Jesse Jackson Apologizes for Remarks on Obama  —  WASHINGTON — The Rev. Jesse Jackson apologized on Wednesday for critical and crude comments he made about Senator Barack Obama, remarks in which he accused Mr. Obama of “talking down to black people.”  —  Mr. Jackson, before an interview …

Obama's Ideology Proving Difficult to Pinpoint  —  Democrats Decry a Move Toward Middle, but Republicans Still See a Liberal  —  Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama put himself on the opposite side of his party's leadership in the Senate yesterday by reversing course to support a compromise intelligence surveillance bill.

Barack's Brilliant Ground Game  —  For a campaign that says it wants to end the politics of the Bush-Cheney years, the Obama for President effort has cribbed an awful lot from the Bush-Cheney playbooks of 2000 and 2004.  —  For starters, Barack Obama's manager admitted to the New York Times …

Carly Fiorina's fuzzy McCain-speak  —  Carly Fiorina is one of John McCain's chief surrogates, talking him up particularly to that key target group, women.  But Fiorina, ousted as chief of Hewlett-Packard in 2005, is not above rounding the edges on straight talk.

Dems searching their souls on drilling  —  In the stages of grief, denial gives way to anger and then to bargaining.  —  It may be an apt metaphor this week, as Democrats' long-held opposition to expanded offshore oil drilling succumbs to the political realities of $4-per-gallon gasoline.

Voters Reject Obama's call for Bilingualism  —  Barack Obama said yesterday that “instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English,” Americans “need to make sure your child can speak Spanish.”  A national telephone survey conducted last month by Rasmussen Reports found …

Bush to G8: 'Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter'  —  After rejecting global climate-change targets, George Bush's parting shot to the G8 summit  —  President George Bush signed off with a defiant farewell over his refusal to accept global climate change targets at his last G8 summit.

In an Iranian Image, a Missile Too Many  —  Updated, 9:33 a.m., Agence France-Presse has retracted the image as “apparently digitally altered.”  —  As news spread across the world of Iran's provocative missile tests, so did an image of four missiles heading skyward in unison.

This year, 6 types of voters will decide the presidential election  —  All voters are not created equal.  —  Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama leads Republican John McCain in the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll by only single digits among registered voters, 48%-42%, at the edge of the survey's margin of error.

Build a Wiffle Ball Field and Lawyers Will Come  —  Some town-owned land in Greenwich, Conn., has been turned into a Wiffle ball field by teenagers.  Neighbors are complaining.  Jeff Currivan, 17, shown at bat, said, “They think we're a cult.”  —  GREENWICH, Conn.

The Audacity of Listening  —  We have to have a talk about Barack Obama.  —  I know, I know.  You're upset.  You think the guy you fell in love with last spring is spending the summer flip-flopping his way to the right.  Drifting to the center.  Going all moderate on you.  So you're withholding the love.

U.S. Troops in Iraq Face A Powerful New Weapon  —  Suspected Shiite militiamen have begun using powerful rocket-propelled bombs to attack U.S. military outposts in recent months, broadening the array of weapons used against American troops.  —  U.S. military officials call the devices Improvised Rocket Assisted Munitions, or IRAMs.

Mahmoud the Fauxtographer  —  Noted document debunker Charles Johnson has noticed something peculiar about one of Iran's bits of official propaganda following Wednesday's missile launch.  —  Unless Iranian missile exhaust tends to form remarkably regular patterns, someone's been busying himself with the clone tool.