Who says Vice-President Dick Cheney doesn’t symbolize “Everyman?” Just look at these incredible career parallels.

BBC: Kember Enjoys First Day at Home …Mr Kember, 74, restated his opposition to foreign troops in the country, but thanked the soldiers who rescued him. “I do not believe that a lasting peace is achieved by armed force but I pay tribute to their courage and thank those who played a part in my rescue,” he said. He went on to thank those of many faiths who had appealed and prayed for him….

Pssst! Hey, you…Vladimir Putin. Here’s a hint. Don’t apply for the sudden opening at the Washington Post for a blogger: THE career of President Vladimir Putin of Russia was built at least in part on a lie, according to US researchers. A new study of an economics thesis written by Putin in the mid-1990s has revealed that large chunks of it were copied from an American text. Putin was labelled a plagiarist yesterday after a pair of researchers at the Brookings Institution, a Washington...

AP: POLICHARKI, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan court has dismissed the case against a man who converted from Islam to Christianity for lack of evidence, an official said Sunday. The court, and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, had been under intense international pressure to drop the case against Abdul Rahman, who faced a possible death sentence for his conversion. Some Islamic clerics had called for his execution, saying Rahman would face danger from his countrymen if he were released….

In a way, it’s a non-story since you could see this one coming: Prospects for robust ethics reform in the 109th Congress are dimming, even as the criminal probes that prompted it are intensifying. It’s a political calculation that could cost lawmakers in this fall’s elections, if they misread the degree to which voters care about bribery inside the Beltway. Yes, let’s hope so. A few months ago members of both parties virtually wrapped themselves in the American flag as they...

Rep. Katherine Harris has done a political about-face on using her extensive inheritance to fund her own political campaign — yet another seeming sign that her campaign is in trouble: In an effort to jump-start her sputtering Senate campaign, Rep. Katherine Harris went on national television invoking the memory of her late father and saying the money he left her will form the financial foundation of her challenge to Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson. Now the Harris campaign says that’s not...

TMV thought there was at least the possibility of it being a slip of the tongue when a (since-fired) radio host called Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice a racial epithet. Here’s another view.

At first glance, you think President George W. Bush should have peered a bit more deeply into Russian President Vladmir Putin’s soul: it turned out that the Russian may have been Putin on the US on when it came to Iraq: As U.S. troops moved toward Iraq in 2003, Saddam Hussein received intelligence about their battle strategy and troop movements from a Russian ambassador, according to a Pentagon report. The Russians claimed they obtained the information from sources inside the U.S. Central Command...

But it won’t go down in the record books (and that’s something to carp about and if you don’t think so, just read the link for the halibut.)

It’s because of the kinds of questions (illustration is below):

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius concludes that George Bush may now be moving into the phase that stymied another president — Lyndon Baines Johnson, during the Vietnam war: Now it gets painful for George W. Bush. Iraq is wrapped around his presidency as tightly as Vietnam was around Lyndon Johnson’s. Bush keeps telling the country he has a plan for victory, but the polls suggest the public doesn’t believe it. Those big “Plan for Victory” signs at his rally in...

BBC: Kember returning to UK amid row Freed British hostage Norman Kember is returning home – to a row over whether he thanked the soldiers who saved him….

The Washington Post’s former conservative blogger Ben Domenech who resigned yesterday amid allegations that he plagiarized past work has ripped into his former editors, calling them “fools”. His fiery retort comes in a story on the conservative website Human Events: In his first public comments since resigning earlier today as a blogger for washingtonpost.com, Ben Domenech says his editors there were “foolsâ€? for not expecting an onslaught of attacks from the left. “While...

This is very good news: An Afghan Christian facing possible execution for converting from Islam was likely to be released from jail “soon,” a senior government official said following huge Western pressure over the case. “He is likely to be released soon,” the official said, adding there would be a top-level meeting on the matter Saturday. Awesome. Religious freedom deserves no less.

Alan Stewart Carl thinks this is a difficult topic and that we’ll be debating this issue over the next few years. And unfortunately, it seems like it’ll remain difficult… This is one of those issues that is difficult to discuss because it is incredibly complex and yet many insist on taking simplistic and misleading positions. This is not just about basic rights (although rights are involved). This is not just about cultural clashes (although assimilation is an issue). And this is...

One of my roommates is making me watch “The O’Reilly Factor.” He’s not impressive. But when it went to commercial, I was informed “this show is brought to you by Waste Management,” my local garbage collection company. Irony amongst the Fox producers? Or just proof there is a God?

Washington Post Op-Ed: Is President Bush the leader of our government, or is he just a right-wing talk-show host? The question comes to mind after Bush’s news conference this week in which he sounded like someone who has no control over the government he is in charge of. His words were those of a pundit inveighing against the evils of bureaucrats…

Well, Red America is no more and plagiarism brought it down. That’s right…Ben Domenech has resigned due to some heavy pressures from the left, the right, and probably his own conscience. This looks bad for bloggers, right? Well, as the executive editor of washingtonpost.com explains… We appreciate the speed and thoroughness with which our readers and media outlets surfaced these allegations. Despite the turn this has taken, we believe this event, among other things, testifies to...

College security teams are using Facebook to investigate their students. Sketchy, or fair use?

Kobe Bryant: Soon to be Jew? The Jerusalem Post has the scoop. But did it have to end with this line? But Bryant dispelled the notion of replacing Schayes as the greatest Jewish basketball player of all-time. “I don’t know if I’m converting, but if I do, you can definitely add another athlete to the pool,” he said. And if he does, that’s one tip-off Bryant won’t be too excited about. Ouch!

At Newsweek, Michael Hirsh (who provides us with yet another must-read) looks at the recent re-emergence of Andrew Natsios, the former head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) who is now a professor at Georgetown and, since just recently, a harsh critic of “the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq occupation”: “In an interview with NEWSWEEK on Tuesday, he harshly criticized the Coalition Provisional Authority led by L. Paul Bremer III for botching...

Why all this talk about high-level personnel changes in the West Wing? Surely the magicians are just trying to change the subject, to redirect media attention away from all the bad news out there. I have more thoughts here.

I think Rhode Island has made the right move on a faith-based abstinence program. More from The Westerly Sun: PROVIDENCE – Rhode Island education officials have banned from public schools a federally funded abstinence program that civil rights advocates said embraced sexist stereotypes and included a voluntary student health survey that violated privacy laws. Lawyers at the Rhode Island affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union first complained last year that a now-abandoned textbook...

Amazingly, cops are coming INTO bars and busting people for public intoxication. I have more here.

The murdered pastor’s murderous wife The WP’s new “conservative” blogger Who got booted off a reality show Who didn’t get married in Italy What’s in celebrity hotel rooms