Pratfall in Damascus  —  Nancy Pelosi's foolish shuttle diplomacy  —  HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) offered an excellent demonstration yesterday of why members of Congress should not attempt to supplant the secretary of state when traveling abroad.

They're free, but Britain has been humiliated  —  Relief at the freeing of the British sailors and Marines in Iran is tempered with dismay at the humiliation to which they and the country they serve have been subjected.  —  The 14 men and one woman are due to return to Britain today …

Gonzales Prepares to Fight for His Job in Testimony  —  Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has retreated from public view this week in an intensive effort to save his job, spending hours practicing testimony and phoning lawmakers for support in preparation for pivotal appearances in the Senate this month …

Zogby: Romney Rockets!  —  Latest New Hampshire telephone poll shows Romney's support nearly doubles to 25% to tie McCain; Giuliani trails at 19%  —  Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has rocketed to the top of the field of contenders for the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary crown …

An Army, Not a Militia  —  SULEIMANIYA, IRAQ - Iraq is a country with three armies and I'm-not-sure-how-many militias and death squads.  The Iraqi Army is nominally the national army, but it's still being trained, supplied, and augmented by the coalition forces, which is to say the Americans.

New bin Laden Video Expected  —  Marvellous.  Let's hope this is old footage, given a new spin.  As-Sahab has been known to recycle bin Laden's speeches in the past, edited and translated by our own American traitor Adam Gadahn.  —  But if bin Laden's speech does include the recent Arab summit …

THE NEXT CRUSADE  —  Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank.  —  Text Size: … The Selimiye Mosque, in Edirne, a city in northwest Turkey, is a magnificent stone edifice, with four minarets and an austere, octagonal-shaped body supporting a large dome.  Built for Sultan Selim II in the sixteenth century …

Bush Uses Recess to Fill Envoy Post and 2 Others  —  President Bush used the Congressional recess on Wednesday to push through his choice to be ambassador to Belgium and to fill two domestic policy positions, provoking Democratic ire with all three appointments.

Belgium to impose tax on barbequing to fight global warming  —  The government of Belgium's French-speaking region of Wallonia, which has a population of about 4 million, has approved a tax on barbequing, local media reported.  —  Experts said that between 50 and 100 grams of CO2 …

Mugabe's Enablers  —  When the heads of state of the Southern African Development Community convened last week in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to discuss the political situation in Zimbabwe, hopes among the Zimbabwean people ran high.  President Robert Mugabe had recently extended his brutal efforts …