Democrats Drop Troop Pullout Dates From Iraq Bill  —  Congressional Democrats relented today on their insistence that a war spending measure sought by President Bush also set a date for withdrawing troops from Iraq.  The decision to back down, described by senior lawmakers and aides …

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.

Bomb Plot Thwarted at Falwell's Funeral  —  Student Arrested With Homemade Bombs, Three Other Suspects Sought  —  Even in death, the Rev. Jerry Falwell rouses the most volatile of emotions.  —  Authorities arrested a Liberty University student for having several homemade bombs in his car.

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.

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.