Saving the Earth: The Biodiesel Bus Blog  —  Singer Sheryl Crow and environmentalist Laurie David have been traveling across America on a two-week Stop Global Warming College Tour, which winds up today at George Washington University.  Crow and David (co-producer of the documentary …

'Gated Communities' For the War-Ravaged  —  U.S. Tries High Walls and High Tech To Bring Safety to Parts of Baghdad  —  BAGHDAD — The U.S. military is walling off at least 10 of Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods and using biometric technology to track some of their residents …

This is a bad one.  The Washington Post's David Broder was interviewed today by XM radio's Bob Edwards, and Broder hammered Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for declaring the "war is lost" as follows: … Audio here.  —  Look, you can argue that Reid's choice of words was a poor one …

The GOP: Waiting for Him to Walk  —  The President's Old Friend: The A.G.'s poor performance at the hearings cost him support on the Hill  —  The pressure on Alberto Gonzales to resign intensified last week following his daylong grilling before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Debates Losing a Bit of Luster in a Big Field  —  The last time Jonathan Prince checked, there were nearly 40 requests for John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate for whom he works, to appear at a candidate debate or forum.  —  They came from state Democratic parties and county Democratic committees.

FDA Was Aware of Dangers To Food  —  Outbreaks Were Not Preventable, Officials Say  —  The Food and Drug Administration has known for years about contamination problems at a Georgia peanut butter plant and on California spinach farms that led to disease outbreaks that killed three people …

Ever-Larger Media Matt  —  Okay.  The time has come to let you all in on some changes forthcoming soon in my life and on this blog.  Most notably, I'm leaving my job at The American Prospect to take a position at The Atlantic Monthly where my primary responsibility is going to be . . . producing this blog.

President Bush Meets with General Petraeus, Discusses War in Iraq  —  THE PRESIDENT: It's my high honor to welcome General David Petraeus back to the Oval Office, and I appreciate Deputy Secretary England and General Pace joining us.  General Petraeus has taken on a very important assignment …

Democrats Craft New Tax Rules, New Image  —  Plan Tries to Shield Middle Class From Paying High Rates  —  House Democrats, aiming to seize taxes from Republicans as a political issue, have come up with a plan to shift the burden of the hated alternative minimum tax onto the shoulders of the nation's richest households.

Couric May Be Ousted from Anchor Desk  —  CBS's $15 million experiment of hiring Katie Couric has not paid any dividends.  Six months into her tenure as anchor of the "Evening News," Couric has actually fallen in the ratings from her predecessor, Bob Schieffer, sparking talk within the network …

Candidates hope ideas strike chords  —  Voters getting an early dose of substance  —  WASHINGTON — Barack Obama is unleashing the fine print.  —  In the political hothouses of town meetings and union gatherings, the Democratic presidential candidate has shared his soothing style and intriguing background.

Student Government Asks Reporters to Leave by Monday  —  You've seen the news coverage from Blacksburg, complete with prominent network anchors reporting from the scene.  —  And now, the student government at Virginia Tech is asking for all of that to end.

Let's be realistic about reality  —  Within hours of the Virginia Tech massacre, the New York Times had identified the problem: ''What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss.''

U.S. Knew of China Missile Test in Advance  —  After a Chinese interceptor smashed into a target satellite in January, Bush administration officials criticized the test as a destabilizing development.  —  It was the first successful demonstration of an antisatellite missile by any country in more than 20 years.

Bedlam Revisited  —  Why the Virginia Tech shooter was not committed.  —  I was in graduate school, studying clinical psychology when they began shutting down the asylums.  The place was California, the time was the early 1970s, and "they" were an unprecedented confederation of progressives, libertarians and fiscal conservatives.