Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream  —  War on Terror Concerns  —  The first-ever, nationwide, random sample survey of Muslim Americans finds them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world.

Bush could double force by Christmas  —  (05-22) 04:00 PDT Washington — The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday.  —  The little-noticed second surge …

The Left's Iraq Muddle  —  Yes, it is central to the fight against Islamic radicalism.  —  At this year's graduation celebration at The New School in New York, Iranian lawyer, human-rights activist and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi delivered our commencement address.

The group blog of The American Prospect  —  PRE-SUFFRAGETTE CITY.  Jill Filipovic points us to this Times article about the new strategy to justify using state coercion to force women to carry pregnancies to term by claiming that women are too irrational to know what's good for them, and offers a modest proposal.

Today's Must Read  —  OK, so you knew Duke Cunningham was dirty, but you didn't know that he was this dirty.  —  The Wrong Stuff: The Extraordinary Saga of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, the Most Corrupt Congressman Ever Caught, the book about Cunningham by the reporters who brought him down, hits stores this coming Monday.

The redemption of John Ashcroft  —  If history can rehabilitate the onetime conservative boogeyman, can it do the same for Bush?  —  HERE'S MORE reason to love democracy: In the Soviet Union, you had to be thrown into internal exile before you could be rehabilitated.

Lieberman, Sticking With Democrats for Now, Warns Them on Iraq  —  Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, says his disagreement with the Democrats over the Iraq war won't prevent him from working with his former party.  For now.  —  ``I hope the moment doesn't come that I feel …

Dems pull deadline from war funding bill … WASHINGTON (CNN) — Speaker Nancy Pelosi will present a plan to House Democrats for a war funding bill that won't include a timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq but will feature benchmarks with consequences, according to Democratic leadership aides.

Free To Be Al Gore  —  Boy, it would be fun if Al Gore changed his mind and ran for president — fun for the voters, anyway.  Imagine a candidate whose preelection book is devoted in large part to an attack on the media for waging war on reason.  —  Politicians, it is often said, never win by attacking the media.

U.S. Government Gave Airtime to Terrorists, Official Admits  —  Justin Rood Reports:  —  Al Hurra television, the U.S. government's $63 million-a-year effort at public diplomacy broadcasting in the Middle East, is run by executives and officials who cannot speak Arabic, according to a senior official who oversees the program.

A Collapse for Democrats  —  I wanted to link to a couple really good posts that I've seen in the past few days about the Democrats' strategy on the Iraq supplemental spending bill.  They drive home what a mistake it is to just give up and pass a supplemental that doesn't include language to stop the war:

Market blast hits rush hour shoppers … ANKARA, Turkey (CNN) — A powerful blast believed to be a bomb ripped through an Ankara shopping district Tuesday, killing at least five people and wounding dozens more.  —  Anti-terror squad police at the scene said they have found traces of A4 plastic explosives.

Maysan  —  A Small Battle in the Media War  —  As we drive to meet the Merlin helicopter, our vehicle displays a British flag on the dash.  We pass teams of British soldiers at Basra Air Station as they conduct morning runs, preparing for the next combat, perhaps only hours away.