Romney's Cash Beckons Iowans To Straw Poll  —  As thousands of Republican activists prepare to descend on Ames, Iowa, tomorrow for the straw poll meant to gauge support for the GOP's presidential contenders, the event has all the markings of a historic mismatch.

Giuliani Says He is Equal to 9/11 Recovery Workers  —  ABC News' Jan Simmonds Reports: In Ohio on Thursday, Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani R-NY handed his critics new ammunition regarding his role surrounding 9/11.  —  Speaking to reporters in Cincinnati, Giuliani said …

US public sees news media as biased, inaccurate, uncaring: poll  —  More than half of Americans say US news organizations are politically biased, inaccurate, and don't care about the people they report on, a poll published Thursday showed.  —  And poll respondents who use the Internet …

Cheney urging military strikes on Iran  —  WASHINGTON — President Bush charged Thursday that Iran continues to arm and train insurgents who are killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq, and he threatened action if that continues.  —  At a news conference Thursday, Bush said Iran had been warned …

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan announces candidacy  —  Citing her son as inspiration, a tearful Cindy Sheehan announced her candidacy Thursday for the U.S. House of Representatives.  —  The anti-war activist is running as an independent against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has represented San Francisco in Congress since 1987.

Right and wrong — GOP style  —  In 2001, the president gave an interesting speech about what Americans should expect from their government.  "We must always ask ourselves not only what is legal, but what is right," Bush said.  "There is no goal of government worth accomplishing if it cannot be accomplished with integrity."

Democrats quizzed at LA gay-rights forum  —  Six candidates, including the front-runners, come to Hollywood to voice support for an influential voting bloc in cable event.  —  Underscoring the importance of gays and lesbians in Democratic politics, most of the party's presidential hopefuls gathered …

The Greenhouse Effect (Updated)  —  Hurricane Linda blows C-SPAN cameras away  —  For Supreme Court buffs who watch C-SPAN, yesterday morning was one of disappointment.  A promising panel discussion, "Covering the Court(s): Reporters on the Supreme Court Beat," that included a bevy …

U.S. Backs Free Elections, Only to See Allies Lose  —  Lebanon's political spin masters have been trying in recent days to explain the results of last Sunday's pivotal by-election, which saw a relatively unknown candidate from the opposition narrowly beat a former president, Amin Gemayel.

The Baghdad Fabulist  —  For weeks, the veracity of the New Republic's Scott Thomas Beauchamp, the Army private who has been sending dispatches from the front in Iraq, has been in dispute.  His latest "Baghdad Diarist" (July 13) recounted three incidents of American soldiers engaged in acts of unusual callousness.

WILLIAM KATZ REMEMBERS: STOP THE PRESSES!  JUST KIDDING  —  William Katz has had a long and varied career, as an assistant to a U.S. senator; an officer in the CIA; an assistant to Herman Kahn, the nuclear war theorist; an editor at The New York Times Magazine; and a talent coordinator at The Tonight Show.

E-male  —  IT'S WORTH remembering that the blogosphere is still so new it baffles spell check.  For that matter, if I type "blogger" on my screen, my retro software offers alternatives like "loggers," "floggers," and "boggler."  —  It "boggles" my mind to realize how quickly a piece of Internet terrain has gained power in politics.

Back to Fallujah  —  I'm headed back to Iraq for two weeks on August 30th, to report on the situation in Fallujah prior to Gen. Petraeus's September report.  I'm accredited with Bill Roggio's Public Multimedia, Inc., and would sincerely appreciate any (tax deductible) donations that cover expenses …

Federal Effort on Web Obscenity Shows Few Results  —  Tom Rogers, a retired Indianapolis detective, toils away most days in his suburban home office reviewing sexual Web sites and other Internet traffic to see whether they qualify as obscene material whose purveyors should be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

Why the Democrats Caved  —  Shortly before noon last Saturday, about 20 House Democrats huddled in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office to decide what to do about a surveillance bill that had been dumped on them by the Senate before it left town.  —  Many of the Democrats were furious.

Keep these quislings out  —  Calls from pro-war bloggers for Britain to grant asylum to Iraqi interpreters are truly nauseating.  —  I love the Yiddish word chutzpah.  I first came across it while working at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Budapest in the mid-1990s.