Iraqi, US forces sweep through volatile city, fight Sadr backers  —  DIWANIYA, Iraq: Iraqi and US forces clashed with Shia militia loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr yesterday in a dawn operation aimed at returning the volatile city of Diwaniya to government control.

President Carter: Bush Ordered Me Not to Go to Damascus  —  More evidence of the White House's partisan manipulation of relations with Syria emerged yesterday, as President Jimmy Carter told a gathering in New York about his recent request to visit Syrian President Assad.  The former president stated:

The Pirates of Tehran  —  Oil prices fell.  The stock market rose.  Video images of smiling British soldiers with Iranian President Ahmadinejad were everywhere.  So were pictures of the 15 freed hostages embracing family members back home.  The relief over the return of the Brits was so tremendous …

An iPod for every kid?  Are they !#$!ing idiots?  —  We have come to the conclusion that the crisis Michigan faces is not a shortage of revenue, but an excess of idiocy.  Facing a budget deficit that has passed the $1 billion mark, House Democrats Thursday offered a spending plan that would buy …

North Koreans Arm Ethiopians as U.S. Assents  —  Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of the country's nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North …

Forecaster Blasts Gore on Global Warming  —  NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A top hurricane forecaster called Al Gore "a gross alarmist" Friday for making an Oscar-winning documentary about global warming.  —  "He's one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things.

Bush: Democrats Jeopardizing Service Members' Safety  —  President Says Democrats Using Spending Bill as Way to Oppose War  —  President Bush used his Easter weekend radio address to suggest that while Americans are "blessed" to have so many brave, volunteer military service members …

Scientists Detail Climate Changes, Poles to Tropics  —  From the poles to the tropics, the earth's climate and ecosystems are already being shaped by the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases and face inevitable, possibly profound, alteration, the world's leading scientific panel on climate change said Friday.

On the ranch, Bush has a perfect escape  —  CRAWFORD, Texas - President Bush's getaway in central Texas is just about everything Washington is not.  There may be no better way to explain why he loves it so much.  —  Life is remarkably different here for a president struggling through his second term.

Baghdad in the Midwest cornfields  —  What an outing to a market in Indiana would look like if a congressman's observations were correct.  —  The delegation arrived at the market [in Baghdad], which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees …

The Saturday Cartoons  —  And here's another Walt Handelsman animation that pokes fun at the Clinton-Obama rivalry for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.  (Apologies in advance to any Hillary Clinton supporters who are offended, but my blogger "focus group" thought this was funny.)

Insurgents transform US military jails into 'terror training camps'  —  America's high-security prisons in Iraq have become "terrorist academies" for the most dangerous militant groups, according to former inmates and Iraqi government officials.  —  Inmates are left largely to run their blocks, which are segregated on sectarian lines.

Mother Of All Blunders  —  On any given day, one isn't likely to find common cause with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  He's a dangerous, lying, Holocaust- denying, Jew-hating cutthroat thug — not to put too fine a point on it.  —  But he was dead-on when he wondered why a once-great power …

Clinton gladly plays the gender card  —  Leading in polls among female Democratic voters, the senator works to build on that support, lining up feminist leaders and appealing to working women.  —  WASHINGTON — A gender gap is growing in the Democratic presidential race, and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton aims to widen it into a chasm.

Justice official is expected to help U.S. attorney's office  —  John Kelly had tried to resolve differences with three attorneys who left management posts.  —  A Justice Department official in Washington is expected to return to Minneapolis next week to help run the U.S. attorney's office in Minnesota …