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Mike Huckabee's campaign grabbed headlines in the days approaching the "Potomac primary" by lacing into the leadership of the Washington State Republican Party after John McCain eked out a modest "victory" in that state's February 9 precinct caucuses. The "loss" contrasted with Huckabee's strong showing earlier that day in Kansas, thus his campaign promptly called the Washington results into question. The caucus results have now been examined and updated without ultimate change to the leader board, but the episode has revealed more about Huckabee and his Ed Rollins-led campaign than anything else. At the crux of the original contretemps was...

The folks at "South Park" take no prisoners. Consider Wednesday's episode, which went after Bill Donohue, president of the conservative Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. Donohue has been a severe critic of the animated series on Comedy Central. The episode mixed Easter and "The Da Vinci Code" in typically wacky fashion. The plot involved the current pope and Jesus. The story ended with Jesus cutting Donahue in half with a flying ninja blade. In other recent controversies, Donohue has called the co-creators of "South Park," Matt Stone and Trey Parker, whores and cowards.

Top White House candidates unveiled their own YouTube video channels on Thursday, pushing the 18-month-old Web video-sharing site even farther into the U.S. political mainstream. Google Inc.'s YouTube, best known for short, amusing videos made by users at home, says You Choose '08 (http://www.youtube.com/youchoose) will allow candidates to control how they exchange views with voters. Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and Bill Richardson have signed up to have their own channels. So have Republicans John McCain, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani.

Pundits who have written off Rudy Giuliani are nuts. As he explores a 2008 bid for President, Giuliani sits atop the Republican pack in most polls - with support that will not quickly erode, despite his stance on some social issues. But look who's right there with him in pole (and poll) position: another Republican with the gift of gab and a reputation for independent thinking. Enter Arizona Sen. John McCain, every bit as intelligent and irascible as Giuliani. These two good friends - both of whom appeal to moderate Republicans - are on a collision course for the nomination....

Firefox users have been urged to update their browser immediately after Mozilla, the organisation behind the popular browser, said it had fixed eight vulnerabilities in Firefox 2.0.Mozilla said five of the eight vulnerabilities were 'critical', meaning an attacker could exploit the weaknesses to run malicious code on the compromised machine. Seven vulnerability updates have been issued for the previous version of Firefox, version 1.5, of which five are rated as critical. Mozilla also urged users of its Thunderbird email application to download several security updates. The updated version was made available on Tuesday evening. It can be downloaded from Mozilla's...

Welcome to The Hobbit Hole! First thread: New Zealander builds Hobbit holeSecond thread: The New Hobbit HoleThird thread: The Hobbit Hole III - Journey to the Cross-roads! (Congratulations, we filled it up!) Fourth Thread: The Hobbit Hole IV - The Road Goes Ever On...Fifth Thread: The Hobbit Hole V - Where Many Paths and Errands Meet...Sixth Thread: The Hobbit Hole VI - And Whither Then? I Cannot Say...Seventh Thread: The Hobbit Hole VII - But not yet weary are our feet... Eighth Thread: The Hobbit Hole VIII - Still round the corner we may meet... Ninth Thread: The Hobbit Hole...

BERLIN — A previously unknown work by Johann Sebastian Bach has turned up in a crate of 18th-century birthday cards removed from a German library shortly before it was devastated by fire last year, researchers said Wednesday. Experts say the work for soprano and string or keyboard accompaniment, composed for a German duke's birthday, is the first new music from the renowned composer to surface in 30 years. Researcher Michael Maul from the Bach Archiv foundation found the composition, dated October 1713, in May in the eastern city of Weimar. The Leipzig-based foundation said there was no doubt about the authenticity of...

Dean Logan, the politically battle-weary director of King County elections, is resigning to take the No. 2 elections job in Los Angeles, prompting County Executive Ron Sims to delay moving the county to a virtually all-mail voting system. In an interview Monday, Logan said a factor in his decision to leave his job as director of the Records, Elections and Licensing Services Division was the "toxic environment" surrounding the elections operation. It heated up after the contested 2004 governor's election and intensified again recently over Sims' vote-by-mail plan. Sims has planned for an August 2007 rollout of the vote-by-mail system,...

South Park Executive Producer Reveals That Comedy Central Censored the Showing of Mohammed out of Fear, not "Religious Tolerance."On Wednesday night, the cable network Comedy Central showed a censored episode of the animated cartoon, South Park, refusing to allow a brief depiction of the prophet Mohammed. The battles between the network and the producers and creators of South Park over the inclusion of Mohammed raged until late Tuesday night, less than 24 hours before the show aired Wednesday at 10pm ET. Interview With Producer Reveals Reason for Censorship was "Fear"In an interview Thursday evening, South Park Executive Producer Anne Garefino...

PHOENIX - A tabloid promised Monday to give money to an organization for burn victims after labeling as "ugly" a police officer who suffered disfiguring burns in a crash while on duty. American Media Inc., owner of the Weekly World News, which ran a list of the "top 10 ugliest people" in its Feb. 7 issue, agreed to make a donation to the Foundation for Burns and Trauma. The tabloid also ran a post-surgery photo of the officer and his wife with the article. The amount of the donation to the foundation, which provides care to burn victims in Arizona,...

