Good news.

From Iraq . From Afghanistan .

How Bush won the confrontation over Iraq....

Carl Hulse writes: Democrats said they did not relish the prospect of leaving Washington for a Memorial Day break — the second recess since ...

When Barbara Walters met Louie C.K.

I loved this AV Club interview with Louis C.K. , which has a lot about why his HBO comedy "Lucky Louie" failed. The part about Bar...

Bob's...

... 66.

Okay, I'm putting that behind me now.

If you're sick of "American Idol" or hated it all along, don't go away. I'm not going to talk about it anymore. Except...

Still trying to recover from that horrible "American Idol" last night...

Entertainment Weekly has some good advic e for next season's final show: Don't allow any non-Idol performers to take the stage — unl...

"American Idol" -- the winner is (I hear) announced... and the theme is: cruelty.

"But I'm only human..." Did everyone in America crack up simultaneously when Phil sang that line in the top-6-guys rendition o...

Murder on State Street!

The Cap Times reports: The victim, Austin David Bodahl, 23, of Waconia, Minn., was pronounced dead early this morning at UW Hospital. Daniel...

The police can't stop a driver for weaving, as long as he stays in his own lane.

Here in Wisconsin.

Fie on fluorescent.

Maybe fluorescent bulbs meet your needs, if you have meager lighting needs, but some of us care how things look and expect some glow , some ...

Monica Goodling testifies: "I may have gone too far in asking political questions..."

NYT reports: Ms. Goodling said that in the course of her five years at the Justice Department, she interviewed hundreds of job applicants, m...

Time management expert does an interview with me and considers it "a bust."

Because unlike everyone else she selected to interview, I didn't produce a list of time management tips. Well, now I have one: If you...

Fiction and nonfiction daddery.

Cameron Stracher has a new book called "Dinner With Dad." Here's some discussion of it: [H]e chronicles his path from a corp...

My screaming problem.

I don't know what it is, but I have this problem -- it started a year ago or so -- of sounding like I'm screaming when I sneeze. It...

That immigration bill is bringing out the vicious language... or at least reports of it.

The other day we heard that John McCain said "f*ck you" and "chickenshit" over the bill, and now here's John Boehne...

The death penalty for the rape of a child: "Short of a first-degree murderer, we can think of no other non-homicide crime more deserving."

Yesterday, the Louisiana Supreme Court issued an opinion upholding the death penalty for the rape of a child under the age of 12. The U.S. ...

Is Gore running for President? "If he drops 25 to 30 pounds, he’s running."

That's Donna Brazile's tip on how to tell if Gore is running, as quoted by Maureen Dowd. ( TimesSelect link. ) Gore is out and about...

ABC reveals that Bush approved plan to destabilize the Iranian government.

Here ... and note the extremely harsh comments. For more commentary, start here . From Captain Ed : ABC reports that Dick Cheney preferred t...

Stemming the red tide.

Why not? The pill that ends menstruation got approved . Was it hard to come up with the title for this post? Yeah! Is there some deep psycho...

Why is Giuliani able to sit back and watch McCain and Romney pummel each other?

Strange, no? It is an unusual dynamic, to have the candidates placing second and third in most national opinion polls engaging one another f...

Justice Scalia presided over a wedding here in Madison this weekend.

Except not officially. He had to hand the man-and-wife pronouncement over to Shirley Abrahamson -- Chief Justice of the Wisconsin Supreme C...

"If you don't like your life, change it."

Just an intriguingly simple bit of advice from Laurence Olivier , who, had he lived, would turn 100 years old today.

"American Idol" -- finale.

Of course, you're watching. 1. Blake wins the coin flip, but instead of saying what everyone always says, that he wants to go second, he...

American Muslims are "happy with their lives and moderate in outlook."

According to a new Pew survey: "Clearly, this public comes across as much more moderate than much of the Muslim public in most of the w...

Should museums display shrunken heads?

Should they accept an artist's offer of his own head -- when he's done using it -- in exchange for the museum's return of their...

When Reagan met Thurgood Marshall.

From the newly published Reagan diaries: "From there to a meeting of Jewish leaders & 3 refusniks we succeeded in getting out of th...

How did Paula Abdul break her nose?

Bzzzzt. Wrong. She was stepping over a Chihuahua. ''I took a nasty fall ... trying not to hurt my dog. I bruised myself on my arm .....

When Pakistani Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz tried to hit on...

... Condoleezza Rice. By the end of the meeting he was babbling. The Pakistanis were shifting uncomfortably. And his voice visibly changed.

"Maybe his solution will be to get out his small varmint gun and drive those Guatemalans off his lawn."

This line, from yesterday's blogger conference , is making quite the sensation . And rightly so! McCain hilariously combines two embarra...

Ann Romney presents us with a cardboard cutout of her husband, Mitt.

(AP photo.) ADDED: I don't know if you realize this is a standard function of political wives.

"If I had known she was going to die at 19, maybe I would have raised her differently."

"I always taught her to be good."

This is incredibly sweet.

This guy is pretty cool too. (Via Metafilter .)

Everyone's using the on-line dating services these days...

... and everyone is so repulsive and presumptuous and idiotic. This is the woman's list of mistakes men make. (It's Rachel Lucas, w...

If no news is good news...

Is news that you thought already happened good news? Feels the same. ADDED: Now, I'm actually reading the article and seeing something ...

Another blogger conference call with McCain.

Starting momentarily. I don't have a question planned. Too busy getting that podcast up and so forth. I'm not going to ask why he sa...

Audible Althouse #84.

It's a podcast. Evil birds, where not to meet men, using nonfiction books to teach kids to read, Mad Magazine, finding the mummified bo...

Christian.

Issues.

Notes in preparation for a second viewing of last night's "Sopranos." [With second-viewing additions scattered throughout.]

Speaking of Amba, she already has a lot to say about last night's "Sopranos." Lots of spoilers over there. Me, I can't wr...

"Why and when did you decide, f*ck that, I'm coming out swinging?"

Amba asks why , so soon after putting an asterisk in "f*ck," I did a post that consisted of calling someone a dick. Good question...

"I wanted cute but got Cujo."

"I have an identical [twin] sister and I don't look like her anymore."

The revival of "traditional play" for children.

Check it out. Some people think kids ought to be encouraged to go outside and play tag and that sort of thing. Conn Iggulden [author of ...

I meet people all day long who say to me, 'I’m an artist because of you,' really cool-looking young people."

"I just want to burst into tears."

Roberts Rules of Order and 60s radicals.

From an essay by Rachel Donadio (which has much more about Roberts Rules of Order): Todd Gitlin, a former president of Students for a Democ...

Hey, the guy who named the blogosphere...

... is kind of a dick.

Yeah, I still have a lot of car pictures to go.

But I thought I'd break the monotony with a photo post that was completely the opposite.

Garden with lady's slippers/tablescape with a tree peony.

The garden looks wild, but it's actually amazingly carefully tended. Those are yellow lady's slippers Inside, the table is carefully...

About that suggestion of mine that reading classes should use nonfiction books.

This post has really stirred people up . Look, my main point is efficiency . Kids need to learn to read, and they should also be learning s...

Poll shows 2 Republicans Iowans want in the race even more than Fred Thompson.

Condoleezza Rice and Newt Gingrich. ADDED: In the comments, I make what you might think is an amazing assertion: I have never seen Fred Thom...

"Kraft singles on white bread was one of this President's most requested lunch items."

Writes Walter Scheib , former White House Executive Chef, fired by Laura Bush in 2005. Don't mess with the chef. He knows those embarras...