RNC fires phone solicitors  —  The Republican National Committee, hit by a grass-roots donors' rebellion over President Bush's immigration policy, has fired all 65 of its telephone solicitors, Ralph Z. Hallow will report Friday in The Washington Times.  —  Faced with an estimated 40 percent fall-off …

Awakening in Babil  —  The provinces of Iraq.  Click map to view.  —  A pro government tribal leader is targeted in Babil; the four provinces around Baghdad have established an Awakening movement  —  The formation of the regional Awakening movements—the groupings of anti-al Qaeda tribes …

Inspector Ignored Warning On TB Patient  —  Man Quarantined With Dangerous Strain Of Tuberculosis ID'd As Lawyer And Son-In-Law Of CDC Microbiologist  —  (CBS/AP) A U.S. border inspector who allowed an Atlanta lawyer infected with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis back into the country …

NPR Continues Kyoto Dishonesty  —  Two days ago, I pointed out that the layers of editors and fact-checkers at the AP managed to miss the fact that the Kyoto treaty got rejected almost four years before Bush took office.  Apparently, the fact-checkers and editors at NPR are no better than those at the AP.

A spreading terror  —  Iraq now set up as a school for insurgents ready to be exported, says GEORGIE ANNE GEYER  —  Anyone who knows anything about cancer knows that the danger point comes when the cancer suddenly and unexpectedly appears in another supposedly "clean" part of the body.

The Final Option  —  Left to Right: Lieutenant Colonel Doug Crissman; General Hamid; Sayed the interpreter.  Seconds after this photo, LTC Doug Crissman grabbed General Hamid's pistol.  (Note: the pistol was already unsnapped.)  —  Hit, Anbar Province, Iraq

McCain Agrees We Need a Cap To Maintain "White, Christian, Male Power Structure"  —  John McCain's campaign posted this YouTube clip of the Senator on the O'Reilly Factor:  —  Near the end of the video, there was this exchange:  —  Bill O'Reilly: But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want?

NINE DAYS AFTER PHOTOS RELEASED, NETS AND TOP PAPERS SILENT OVER AL-QAEDA TORTURE HOUSE  —  Yet Top Media Ran More Than 6,000 Stories on Abu Ghraib Abuses  —  "The elite media's liberal bias is abundantly clear in this case.  U.S. soldiers raided several al-Qaeda safe houses in Iraq …

Why Do We Stay In Iraq?  —  Josh Marshall heads down the path to madness in order  —  to try to answer that question.  —  The answer is unknowable because there isn't one.  There are a variety of powerful actors who have different motives.  It's as true, if not more true …

Rudy Blasts Hillary [Larry Kudlow]  —  Rudy blasted Hillary's tax hike plan yesterday calling it an "astounding, staggering tax increase."  Good for him.  —  Hillary's been out proclaiming her government redistributionist message of "shared prosperity."  Her growth-paralyzing solution?

The Case for Conservatism  —  Conservatism's recovery of its intellectual equilibrium requires a confident explanation of why America has two parties and why the conservative one is preferable.  Today's political argument involves perennial themes that give it more seriousness than many participants understand.

Man says he's got a new Loch Ness video  —  EDINBURGH, Scotland - The Loch Ness monster is back — and there's video.  A man has captured what Nessie watchers say is possible footage of the supposed mythical creature beneath Scotland's most mysterious lake.

50 More Years in Iraq?  —  The White House, long irritated by the frequent use of Vietnam as a metaphor for Iraq, embraced its own analogy yesterday: South Korea.  —  There's an undeniable attraction to holding up America's military presence in South Korea as a model for Iraq …

Living in Terror  —  Let me ask you a hypothetical question.  What do you think America would do if Canadian soldiers were firing dozens of missiles every day into Buffalo, N.Y.?  What do you think our response would be if Mexican troops for two years had launched daily rocket attacks on San Diego — and bragged about it?

Let's Help Chris Dodd End the Occupation  —  How cool was that, firedoggies?  Wednesday afternoon, Connecticut Senator and presidential candidate Christopher Dodd vlogged at FireDogLake about his Amendment to this summer's Defense Authorization Bill.  We had a great dialogue …