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 …

Exclusive: Diane Sawyer Speaks to TB Patient  —  Sawyer Interviews Andrew Speaker, TB Patient in Isolation  —  Andrew Speaker has asked for forgiveness from the airline passengers he exposed to a rare strain of tuberculosis, and told ABC's Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview …

Bush's 'new climate strategy'  —  Today's headlines are full of the news that President Bush is &;  quot;unveiling a new climate strategy.&;  quot; If your immediate reaction is cynicism, well ... looks like you learned something over the last seven years.  Let's look a little closer.

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

The lessons of Vietnam  —  Iraq desperately needs a political solution in the short term to make the war more manageable for the next president.  —  THE IRAQ WAR has reawakened memories of the Vietnam War, the most significant political experience of an entire American generation.

Senate Panel Questions C.I.A. Detentions  —  The Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday questioned the continuing value of the Central Intelligence Agency's secret interrogation program for terrorism suspects, suggesting that international condemnation and the obstacles it has created …

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 …

Too Bad  —  President Bush has torn the conservative coalition asunder.  —  What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration.  They are not resisting, fighting and thereby setting …

Kerry's Regrets About John Edwards  —  After a day of filming at Edwards's summer home on Figure Eight Island in the Outer Banks, we went out to dinner.  Afterward, while Elizabeth drove the car home, John and I headed back on his boat; as the darkness closed in, we got lost in the tall grasses of the shallow waterways.

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.

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?

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 …

Can Any Immigration Bill Be Saved?  —  Another day of interviews and calls, and my overwhelming sense is that the immigration bill as drafted is as dead as dead can be.  The president's speech on Tuesday had the effect of throwing gas on the flames, and the anger has multiplied, and it isn't nativist in the least.

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.