Clinton's Foreign Policy Balancing Act  —  In Her Stances, Senator Has One Eye on Primary, One on General Election  —  While preparing to give a major critique of the war in Iraq last month, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton read a draft of the speech and added a few lines of her own.

Beauchamp Recants  —  THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp—author of the much-disputed "Shock Troops" article in the New Republic's July 23 issue as well as two previous "Baghdad Diarist" columns …

TIMESSELECT CONTENT FREED  —  The New York Times is poised to stop charging readers for online access to its Op-Ed columnists and other content, The Post has learned.  —  After much internal debate, Times executives - including publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. - made the decision to end …

Propaganda Redux  —  Take it from this old KGB hand: The left is abetting America's enemies with its intemperate attacks on President Bush.  —  During last week's two-day summit, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown thanked President Bush for leading the global war on terror.

As British Leave, Basra Deteriorates  —  Violence Rises in Shiite City Once Called a Success Story  —  As British forces pull back from Basra in southern Iraq, Shiite militias there have escalated a violent battle against each other for political supremacy and control over oil resources …

Our Chance to Capture the Center  —  With President Bush and the Republican Party on the rocks, many Democrats think the 2008 election will be, to borrow a favorite GOP phrase, a cakewalk.  Some liberals are so confident about Democratic prospects that they contend the centrism that vaulted Democrats …

It's a Female Dog, or Worse.  Or Endearing.  And Illegal?  —  The New York City Council, which drew national headlines when it passed a symbolic citywide ban earlier this year on the use of the so-called n-word, has turned its linguistic (and legislative) lance toward a different slur: bitch.

Clinton aide's PR firm is under attack  —  Labor activists say it does anti-union work.  They want Mark Penn to quit the company or her presidential campaign.  —  WASHINGTON — As she presses for a coveted endorsement from organized labor, presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton …

In Dusty Archives, a Theory of Affluence  —  For thousands of years, most people on earth lived in abject poverty, first as hunters and gatherers, then as peasants or laborers.  But with the Industrial Revolution, some societies traded this ancient poverty for amazing affluence.

Tougher Rules Change Game for Lobbyists  —  H. Stewart Van Scoyoc, founder of one of the biggest lobbying firms in Washington, spent an anxious morning with his lawyer last week assessing the far-reaching ethics and lobbying rules Congress had passed the day before.

All the News That Seemed Unfit to Print  —  Somewhere in Kalamazoo, Elvis weeps: The Weekly World News is folding.  —  The Weekly World News was not one of those sleazy tabloids that cover tawdry celebrity scandals.  It was a sleazy tabloid that covered events that seemed to occur in a parallel universe …

City Is Rebuffed on the Release of '04 Records  —  A federal judge yesterday rejected New York City's efforts to prevent the release of nearly 2,000 pages of raw intelligence reports and other documents detailing the Police Department's covert surveillance of protest groups and individual activists …