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People vote in Iraq but not much seems to get done. 

Here's a  USA Today interview with Prime Minister al Maliki.  He's optimistic about controlling the militias because he says they are at  at least of the political process.

We don't have Sunnis and Shiites here but we do have Red and Blue states.  Their militias are part of the political process too.

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Outraged Democrats plan to use the behavior of Mark Foley  as a campaign club to beat the bushes for Republican voters.

Maybe it's working.  Republican Tom Reynolds is in charge of protecting House seats in the upcoming election.  But he finds himself so far behind in the polls that he had to resort to "human shields" according to Britain's Times Online:

"Mr Reynolds suffered widespread ridicule for holding a press conference
last week where he surrounded himself with young children of
supporters, prompting reporters to complain that in such circumstances
they were unable to ask him about the sexually charged computer
messages. The Democrats muttered about Mr Reynolds using “kids as human
shields”.

On the other hand, too much focus on Foley may not be the best way for the party of gay marriage to attract angry republicans.  Here's Earl Ofari Hutchinson referring to an MSNBC poll in the Huffington Post:

"The poll certainly found voters more ready than ever to punish GOP
candidates for the appalling corruption, arrogance and ineptitude of
the Republican leadership. But the Dems make a colossal mistake if they
think that Foley and the GOP's follies alone will put them over the top."

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A year and a half ago Steven Chen and Chad Hurley used credit cards to launch their video site, YouTube. The site was soon hosting 100 million video clips. Chen and Hurley were concerned. With no advertising, the more viewers the site drew the more money they lost. (Forbes has the details here.)

No problem.  This week Google snapped up YouTube as part of its world take-over program.  The 20 something Chen and Hurley are now billionaires. (The Independent has a good account.)

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Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist who wrote about the Dirty War in Chechnya, was assassinated.  She was a constant critic of Vladimir Putin.  She died on his birthday.  Putin is a former head of KGB.

According to USA Today Politkovskaya was working on a story about kidnapping and torture in Chechnya when she was killed.

American reporter, Paul Klebnikov was hit in Moscow in 2004.  The Committee to Protect Journalists says 42 journalists have been murdered in Russia since 1992.

I wanted to work this story it into a cartoon but it lacked gay e-mails so it didn't get much play in the U.S.  The Korean nuke test is big news and Russia is a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council so here it is.

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Well, he went ahead and did it anyway.  House Speaker Hastert demanded an immediate response thanking Kim Jong II for knocking the Foley scandal off the front page.  Madeline Albright will drink to that.

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Florida Republican Mark Foley took big chances sending raunchy e-mails and lewd text messages to congressional pages.  Maybe he thought he would be protected.  Or maybe we was committing political suicide. He resigned his seat.

On the other hand, he's still following congressional procedure.  He has checked into rehab, giving alcoholism a bad name.

The question now is what did House Speaker Hastert know about Foley's messages and when did he know it.

The Washington Times thinks Hastert is Foley's keeper and he should step down too.  The Wall Street Journal asks why go after Hastert when  Democrat Gerry Studds actually seduced a page 23 years ago and was allowed to remain a member of congress for 13 years after being censured?

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In a bold bid for world domination, Wal-Mart will sell generic prescription drugs for $4.00. 

This undercuts the United States world domination price of free.  While technically lower than the Wal-Mart price it is posted in an unknown language.   

Target says it will match Wal-Mart's price.  Al Qaeda has yet to respond.

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Parts of a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq were leaked to the New York Times last Sunday.  The leaks attracted  attention:

"The Iraq conflict has become the "cause célèbre" for jihadists,
breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and
cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."

Bush countered by declassifying a 3 page summary of the report (Read the declassified NIE report (.pdf)) : 

"Should jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves,
and be perceived, to have failed, we judge fewer fighters will be
inspired to carry on the fight."

In the end it's a zero sum report.  Daniel Henninger thinks we're still not getting our billions worth from from spooks:

After the White House released the
NIE summary late Tuesday afternoon, reporters reading it for the first
time on the Web undoubtedly kept hitting the Page Down button on their
PCs. This is it!? Three crummy pages that anyone could have boiled down
from a Foreign Affairs "Wither Iraq?" symposium.