High Level Debate Stalled Syria Air Strike  —  U.S. Was Concerned Over Intelligence, Stability to Region, Officials Tell ABC News  —  The September Israeli airstrike on a suspected nuclear site in Syria had been in the works for months, ABC News has learned, and was delayed only at the strong urging of the United States.

Fort Hunt's Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII  —  For six decades, they held their silence.  —  The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.

AN IMMODERATE MODERATOR  —  So, should viewers of Tuesday's Re publican presidential debate expect an exchange of views between the candidates - or between the candidates and one of the event's moderators?  —  It's a fair question, given the jaw-dropping comments Thursday evening from MSNBC blowhard …

Scandal brewing at Oral Roberts  —  TULSA, Okla. - Twenty years ago, televangelist Oral Roberts said he was reading a spy novel when God appeared to him and told him to raise $8 million for Roberts' university, or else he would be "called home."  —  Now, his son, Oral Roberts University …

The Sunni Insurgency Has Become a "Disaster": An Estranged Former Ally Lashes Out, Accusing Al-Qaida of Torture and Murder in Diyala  —  In a rather stunning development, the Iraqi Islamic militant faction known as Asaeb al-Iraq al-Jihadiya (a.k.a. "the Iraqi Jihad Union") …

What's on a Lapel?  —  Senator Barack Obama's comments about the absence of an American flag pin on his lapel created dustup on the campaign trail yesterday.  When asked why he wasn't wearing a flag pin in a television interview on Wednesday he said he had stopped wearing one because he felt that the pin …

The Erosion of a Murder Case Against Marines in the Killing of 24 Iraqi Civilians  —  Last year, when accounts of the killing of 24 Iraqis in Haditha by a group of marines came to light, it seemed that the Iraq war had produced its defining atrocity, just as the conflict in Vietnam had spawned the My Lai massacre a generation ago.

I am creating artificial life, declares US gene pioneer  —  Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.

Welcome To "The Nanny State"  —  Welcome to the Nanny State  —  By Bill Steigerwald  —  With his book "Nanny State," Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi has thrown a conservative-libertarian rope around a disturbing political and cultural trend — the nannification of America by moral busybodies …

With Him or Against Him  —  THE BLACK-AND-WHITE WORLD OF CLARENCE THOMAS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH RACE.  —  Clarence Thomas' new autobiography, My Grandfather's Son, paints a stark picture of an America in which nothing but race matters.  In his telling, virtually everyone who has ever wronged him has done so because of his race.

"Media Matters"; by Paul Waldman  —  Here at Media Matters, as in many other places, this was a week of Rush Limbaugh, not only because of what he said about American soldiers and veterans who oppose the Iraq war, but because of what he said about us.  There has been some wild spinning coming …