Welcome to The Hobbit Hole! Tomorrow we may come this way... First thread: New Zealander builds Hobbit holeSecond thread: The New Hobbit HoleThird thread: The Hobbit Hole III - Journey to the Cross-roads! (Congratulations, we filled it up!) Fourth Thread: The Hobbit Hole IV - The Road Goes Ever On...Fifth Thread: The Hobbit Hole V - Where Many Paths and Errands Meet...Sixth Thread: The Hobbit Hole VI - And Whither Then? I Cannot Say...Seventh Thread: The Hobbit Hole VII - But not yet weary are our feet... Eighth Thread: The Hobbit Hole VIII - Still round the corner we may...

Welcome to The Hobbit Hole! Though we pass them by today... First thread: New Zealander builds Hobbit holeSecond thread: The New Hobbit HoleThird thread: The Hobbit Hole III - Journey to the Cross-roads! (Congratulations, we filled it up!) Fourth Thread: The Hobbit Hole IV - The Road Goes Ever On...Fifth Thread: The Hobbit Hole V - Where Many Paths and Errands Meet...Sixth Thread: The Hobbit Hole VI - And Whither Then? I Cannot Say... Seventh Thread: The Hobbit Hole VII - But not yet weary are our feet... Eighth Thread: The Hobbit Hole VIII - Still round the corner we...

I was doing our weekly checkbook balancing this afternoon, when I noticed a $9.00 charge on 12/15 from something called VISA-WLI*RESERVATIONREW800-7327031 CT. It rung a bell, and I remembered seeing a similar charge last month on 11/15. I had not really thought much about that previous charge because my new wife (HairOfTheDog) and I had merged bank accounts the previous week, and I had assumed it was a transaction she had performed and forgotten to write down, or some kind of bank charge related to the changes to our account. But we now saw that this was fishy, and knew...

TACOMA, Wash. -- An oil spill stained Tacoma's Commencement Bay on Thursday, and state Department of Ecology investigators said they did not immediately know the source or extent. Spill responders from the department the U.S. Coast Guard were sent to Dalco Passage, between the south end of Vashon Island and Tacoma's Point Defiance, after someone on a tug boat reported thick black oil about 1 a.m. in the water, Ecology spokeswoman Mary Ellen Voss said. The initial report indicated the spill was about an acre in size, but television news footage from a helicopter showed an oily sheen spreading over...

Television's seemingly unbeatable answer man — or question man — has passed the $1 million mark on "Jeopardy!" Ken Jennings, the whip-smart software engineer from Salt Lake City, won his 30th straight contest on the syndicated game show, in an episode televised Tuesday. That brought his earnings to $1,004,960. He's long since blown past the previous record for a "Jeopardy!" contestant, excluding special tournaments. Tom Walsh of Washington, D.C., set that record of $184,900 over seven days last winter.

~snip~ But the real TV story this week has to be the undisputed 25-game reign of Jeopardy! supercontestant Ken Jennings. As of yesterday, the 30-year-old software engineer from Salt Lake City had won a total of $788,960, beating the previous record-holder, Tom Walsh, by a margin of over $600,000. Granted, this unprecedented victory streak was also made possible by this season's change in Jeopardy! rules—the term limits have been lifted, as it were, so that the run of a winning contestants may continue indefinitely, instead of being stopped after five consecutive games. But Ken is no mere beneficiary of this...

TUCSON, Ariz. - Scientists, including acclaimed wildlife biologist Jane Goodall, joined environmental groups Tuesday in petitioning the government to add 225 plants and animals to the endangered species list. The species are not new to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; four-fifths have been on the agency's waiting list for a decade. Some have been waiting since 1975. The average is 17 years. Goodall, known for her pioneering research on chimpanzees, signed the petitions, joined by other prominent scientists including biologists E.O. Wilson of Harvard University and Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University. "Wildlife is facing serious threats almost everywhere," Goodall...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Netflix Inc. on Thursday posted a wider quarterly net loss hurt by higher marketing costs, but the online DVD renter raised its earnings forecast, predicting better service would draw subscribers willing to pay 10 percent higher fees. Netflix shares dropped some 11 percent in after-hours trading, however, as investors reacted to a mixed outlook including an indication the planned price hike would cause a jump in a key measure of cancellations in the second quarter before a recovery later in the year. Netflix said it would boost its basic subscription price by $2 per month to...

LONDON (Variety) --- In direct response to the American uproar over Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," the Monty Python team is planning a 25th anniversary Stateside re-release of its comedy "Life of Brian." The 1979 movie, about the hapless Brian of Nazareth who spends his life (and death) being mistaken for the Messiah, will be distributed by Rainbow Releasing, which previously handled the U.S. re-release of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." Plan is to open the pic at the end of April in New York and Los Angeles. Columbia TriStar, which owns the international distribution rights, may...

<p>The military academy, North Carolina, Navy and Michigan State are in talks about playing a season-opening doubleheader Nov. 12 or Nov. 13 on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, an Air Force official said.</p> <p>"There is nothing finalized in writing yet," Air Force senior associate athletic director Mike Saks told The Gazette in Colorado Springs. "It's a thought, a great thought obviously, if it's approved through all the channels. If all that is all taken care of and we are offered a real contract on all of this, we would sign it tomorrow."</p>