Excerpts from some of the tributes: President Bush: Those of us who knew and worked with Tim, his many friends, and the millions of Americans who loyally followed his career on the air will all miss him. As the longest-serving host of the longest-running program in the history of television, he was an institution in [...]

I had to have someone tell me the news twice. It is literally impossible for me, and I’m sure many others, to imagine Washington without him. My condolences to his family. (Added a link.)

Jay raises an interesting point. Where do these things start? The time line in my story, does indeed suggest that the rumor about Michelle Obama was fanned by a pro-Clinton blogger. But it was out there before that, and had enough currency that one of her closest friends and her chief of staff felt it [...]

As several bloggers have rightly noted, I erred yesterday on MSNBC when discussing Karen Tumulty’s piece about the Obama campaign’s efforts to combat rumors and smears. I said the rumor about Michelle Obama making a derogatory comment about whites was started by conservative bloggers. That was a mistake. As Tumulty wrote in her piece, the [...]

Howard Dean and the DNC are all excited about Fox News Channel Shepard Smith’s admission after last night’s New York “town hall” that tickets to the event had been distributed by the McCain campaign, the New York Mayor’s office and some independent groups. For the DNC outrage factory this was, um, outrageous. [Note to media [...]

PEMBERTON, N.J.–I am still sitting in a John McCain town hall, so have not had time to transcribe the full quotes, but wanted to post this quick. After a day of consideration, the McCain Campaign has decided to come out hard against yesterday’s 5 to 4 decision to grant more rights to court review for [...]

TIME’s own James Poniewozik, a self-described “dude,” lays out the “archipelago” of charges of media sexism in the coverage of Hillary Clinton. Worth the read. An excerpt: The critique is a kind of rhetorical island-hopping, trying to connect the demonstrable to the arguable to the unprovable to the far-fetched. To wit: * Many commentators said [...]

Brussels Defense Secretary Robert Gates made a striking point at the NATO ministerial conference here last night: In May, for the first time, there were more coalition deaths in Afghanistan (18, including 13 Americans) than there were in Iraq (16, including 14 Americans). He used this to urge our European allies to start meeting their [...]

Interesting statement today from Iraq’s prime minister Nouri al-Maliki. The Status of Forces Agreement with the U.S. seems to be in some trouble: “We can’t extend the U.S. forces permission to arrest Iraqis or to undertake the responsibility of fighting terrorism in an independent way, or to keep Iraqi skies and waters open for themselves [...]