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 …

Iraqi leader tells Bush: Get Gen Petraeus out  —  Relations between the top United States general in Iraq and Nouri al-Maliki, the country's prime minister, are so bad that the Iraqi leader made a direct appeal for his removal to President George W Bush.  —  Although the call was rejected …

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.

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."

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 …

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.

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.

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 …

Fewer See Balance in High Court Decisions  —  Growing Numbers In Poll Say Bench Is 'Too Conservative'  —  About half of the public thinks the Supreme Court is generally balanced in its decisions, but a growing number of Americans say the court has become "too conservative" …

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.

MoveOn Gets Someone to Bite on Faux Fox Protest  —  Liberal Coalition Mimics Right-Wing Groups  —  Taking a page from Don Wildmon's American Family Association, MoveOn and other liberal groups are going after marketers who advertise on Fox News.  And just like the AFA's claims that large portions …