Obama: Surge Doesn't Meet Long-Term Goals  —  In An Exclusive Interview With Katie Couric, Illinois Senator Defends Position On Troop Buildup … Katie Couric: Sen. Obama, first of all, you have not been to Iraq since 2006.  What did you learn on your recent visit that surprised you?  Or what was new?

SEN. JOHN EDWARDS CAUGHT WITH MISTRESS AND LOVE CHILD!  —  Vice Presidential candidate Sen. John Edwards was caught visiting his mistress and secret love child at 2:40 this morning in a Los Angeles hotel by the NATIONAL ENQUIRER.  —  The married ex-senator from North Carolina …

Vanity Fair Covers The New Yorker  —  We here at Vanity Fair maintain a kind of affectionate rivalry with our downstairs neighbors at The New Yorker.  We play softball every year, compete for some of the same stories, and share an elevator bank.  (You can tell the ones who are headed …

McCain Meltdown  —  John McCain said this today in Rochester, New Hampshire: … This is the ninth presidential campaign I've covered.  I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate.  It smacks of desperation.  It renews questions about whether McCain has the right temperament for the presidency.

Heavy mush  —  The day after Barack Obama said that the troop surge in Iraq has worked but that he was right to oppose it because “we had to change the political debate,” Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post proclaims that Obama has, by virtue of his trip to the Middle East, demonstrated his “gravitas.”

Pickens Tells Offshore Drilling Advocates: 'You're Going To Get A Rude Awakening'  —  Testifying before Sen. Joe Lieberman's (I-CT) Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, conservative Texas billionaire T. Boone Pickens explained his plan to dramatically decrease oil usage by greatly expanding wind power electricity.

Too young for the No. 1 job?  —  Barack Obama is too young to be president.  Yes I know he is 46 and the Constitution sets the presidential age qualification at 35 or higher, but Obama has said that we ought not to interpret the Constitution woodenly and formalistically.

“Wall Street Got Drunk”: ‘Banned’ Bush Video Surfaces  —  An ABC-TV outlet in Houston, and now the Houston Chronicle, have posted a video taken at a political fundraiser for Pete Olson, featuring George W. Bush last week — capturing some embarrassing/revealing moments after, he noted, he had asked cameras to be turned off.

Novak: “I Just Put Something on the Internet” (!!)  —  Prince of Darkness tells Fox News Channel: His report about McCain announcing his running mate this week may have been “a dodge” by the campaign to grab some headlines from Obama.  —  The conservative columnist goes on to say he'd gotten the tip from a …

Gore's nutty idea  —  He's a former vice president of the United States, Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author, so the lavish news coverage of Al Gore's latest brainstorm was inevitable.  Less understandable is why an idea so irresponsible - in economic terms, in fact, just this side of deranged - attracted so little ridicule.

Nas delivers petition to Fox  —  Hip hop star Nas heads to Fox's Manhattan headquarters Wednesday at 2pm to deliver a petition with over 600,000 signatures calling on the network to “stop its racist smears against the Obamas and other Black Americans.”  —  “FOX poisons the country …