FEMA under fire for 'faking' news conference  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House scolded the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Friday for staging a phony news conference about assistance to victims of wildfires in southern California.  —  The agency — much maligned for its sluggish response …

A Scott Beauchamp Update  —  Since our last statement on "Shock Troops," a Diarist by Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp that we published in our July 23 issue, we have continued our investigation into the article's veracity.  On Wednesday, for a brief period, The Drudge Report posted several documents …

The Mitt-Brownback spat carries on  —  Sam Brownback may be out of the race, but his very public dangling of an endorsement for Rudy is angering at least one prominent Romney backer.  To set the stage: These two camps, Brownback and Romney, are not fond of each other and did battle …

USS Cole bomber released from jail  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — U.S. law enforcement officials Friday blasted Yemen's release of one of the leaders of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 U.S. soldiers.  —  "We are dismayed and deeply disappointed in the government of Yemen's decision …

Edwards Introduces Bold Proposals For Restoring Corporate Responsibility And Strengthening Retirement Security For The Middle Class And Working Families  —  As part of seven-day "Stand Strong" campaign, Edwards calls for updating the social compact with hard-working Americans to protect them from abuse by corporations

Some cool graphs of rich states and poor states  —  I'll take advantage of Paul Krugman's recent link to our paper on income and voting by putting up some cool scatterplots that we made recently.  It started with our maps of which states Bush and Kerry would've won if only the votes of the poor, middle-income, and rich were counted:

Right Wing Enraged: Laura Bush Is A 'Butt-Kisser' For Wearing Headscarf In Mideast  —  When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wore a headscarf while visiting the Umayyad mosque in Damascus in April, the right wing pounced on her, attacking her as "subservient" and calling the act "disgust[ing]."

Georgia Court Orders Man Freed in Sex Case  —  The Georgia Supreme Court today ended the 10-year prison sentence of a man who was convicted in 2003 of having consensual oral sex with another teenager.  The court said the harsh sentence violated the Constitution's protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

Putin invokes Cuban missile crisis  —  Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, on Friday compared US plans to build a missile defence shield near Russia's borders to the 1962 Cuban missile crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.  —  Mr Putin quickly qualified his remarks …

Why Democrats are afraid to raise taxes on the rich  —  New data from the Internal Revenue Service show that income inequality continues to widen.  The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans earn more than 21 percent of all income.  That's a postwar record.  The bottom 50 percent of all Americans …

Billions in housing wealth at risk as foreclosures soar  —  More than $23.6 billion in California housing wealth will evaporate if real estate prices continue to decline and foreclosures on subprime home loans soar, according to a new congressional report that indicates the fallout from the national mortgage crisis is worsening.

GOP LUNACY....Ron Brownstein looks at the ongoing Republican interest group panderfest from a slightly different angle: … Every two years the losing party has this exact same conversation: (a) move to the center to appeal more to swing voters, or (b) move left (right) in order to stay true …

INHOFE NOT OK.  —  Reading about yet another terrible stand taken by Senator James "global warming is the second-largest hoax ever played on the American people, after the separation of church and state" Inhofe (leading the fight against the law of the sea), I wondered if there was much chance …

Army to review Iraq contracts for fraud  —  WASHINGTON - A team of specially trained investigators will hunker down in an Army office north of Detroit on Monday to begin poring over hundreds of Iraq war contracts in search for rigged awards.  —  This team of 10 auditors …