• Heck, I give myself some credit for managing to get the Clinton and Obama campaigns to agree on something -- that neither wanted to be associated with my remarks.

• The Pittsburgh franchise hasn't finished above .500 since 1992. If, as universally predicted, the Pirates turn in their 16^th consecutive losing season this year, they will tie the all-time frustration record for professional sport set by the Philadelphia Phillies...

The Pentagon on Wednesday said an eruption of violence in southern Iraq, where US-backed government forces were battling Shiite militias, was a "by-product of the success of the surge."

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said it showed that the Iraqi government and security forces were now confident enough to take the initiative against Shiite extremists in the southern port of Basra.

• The John McCain campaign has suspended an aide for circulating a political attack video that splices together footage of Barack Obama, his long-time pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. and historical imagery of “black power” proponents. The YouTube video, called “Is Obama Wright?,” was making the rounds on conservative blogs, before the McCain aide, identified as Soren Dayton, was punished for posting it on a personal Twitter page.

• The YouTube video in question showed snippets of incendiary Wright sermons, including one where he refers to the United States as the “U.S. of KKK-A,” interspersed with clips of Obama denying being present during the controversial sermons. The video also includes a clip of Malcolm X, the rap song “Fight the Power” and segments questioning Obama’s patriotism. The Politico reported that the video was made in part by Lee Habeeb, former producer for “The Laura Ingraham Show.”

• United State Representative Thomas M. Reynolds announced Thursday that he will not seek another term in Congress...
• Mr. Reynolds, a Republican, said he wanted to spend more time with his family and indicated that recent criticism had not been a factor in his decision.
• ..“I had time to reflect on the State Senate seat in the north country and Congressman Hastert’s seat in Illinois.” He was referring to the recent Democratic victories in elections to fill posts that had long been in Republican hands. In New York, a Democrat, Darrel J. Aubertine, defeated the Republican, William A. Barclay, for a State Senate seat had had been Republican for more than a century. In Illinois, a Democrat, Bill Foster, won election to the House seat vacated by J. Dennis Hastert, the former speaker. Mr. Hastert, a Republican, had held the seat for two decades.

• Events unfolding this week on the lower end of Manhattan will cancel out all the projects John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been talking about. McCain will have to deal with the home truth that, though he may dig up enough soldier boys for the Middle Eastern wars, there is no money to pay for them. And thanks to the ever-shrinking dollar, other countries are not going to lend us more money to carry them on. We have run out of money: it's time to cut and run.

• Politics, technology, military capacity, and diseases have all played decisive roles in shaping history, yet it is impossible to understand the rise and fall of empires, the clash of civilizations, and the evolving balance of power without appreciating the unique fervor that religion inspires, and the speed with which new religions can spread"

• "...religious leaders prone to fanaticism are likely to find that the price of using force to spread God’s word, or to try to monopolize it, will be a greatly diminished hold on the future. Moreover, the future may come sooner than we think. We have seen how rapidly religion has spread in the past, claiming adherents from competing faiths before the competition knew what hit them. Both secularism and secularly inspired ways of being religious are spreading just as rapidly—maybe even more so. Historians may one day look back on the next few decades, not as yet another era when religious conflicts enveloped countries and blew apart established societies, but as the era when secularization took over the world."

• "She did not sit in on national security meetings. She did not have a security clearance. She did not attend meetings in the situation room. She conducted no negotiations. She did not manage any part of the national security bureaucracy." -- Former Clinton White House aide Greg Craig, in an interview with the National Journal, adding that Sen Hillary Clinton has "in serious ways overstated, if not grossly exaggerated, the nature of her experience."

• ...."many of them want to be martyrs.."
  
• "The attorney general said his view was a personal opinion. The Justice Department will participate in the trial, he said, but the Defense Department will be in charge.

• Two U.S. Senators sent out a new round of letters today to some of the nation’s most high-profile televangelists, urging them to turn over key financial records. The Senators told the ministries that they want to know how their “non-profit organizations are structured and operate,” amid allegations that some of the televangelists have misused church funds to enrich themselves.

• In another twist to the bitter battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, former vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, a member of Sen. Hillary Clinton's finance committee, vented her frustration with Sen. Barack Obama's campaign success in racially charged remarks. ..
  

  "If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position," Ferraro told a local California newspaper last week.

  "And if he was a woman (of any color) he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept," Ferraro said.

• The unhappiness of the Bush administration with Fallon's role as well as the unflattering picture of administration policy revealed by the article was evident Thursday from the failure of either the White House or the Pentagon to issue the usual reassuring statements in response to the article.
• Fallon is not the first CENTCOM commander to rein in aggressive White House policy toward the Middle East. In late 1997, according to Dana Priest's book, "The Mission", the Bill Clinton White House wanted CENTCOM commander Gen. Anthony Zinni to order his pilots to provoke a military confrontation with Iraq in the no-fly zone by deliberately drawing fire from Iraqi planes. The request for such a provocation was conveyed to Zinni by the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Ralston. But Zinni, who believed that it could lead to an unwanted war with Iraq, insisted that a formal request from the White House would have to be sent, and the plan was dropped.

• Striking to see such behavior between commercial breaks urging viewers to purchase Claritin and Frosted Mini-Wheats for the kids and Beneful Prepared Meals for the dog. TV Land also ran a spot for a forthcoming program called The Big 4-0, which will document the birthday parties of vulgar quadragenerians. Forty is the new 16. Drama is the new comedy. Pfft.

"It's harder and harder trying to do the Lord's work in the city of Satan," McCain said of Washington.

• A new state ban on smoking in restaurants and other nightspots contains an exception for performers in theatrical productions. So some bars are getting around the ban by printing up playbills, encouraging customers to come in costume, and pronouncing them "actors."

Gary Gygax, who co-created the fantasy game Dungeons & Dragons and helped start the role-playing phenomenon, died Tuesday morning at his Wisconsin home. He was 69.

• The FBI improperly used national security letters in 2006 to obtain personal data on Americans during terror and spy investigations, Director Robert Mueller said Wednesday.

• In a stunning upset that could reshape the nation's aerospace industry, Northrop Grumman Corp. and European partner Airbus were tapped Friday for a $40-billion Pentagon contract to build 179 aerial refueling tankers for the Air Force.

• "More passengers, more cargo, more fuel offload, more patients that we can carry, more availability, more flexibility and more dependability," Gen. Arthur Lichte, the commander of the Air Mobility Command at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, said of the Northrop Grumman-EADS KC-45A tanker.

• "In 2004, the U.S. Congress killed a $23.5 billion Air Force plan to lease and then buy 100 modified Boeing 767 tankers amid a Pentagon procurement scandal brought to light chiefly by Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the all-but certain Republican nominee for U.S. president"

Pomp and ceremony greeted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his arrival in Iraq on Sunday, the fanfare a stark contrast to the rushed and secretive visits of his bitter rival U.S. President George W. Bush.

Ahmadinejad held hands with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani as they walked down a red carpet to the tune of their countries' national anthems, his visit the first by an Iranian president since the two neighbours fought a ruinous war in the 1980s.

His warm reception, in which he was hugged and kissed by Iraqi officials and presented with flowers by children, was Iraq's first full state welcome for any leader since the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003.