Fox News calls Michelle Obama “Obama's baby mama”  —  An alert reader wrote in just a little while ago to let us know about something he'd spotted on Fox News Wednesday afternoon.  During a segment discussing conservative attacks against Michelle Obama, the wife of presumptive Democratic nominee Barack …

Obama Leads, but Margin Is Less Than Some Expect  —  Poll Has Democrat Continuing to Lag With White Males  —  WASHINGTON — Democrat Barack Obama begins his presidential race against Republican John McCain with a lead in the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, but not so great an edge …

New Gang of 14 won't back McCain  —  At least 14 Republican members of Congress have refused to endorse or publicly support Sen. John McCain for president, and more than a dozen others declined to answer whether they back the Arizona senator.  —  Many of the recalcitrant GOP members declined …

Pakistan Angry as Strike by U.S. Kills 11 Soldiers  —  ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — American air and artillery strikes killed 11 Pakistani paramilitary soldiers during a clash with insurgents on the Afghan border on Tuesday night, a development that raised concerns about the already strained American relationship with Pakistan.

President Obama?  Many White Supremacists are Celebrating  —  With the nomination of Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential candidate clinched, large sections of the white supremacist movement are adopting a surprising attitude: Electing America's first black president would be a very good thing.

Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech  —  VANCOUVER, British Columbia — A couple of years ago, a Canadian magazine published an article arguing that the rise of Islam threatened Western values.  The article's tone was mocking and biting, but it said nothing that conservative magazines …

Papers give peek inside al Qaeda in Iraq  —  BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — With Christmas 2005 approaching, the princes of al Qaeda's western command were gathering.  They'd been summoned for something special: to plot a three-month campaign of coordinated suicide, rocket and infantry attacks on American bases …

Prosecutors leaned on him, Rezko says  —  Letter to judge defended Obama and Blagojevich  —  Two months before he was convicted of federal corruption charges, political fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko told his trial judge that “overzealous” prosecutors were pressuring him to tell …

Is Bobby Jindal — Who May Be On McCain's Veep Shortlist — An Exorcist?  —  Bobby Jindal, the 36-year old governor of Louisiana, is being taken seriously by the national press as a candidate on the shortlist to be John McCain's Vice President.  No one doubts that he's a political prodigy …

Bush Awards Medal of Freedom to Donna Shalala  —  According to a White House press release (Update II, below), President Bush has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to a woman who did her best to stamp out freedom of speech while chancellor of the University of Wisconsin, Madison …

McCain, Obama Reaching Out to Female Voters  —  Sen. John McCain and his aides have gone out of their way to praise Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in recent days, and by the end of the week his most prominent female supporter, former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina …

Experts fear new front with al-Qaida as terror group switches focus from Iraq  —  Last month an Arabic satellite TV channel broadcast a chilling video of a group of Iraqi teenagers called the “Youths of Heaven” - their faces masked and brandishing Kalashnikov rifles, chanting “Allahu Akbar” …

Exclusive: Obama's Anti-Rumor Plan  —  As long as there have been rumors in politics, there has been one widely accepted way for a candidate to deal with them.  Basically, it's not to.  Otherwise, according to prevailing wisdom, all a candidate achieves is to elevate the rumors to a legitimate story for the media to feast on.

GOP claim about Chinese oil drilling off Cuba is untrue  —  WASHINGTON — As Congress has debated energy policy over the past several days, an unusual argument keeps surfacing in support of drilling off the U.S. coastline and in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

House Fails To Extend Jobless Benefits  —  The House yesterday narrowly failed to approve a proposal to give jobless workers an extra three months of unemployment benefits, but Democratic leaders said they would bring back the bill for a second vote today.  —  Despite a White House veto threat …