An Optics Problem For McCain  —  Item: The McCain campaign's handpicked RNC convention czar, Doug Goodyear, resigns after Newsweek reports that his firm, the DCI Group, was working to make the government of Myanmar look good. … Discussion: Optics.  What becomes now of Doug Davenport …

Halliburton Rape Claim Goes to Court  —  Judge Orders That Woman's Case Should Go to Trial, Not Arbitration  —  A Houston woman who says she was gang raped by co-workers at a Halliburton/KBR camp in Baghdad won a major court battle late Friday when a Texas judge ordered that she can bring …

Obama unstained by Chicago Way  —  Will Barack Obama's presidential candidacy serve his state and city by finally drawing national attention to the sleazy and corrupt politics of Illinois and Chicago?  —  It is all about context.  The presumptive Democratic presidential candidate's politics were born in Chicago.

You Better Keep Your Mouth Shut, In A Rut  —  It's always disconcerting to read senior defense officials sounding like the wingnutosphere, but this gem from the doc-dump about the Pentagon's media-manipulation efforts is especially telling.  In 2006 Rajiv Chandrasekaran did a TPMCafe book club …

Dear Senator Obama ...  A Republican reformer has advice for the new guy promising to clean up Washington: get specific.  —  Your campaign has been brilliant.  It has given you more support and more momentum than most analysts expected a year ago.  Keeping things simple and vague has worked so far …

Party Like It's 2008  —  ANOTHER weekly do-or-die primary battle, another round of wildly predicted “game changers” that collapsed in the locker room.  —  Hillary Clinton's attempt to impersonate a Nascar-lovin', gun-totin', economist-bashin' populist went bust: Asked which candidate most …

Already, Obama and McCain Map Fall Strategies  —  Senators John McCain and Barack Obama are already drawing up strategies for taking each other on in the general election, focusing on the same groups — including independent voters and Latinos — and about a dozen states where they think the contest …

Rethinking Ethanol  —  The time has come for Congress to rethink ethanol, an alternative fuel that has lately fallen from favor.  Specifically, it is time to end an outdated tax break for corn ethanol and to call a timeout in the fivefold increase in ethanol production mandated in the 2007 energy bill.

HRC: ‘I AM NO SHRINKING VIOLET’  —  From NBC/NJ's Mike Memoli  —  LOUISVILLE, KY — Hillary Clinton touted her electability and commitment to the Bluegrass State as she was the only candidate to address Democrats tonight.  —  “The only way we can have a Democrat in that White House come next January …

Hillary Holds Private Conference Call With Her Super-Dels: “I Know This Is Not Easy”  —  Hillary held a private rally-the-troops conference call with her super-delegate supporters this afternoon, urging them to believe that “this race is not over,” vowing to them she'd promote Dem unity after the primary …

Lebanon's Third Civil War  —  The third civil war has begun in Lebanon.  —  The first war was a short one.  Sunni Arab Nationalists in thrall to Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser wanted to attach Lebanon to the United Arab Republic - a brief union of Egypt and Syria.

History re-written: Obama never said he would meet personally with Iran without precondition, says advisor; Update: Website excerpt added  —  LGF nails them to the wall, but the Times's complicity in this whitewash is actually even worse than Charles suggests.  From today's story: