Republican Sen. Conrad Burns chastised a group of firefighters over the weekend for doing a “poor job” of squelching a 92,000-acre blaze near Billings, a state report shows.

Burns and the firefighters - members of the Augusta Hotshots from the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest in Virginia - were at the Billings Logan International Airport awaiting flights, according to Burns and U.S. Forest Service representatives.

Burns approached the firefighters and told them they had “done a poor job” and “should have listened to the ranchers,” according to a report prepared by Paula Rosenthal, a Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation employee who was sent to the airport to speak with the senator.

"It would probably be a stretch to think we're going to be there [as a contender] in 2007. It's going to be a little slower. I don't want to mislead anyone."

"Scrubs" creator Bill Lawrence is in place to adapt and direct "Fletch Won," a project that would likely reunite him with series star Zach Braff.

This would be the first feature film project for Lawrence. The Weinstein Company hopes to have "Fletch Won" in production by April 2007 when "Scrubs" goes on summer vacation.

Based on the book by Gregory McDonald, "Fletch Won" is a prequel to the first seven books in the mystery-comedy series and the movie would be treated as a prequel to Chevy Chase's two "Fletch" films from the '80s.

Exxon Mobil Corp. said Thursday it earned $10.36 billion in the second quarter, the second largest quarterly profit ever recorded by a publicly traded U.S. company.

The earnings figure was 36 percent above the profit it reported a year ago. High oil prices helped boost the company's revenue by 12 percent to a level just short of a quarterly record.

Exxon Mobil's report comes a day after another large U.S. oil company, ConocoPhillips, said it earned more than $5 billion in the quarter and at a time when many drivers in the U.S. are paying $3 for a gallon of gas — increasing the likelihood of further political backlash in Washington.

"Condoms and teenagers work about 50% of the time, if you count all of the studies up."
-Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), a doctor who should probably know that condoms are 97% effective.

"It kind of reminds . . . I could use the Third Reich, the big lie..."
-Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), speaking about people who believe global warming is a problem.

"...most scientists unfortunately, those that certainly are advocating for this(embryonic stem cell research), and many others feel very little moral compulsion."
-Sen. Rick Santorum (R-OK, in spirit)

A powerful Republican committee chairman who has led the fight against President Bush’s signing statements said Monday he would have a bill ready by the end of the week allowing Congress to sue him in federal court.

“We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president’s acts declared unconstitutional,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said on the Senate floor.

Specter’s announcement came the same day that an American Bar Association task force concluded that by attaching conditions to legislation, the president has sidestepped his constitutional duty to either sign a bill, veto it, or take no action.

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted Thursday to freeze funding for popular education programs such as Head Start and grants to schools for poor children and those with special needs.

Job training programs would face a slight cut, and health research funded by the National Institutes of Health would receive a less than 1 percent gain over current levels.

For the next five years, Congress is setting aside up to $100 million a year to promote marriage and $50 million a year to produce committed fathers. This year’s allotment goes out before Sept. 30.

A state judge has ruled that North Carolina's 201-year-old law barring unmarried couples from living together is unconstitutional.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued last year to overturn the rarely enforced law on behalf of a former sheriff's dispatcher who says she had to quit her job because she wouldn't marry her live-in boyfriend.

Deborah Hobbs, 41, says her boss, Sheriff Carson Smith of Pender County, near Wilmington, told her to get married, move out or find another job after he found out she and her boyfriend had been living together for three years. The couple did not want to get married, so Hobbs quit in 2004.

Actor Haley Joel Osment was hospitalized early Thursday after he apparently lost control of his car while heading to his Los Angeles-area home, authorities said.

Osment, who was nominated for an Academy Award for his role as a boy who could see dead people in "The Sixth Sense," was driving a 1995 Saturn about 1 a.m. when the car collided with a brick pillar and flipped, said Los Angeles County sheriff's Lt. Greg Sisneros.

The 18-year-old actor was awake and talking following the crash, Sisneros said. He had been alone in the car and was taken to Huntington Hospital in nearby Pasadena.

"I am for Ralph Reed as strongly as I have ever been for anyone."

Bush expressed his frustration with the United Nations and his disgust with the militant Islamic group and its backers in Syria as he talked to British Prime Minister Tony Blair during the closing lunch at the Group of Eight summit.

"See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over," Bush told Blair as he chewed on a buttered roll.

"You eight hours? Me too. Russia's a big country and you're a big country. Takes him eight hours to fly home. Not Coke, diet Coke. … Russia's big and so is China. Yo Blair, what're you doing? Are you leaving," Bush said.

The lead researcher in this field told me, he said, "I look at the numbers of the United States and I see about 23% of the population who are pure right-wing authoritarian followers." They're not going to change. They're going to march over the cliff. The best thing to deal with them -- and they're growing, and they have a tremendous influence on Republican politics -- The best defense is understanding them, to realize what they are doing, how they're doing it and how they operate. Then it can be kept in perspective and they can be seen for what they are.

A little bit of England will be visiting "The Office" next season.

Ben Silverman, the executive producer of the hit NBC comedy, says that there will be something of a cross-over episode of "The Office," with some of the cast from the U.K. edition making an appearance at the dreary factory in Scranton, Pa., where the U.S. version takes place.

"There's a lot of love between [the casts and crews] of the two versions of the show," Silverman told The Post, declining to reveal plot details of the upcoming episode so as not to spoil it for fans.

"Expect some cameos from the U.K. paper company," says Silverman.

It was not immediately clear if the British cast members will be reprising their roles from the original U.K. version of "The Office" or simply popping up in other roles.

Mr. Santorum has insisted that voters do not really know much about Mr. Casey, that some Pennsylvanians actually believe the Democratic candidate is his father, former Gov. Robert P. Casey, who died six years ago.

"This is a guy recruited by the Democrats because he has a good name," Mr. Santorum said, after shaking hands at a Fourth of July fireworks display in Radnor.

Mr. Casey, in an interview, noted that he had run three statewide general election campaigns in recent years and served as state auditor general and treasurer. Moreover, he said, it is "really insulting to the people of Pennsylvania" to suggest that some voters still think he is his father.

Journey will have a new lead singer on its summer tour with Def Leppard while Steve Augeri recovers from a throat infection.

Jeff Scott Soto, who has performed with Journey guitarist Neal Schon, will step in for Augeri starting with a show Friday in Bristow, Va.

"Steve's been suffering with an acute throat condition since before we kicked off the tour with Def Leppard. We were hoping he'd be in well condition to handle the rigors of the road but unfortunately it appears to be a chronic condition requiring total voice rest," the band said in a statement Thursday.

Well, Ann Coulter may be "liberal" in one respect, anyway. The New York Post reported Sunday that author/columnist Coulter "cribbed liberally in her latest book" and also in several of her syndicated columns, according to a plagiarism expert.

John Barrie, creator of the iThenticate plagiarism-probing system, claimed he found at least three examples of what he called "textbook plagiarism" in the new Coulter book "Godless" after he ran its text through the program.

He also discovered verbatim copying in Coulter's weekly column, which is syndicated to more than 100 newspapers by Universal.

The headline in classic Post fashion: COPYCATTY COULTER PILFERS PROSE: PRO

Bloggers had been citing examples of alleged Coulter cribbing for months.