Bush in holy gaffe  —  Vatican City - US President George W Bush drew gasps at the Vatican on Saturday by referring to Pope Benedict XVI as "sir" instead of the expected "His Holiness", pool reporters said.  —  They could clearly hear the US leader say "Yes, sir" when the pope asked …

Judge Walton's Lesson  —  Years ago, when campaigns were drowning in political rhetoric on the crime issue, I got The Post to reassign me temporarily to the District of Columbia courthouse so I could learn from front-line law enforcement what worked — and what didn't — to keep the streets safe.

Military Envisions Longer Stay in Iraq  —  Officers Anticipate Small 'Post-Occupation' Force  —  BAGHDAD — U.S. military officials here are increasingly envisioning a "post-occupation" troop presence in Iraq that neither maintains current levels nor leads to a complete pullout …

Fatwa forbids PA Muslims to emigrate  —  Alarmed by the growing number of Palestinians who are emigrating from the Palestinian territories, the Palestinian Authority's mufti has issued a fatwa [religious decree] forbidding Muslims to leave.  —  Sources in the PA Foreign Ministry told …

Pentagon Confirms It Sought To Build A 'Gay Bomb'  —  (CBS 5) BERKELEY A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Land of Plenty  —  AFTER the privations of the Depression and war years, Congress passed and President Harry Truman signed the Employment Act of 1946, which made it federal policy to maintain "the propensity to consume."  The choice of the word "propensity" would have seemed droll, were any Congress capable of drollery.

The Zero-to-60 Thompson Run  —  Fred gears up for 2008.  —  In early March, only a handful of Fred Thompson's good friends knew that he was even thinking about a bid for president.  Three months later, according to several polls, Thompson is in second place nationally, trailing frontrunner Rudy Giuliani.

Chinese Leave Guantánamo for Albanian Limbo  —  TIRANA, Albania — Ahktar Qassim Basit says he is not angry about the four years he spent as an American prisoner at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, before his captors mumbled a brief apology and flew him to this drab Balkan capital to begin a new life as a refugee.

Amid death and chaos, the Scouts revive an idea of fun for children  —  A cordon at the camp protects them from unexploded bombs but the tradition lives on 80 years after it was introduced by the British  —  Armed with rakes and wheelbarrows, a group of Iraqi Scouts and Guides is clearing a patch of Baghdad woodland.

Haditha Cases Continue To Crumble  —  The Associated Press reports that according to the attorney for Captain Randy Stone, legal officer for the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, charged with failing to report or investigate the deaths at Haditha, the investigating officer, Major Thomas McCann …

Grass Roots Roared and Immigration Plan Collapsed  —  The undoing of the immigration bill in the Senate this week had many players, but none more effective than angry voters like Monique Thibodeaux, who joined a nationwide campaign to derail it.  —  Mrs. Thibodeaux, an office manager …

Lingo lessons in mateship  —  MANDARIN is a tonal language, as fluent Mandarin tonalist Kevin Rudd will tell you.  This means words that are spelled identically may have entirely different meanings according to the way they are pronounced.  —  Sounds complicated, but it ain't.

BANG YOUR HEAD AGAINST THE WALL SLOWLY. the Bush administration has been following through on their brilliant "pro-democracy" programs in Iran, so naturally we're all in a lot of trouble.  But most of all, the Iranian reform movement is.  —  Scott MacLeod at Time asks "Did the U.S. Incite Iran's Crackdown?"

Right message, wrong messenger  —  Take a wild guess who shared these words of wisdom during a recent commencement address (via Jonathan Schwarz): … The words of Al Gore?  Bill Moyers?  Eric Alterman?  —  Try Katie Couric, anchor of the CBS Evening News, who would appear to have some power …