Fred Thompson running for president  —  Fred Dalton Thompson is planning to enter the presidential race over the Fourth of July holiday, announcing that week that he has already raised several million dollars and is being backed by insiders from the past three Republican administrations, Thompson advisers told The Politico.

Right-wing noise machine: Plame not covert  —  (updated below - updated again - Update III)  —  NBC News, yesterday: … The right-wing noise machine spent the last two years repeatedly, continuously and emphatically telling their followers the exact opposite:

Economix: Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs  —  The whole controversy involving Lou Dobbs and leprosy started with a "60 Minutes" segment a few weeks ago.  —  The segment was a profile of Mr. Dobbs, and while doing background research for it, a "60 Minutes" producer came across a 2005 news report …

Mahdi army 'seized kidnapped Britons'  —  A Shia militia commander claimed today that the five British nationals kidnapped in Baghdad were driven straight into a hostage holding centre in a neighbourhood ruled by the firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.  —  A cell commander in Sadr's Mahdi army …

GOP plots blue-slip attack  —  House conservatives are ready to stop the Senate immigration bill in its tracks with a potent procedural weapon should the contentious measure win passage in the upper chamber.  —  The trump card conservatives may hold is a constitutional rule that revenue-related bills must originate in the House.

ACLU Sues Boeing Subsidiary for Participation in CIA Kidnapping and Torture Flights  —  Group Also Appeals to United States Supreme Court in Khaled El-Masri Lawsuit  —  NEW YORK - The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a federal lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. …

Bush envisions U.S. presence in Iraq like S.Korea  —  Source: Reuters  —  President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role, the White House said on Wednesday.

Clinton Secures Endorsement of the Mayor of Los Angeles  —  Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton have delivered another one-two punch that reflects their combined political power: corralling the endorsement of Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles …

Libertarians, beware the rigid reign of Rudy  —  Behind Rudy Giuliani's impressive lead in the polls is one fact that puzzles the pundits: Many cultural conservatives are backing a pro-choice, pro-gun control candidate.  But what should be equally surprising is the strong support Giuliani …

Lieberman in Iraq sees "progress," says so-called surge "would start to break the insurgency"  —  What a coincidence.  Two years after Cheney said the insurgency was in its last throes, Joe Lieberman made essentially the same prediction.  —  CNN reports that Lieberman is on an unannounced "surprise" visit to Baghdad.

Report confirms terror dry run  —  A newly released inspector general report backs eyewitness accounts of suspicious behavior by 13 Middle Eastern men on a Northwest Airlines flight in 2004 and reveals several missteps by government officials, including failure to file an incident report until a month after the matter became public.

The persecution of Lina Joy, continued  —  No, you cannot convert: Three cheers for sharia!  —  Last August, I wrote about the plight of an ex-Muslim woman in Malaysia named Lina Joy.  She had converted to Christianity and wanted to marry a Christian man.

Justices' Ruling Limits Suits on Pay Disparity  —  The Supreme Court on Tuesday made it harder for many workers to sue their employers for discrimination in pay, insisting in a 5-to-4 decision on a tight time frame to file such cases.  The dissenters said the ruling ignored workplace realities.

Dying for an Iraq That Isn't  —  Of all the absurdities attending our unending war in Iraq, the greatest is this: We are fighting to defend that which is not there.  —  We are fighting for a national government that is not national but sectarian, and has shown no capacity to govern.