Yesterday in a Wall Street Journal article, “Plan for Iraq: Shareholders Don’t Shoot Each Other,” Charles Wolf, Jr.

This is an interesting geographic depiction of George W. Bush’s favorability levels. It’s not all that surprising that Bush’s popularity is worst in “blue states” and markedly better in the south and midwest. However, if the election in November 2004 had been held tomorrow, George W. Bush could not win with a map like this….

This is rather big news in Japan. A senior government panel in Japan has decided that women should be allowed to ascend to Japan’s imperial throne.

The White House has stated that claims that George Bush suggested bombing Al-Jazeera’s Qatar-based headquarters are “outlandish.

I just wrote this piece for TPM Cafe and invite any debate about what I’m suggesting. I have recently received some friendly criticism for focusing on things that are “too inside DC.” I think my writing and commentary are pretty diverse — but I’ll think about broadening the subject matter in coming months.

I do too.

President Bush and Vice President Cheney have been failing in their efforts to “set the record straight“, as their press team calls it, on the subject of Iraq-related WMD intelligence access before the invasion. I am rushing off to a meeting tonight, and the material I’d like to comment on is piling up.

Just about every government in the Middle East has been ticked off at the reporting by Al-Jazeera. This fact, more than anything else, indicates that Al-Jazeera is doing a lot right. I have made no secret of my respect for Al-Jazeera and its ability to dominate the Middle East media market with its reporting.

If I happened to be in charge of the Pulitzer Prizes for journalism, I’d award one to neocon-friendly Claudia Rosett for her work on the U.N. oil-for-food scandal and the other to Dana Priest for her writing on America’s secret intelligence institutions and her recent revelations about secret Eastern European detention centers.

Yesterday evening, I went to another in a series of dinners and movies hosted by Margaret Carlson, Washington political commentator and Editor-at-Large of The Week Magazine, and this relatively new newsy weekly, The Week. The last of these was hosted by Margaret Carlson and Senator Lindsey Graham.