friday.  —  Vilsack left office in January …

New Republic to Cut Back Publication Schedule  —  The New Republic, the thinning left-leaning weekly magazine whose circulation has plunged in the era of the Web, is overhauling itself with a new configuration of owners, who are investing in a new look for the magazine and cutting back its publication schedule to every two weeks.

Verbatim Bachmann on Iran: "There's already an agreement made.  [Iran is] going to get half of Iraq and that is going to be a terrorist safe haven zone."  —  U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann claims to know of a plan, already worked out with a line drawn on the map, for the partition of Iraq …

Okay, so we've prepared a little Joe Lieberman care package for people to email to reporters and/or commentators when they talk about Lieberman switching parties.  —  Here's what's in it.  We've compiled lots and lots and lots of examples of Lieberman swearing up and down to the voters of Connecticut that he'd stay with the Dems.

You Go, Geffen!  —  Hillary Clinton's very bad week.  —  We know from the philosophers that a true statement is true without regard to the reliability or sagacity of the person who utters it.  We have it on good authority that the truth shall set us free.  David Geffen spoke truth to Maureen Dowd last week.

'NYT' SUNDAY PREVIEW: Suze Orman Reveals She is the '55-year-old Virgin'  —  NEW YORK In an interview for The New York Times Magazine this coming Sunday, financial guru and TV host Suze Orman gets on Deborah Solomon's case for not looking out for her own money, partly because "you are a woman."

Painting Over the Problems at Walter Reed's Building 18  —  It's not every day one gets to witness a whitewash in action, but Walter Reed Army Medical Center provided just such an opportunity yesterday.  —  In Sunday's Washington Post, Dana Priest and Anne Hull described the woeful conditions …

Among Religious Groups, Jewish Americans Most Strongly Oppose War  —  Opposition goes beyond Jewish Americans' political affiliations  —  PRINCETON, NJ — An analysis of Gallup Poll data collected since the beginning of 2005 finds that among the major religious groups in the United States …

Rape of Second Sunni Woman by Iraqi Security Forces Alleged  —  An Iraqi police official in the northwestern city of Tall Afar said Thursday that a military officer and three soldiers had admitted to raping a Sunni woman and recording the act with a cellphone camera.

Political bloggers fear publicists will infiltrate sites  —  WASHINGTON — Erick Erickson has been running the popular blog Redstate.com long enough to know what his readers' postings sound like: red-meat conservative rhetoric served up with a little dash of populist anger.

U.S. soldier gets 100 years for Iraq rape, killings … FORT CAMPBELL, Kentucky (AP) — A U.S. soldier was sentenced to 100 years in prison Thursday for the gang rape and murder of an Iraqi girl and the killing of her family last year.  —  Sgt. Paul E. Cortez, 24, also was given a dishonorable discharge.

Fox News jogs its blogs  —  'It's Out There' gets test run  —  Fox News Channel is testing another pilot on Sunday that will air following its experiment in news satire, "The ½ Hour News Hour."  —  "It's Out There," a half-hour of stories derived from blogs, will get a half-hour …

U.S. economy leaving record numbers in severe poverty  —  WASHINGTON - The percentage of poor Americans who are living in severe poverty has reached a 32-year high, millions of working Americans are falling closer to the poverty line and the gulf between the nation's "haves" and "have-nots" continues to widen.

Fake Private Parts Are No Joke, Myers Says  —  Delegate Wants to Ban Vehicle Displays of Plastic Genitals  —  Maryland Del. LeRoy E. Myers Jr. to truckers: If you've got 'em, you don't need to flaunt 'em.  —  As the General Assembly debates global warming and the death penalty, Myers …

Senator Lott Floods the Zone  —  A house is lost and now a senator wants revenge.  —  One big question when Democrats took over Congress was which industry would be first to feel the new majority's populist rage.  Oil?  Pharma?  Banks?  Corporate America just got its answer …

EXCLUSIVE: Cheney on Global Warming  —  Vice President's Views At Odds With Majority Of Climate Scientists  —  Sydney, Australia, Feb. 23, 2007 — In an exclusive interview today, ABC's Jonathan Karl asked Vice President Dick Cheney about the topic of global warming, a subject Mr. Cheney has rarely addressed in the past.

U.S. Used Bases in Ethiopia to Hunt Al Qaeda in Africa  —  The American military quietly waged a campaign from Ethiopia last month to capture or kill top leaders of Al Qaeda in the Horn of Africa, including the use of an airstrip in eastern Ethiopia to mount airstrikes against Islamic militants …

Cheney Reiterates Criticism of House Speaker Pelosi  —  Vice President Cheney today repeated his charge that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's approach toward the Iraq war would benefit al-Qaeda, saying that he was not trying to impugn the speaker's patriotism but instead hold her accountable for the consequences of her policies.