Aide: Iraq PM relations with Petraeus poor  —  BAGHDAD — A key aide says Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's relations with U.S. commander Gen. David Petraeus are so poor the Iraqi leader may ask Washington the withdraw the well-regarded U.S. military leader from duty here.

Partisans Gone Wild  —  A funny thing is happening in American politics: The fiercest battle is no longer between the left and the right but between partisanship and bipartisanship.  The Bush administration, which has been notorious for playing to its hard-right base, has started reaching across the aisle …

What Beltway media stars mean by "centrism" and "extremism"  —  As always, when wielded by Beltway media stars, the terms "centrist" and "moderate" and "mainstream" mean "whatever views I personally happen to hold on a topic, regardless of how many Americans actually share it."

More on Lowe's pulling ads from O'Reilly  —  What moved Lowe's to pull its ads from the Bill O'Reilly hate-fest?  —  Could it be that targeting Home Depot for its support of the FOX Nutwork's coordinated campaign against science raised some eyebrows?  —  Even as Home Depot is hoping …

Many Happy Returns  —  Recall if you will.  It was a bright, warm day in September, and the clocks were striking thirteen.  In the busy East of the country, trains, planes, and automobiles disgorge lines of still-sleepy workers.  Across the Great Plains and into the Rockies, men and women wake slowly to their coffee.

Our War on Terror  —  The day after the 9/11 attacks, President George W. Bush declared the strikes by Al Qaeda "more than acts of terror.  They were acts of war."  Bush's "war on terror" was "not a figure of speech," he said.  Rather, it was a defining framework.

The Saturday Cartoons  —  And here's Mark Fiore with an animation on the Bush administration dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: "Pickling The Poor" with your host, Buzzie the Fly.  —  Click on the screenshot above or go here to see it.  —  All cartoons are posted with the artists' express permission to BobGeiger.com.

The Centrists Didn't Hold  —  NOT very long ago, the Democratic Leadership Council was a maker of presidents — or, at least, the maker of a president.  In 1991, Gov. Bill Clinton of Arkansas, then the council's chairman, elucidated the "New Democrat" ethos and previewed the themes …

Labels Matter: Progressive Better than Liberal, Reagan-Like Better than Conservative  —  During last Monday's Democratic Presidential debate, Senator Hillary Clinton indicated that she preferred to be called "progressive" rather than "liberal."  The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds …

Hate-crime arrests in Quran desecrations at Pace University  —  NEW YORK (AP) _ A 23-year-old man was arrested Friday on hate-crime charges after he threw a Quran in a toilet at Pace University on two separate occasions, police said.  —  Stanislav Shmulevich of Brooklyn was arrested on charges …

Democrats as victims?  —  There's an interesting meme of Democratic victimology developing here...  In addition to former Sen. John Edwards, D-NC, saying that media attention on his hair stems from powerful interests who "want to shut me up", it should be noted that Sen. Hillary Clinton …

Fred on Restoring Federalism: Bring Back Reagan on the 10th Amendment  —  Former Tennessee senator and presumptive GOP presidential candidate Fred Thompson continues his hearts and minds campaign on the Right side of the Blogosphere with a lengthy post on federalism at I'm With Fred.

In the '60s, a Future Candidate Poured Her Heart Out in Letters  —  They were high school friends from Park Ridge, Ill., both high achievers headed East to college.  John Peavoy was a bookish film buff bound for Princeton, Hillary Rodham a driven, civic-minded Republican going off to Wellesley.

Romney Will Skip YouTube Forum  —  Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said Friday that he will not participate in a debate on Sept. 17 co-sponsored by CNN and YouTube, saying the debate did not show the proper respect for the process of selecting a presidential nominee.