Iranian Leader Was Denied Ground Zero Visit  —  An advance team for the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asked earlier this month that he be allowed to lay a wreath at the World Trade Center site during the opening of the United Nations General Assembly next week, but the request was denied …

Longer Leaves for Troops Blocked  —  Senate Republicans yesterday rejected a bipartisan proposal to lengthen the home leaves of U.S. troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, derailing a measure that war opponents viewed as one of the best chances to force President Bush to accelerate a redeployment of forces.

Rather Files $70 Million Lawsuit Against CBS  —  Dan Rather, whose career at CBS News ground to an inglorious end 15 months ago over his role in an unsubstantiated report questioning President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service, filed a $70 million lawsuit this afternoon against the network …

I Don't Support the Troops..oops, there, I said it  —  This has been digging at me for, oh, about 4 years now.  I have been hesitant to express this thought, in comments sections and in discussion with other people about the Iraq quagmire for fear of, I don't know, being called mean.  Or, un-American.

More proof "the surge is working": Right-wingers claim even the CIA is afraid to go outside without trigger-happy Blackwater  —  There's been a lot going on this week — so much that I haven't been able to comment on maybe the biggest story of all, and that is the uproar surrounding …

Darth Cheney  —  "You can always tell when the Republicans are getting restless, because the Vice President's motorcade pulls into the Capitol, and Darth Vader emerges," Clinton said just now at Town Hall in New York.  —  "I'm not invited to their meetings and I don't know what he says or does," she said.

Fears of dollar collapse as Saudis take fright  —  Saudi Arabia has refused to cut interest rates in lockstep with the US Federal Reserve for the first time, signalling that the oil-rich Gulf kingdom is preparing to break the dollar currency peg in a move that risks setting off a stampede out of the dollar across the Middle East.

Prominent Lawyer to Be Indicted  —  Melvyn I. Weiss, a leading class-action securities lawyer, is expected to be indicted as early as today in connection with the kickback scheme that has ensnared his firm, Milberg Weiss, and several former lawyers there, the firm said yesterday in a statement.

Breaking: Webb amendment fails.  —  The Senate just voted 56 to 44 on Sen. Jim Webb's (D-VA) amendment "requiring that active-duty troops and units have at least equal time at home as the length of their previous tour overseas."  The bill failed to garner the 60 votes needed to move forward.

Pants Update: The Dry Cleaners Shuts Down  —  Roy Pearson, the D.C. administrative law judge whose $67 million lawsuit against his neighborhood dry cleaners turned into a worldwide lesson in how one obsessed person can hijack the American legal system, lost his case in court …

New al-Qaida video released  —  CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida's deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri said the United States was being defeated in Afghanistan, Iraq and other fronts in a new video released Thursday, the latest in a series put out by the terror network.  —  The video came days …

Mexican lesson plans crossing the border  —  Immigration - Some Oregon schools are using curricula from Mexico to aid Spanish speakers  —  Oregon is counting on a new tool to educate Spanish-speaking students across state schools: Mexico's curriculum.  —  Already in place at three Oregon high schools …

Jackson backpedals on Obama, 'Jena 6' at issue  —  Photo by Lindsay Pierce of the Harvard News Office  —  The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday softened his criticism of Sen. Barack Obama, whom he reportedly criticized earlier in the week for "acting like he's white" on the Jena 6 race case in Louisiana.

Taxing the Hand That Feeds Us  —  REPUBLICAN presidential candidates can't get elected without owning the tax issue.  So far, the current crop is giving it away.  —  A huge reason for Ronald Reagan's popularity was his cutting of all income-tax rates and ending of "bracket creep," …