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 …

Freed Wilson's next ambition — to succeed  —  ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) — Genarlow Wilson was released from prison Friday, after spending more than two years behind bars for a teen sex conviction.  —  "At times I dealt with adversity ... my family and myself, we finally get to deal with happiness now …

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

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]."

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:

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 …

Patriots Stand Up  —  Sen. Chris Dodd gave a great statement on the floor of the Senate this morning.  You can watch video here on his Senate website.  I asked for a written copy of the remarks, because there wasn't a transcript available, and am reprinting them here with permission because I've had several e-mails asking for this.

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 …

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 …

Human race will 'split into two different species'  —  The human race will one day split into two separate species, an attractive, intelligent ruling elite and an underclass of dim-witted, ugly goblin-like creatures, according to a top scientist.  —  100,000 years into the future …