It sounds like it's not too bad, only 6 reported deaths so far and around 100 wounded. Could of been a hell of a lot worse. They're linking it to local Islamic rebels affiliated with al Qaeda, but from what I've seen that is just the standard assumption.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,10715369%255E601,00.html

 Hi Everyone,

 I am interested in running for Congress. Obviously not in this cycle! Right now my district has a good rep. and I wouldn't ever try to run against him, so we're talking a few years from now (unless I move). My question though is when that day comes what does it take? What can I be doing now to get into a position where the party would be willing to back me? What do I need to bring to the table to make them seriously consider me?
 I know I would make a good congressman, my values are in the right place and I know the issues, and I'm not afraid to fight for what I believe in. But right now I'm a 24 year old part-time IT worker/part-time grad student. I don't have any connections to the party establishment besides a friend working in a press office. I've tried volunteering and finding employment with a major campaign but after being offered a position was blown off for no apparent reason (I was offered work on the internet team but then never heard back when I said I would take it, despite making multiple efforts to contact the person who offered the position). So what can I do for the next few years so that if the time comes the party doesn't look at me as a risk to run as a candidate?

 According to this NBC News report Chalabi and his merry gang are under investigation by local Iraqi police for, among other things, kidnapping, stealing government vehicles, and shooting at police.  
 Of course Chalabi says this is politically motivated by enemies of the INC, but according to the article the police did in fact seize stolen government vehicles from them, and I'm sure many of you recall reports of them car jacking people in Baghdad soon after their arrival.

Why are we paying this guy $340K a month again?

 My wife and I have been following the primary season since the very beginning - we had been looking forward to finally participating in our state's caucus on Feb. 7. I say "had" because it was a terrible experience for us - we didn't get to participate. We didn't do anything wrong, we got told to go to the wrong place! After wandering around a local church for 10 minutes and not finding anyone we rushed home and went to Howard Dean's website awhere we found the right place to go listed - we arrived right before 10:30, the cut off point for participation. Quickly we ran around looking for whoever was in charge so we could join our precinct. NO ONE KNEW WHO WAS IN CHARGE. We kept running into people in the exact same situation as us, I'd ask them if they knew who was in charge, they who say they didn't know and were also looking for who was in charge so they could join their precinct. The whole thing was a mess, all the precincts had split up into different rooms and spread throughout the cacus site (a local school), few of the rooms were labelled with what precint was in them, so there was no way we could find our precinct without going into the rooms and interrupting. Which we did, but often when we went in and asked the people in the rooms didn't even know what precinct they were in, nor did they know who was in charge. Eventually we found someone we knew from work who led us to their precinct captain - who told us we were screwed. We could watch but we couldn't participate. It was a very frustrating experience, I'm extremely pissed off at the local Democrats for their shoddy organization and really upset that after months of anticipation and weighing the different candidates we didn't get to provide any input. We never did find our precint or the person in charge and left in disgust.

 This is cross posted from a reply I wrote to the Mission Accomplished story:

I'd like to see a vicious attack ad with Bush pracing in his flight suit in front of the "Mission Accomplished" banner, followed by his "Bring 'em on!" challenge to the Iraqi insurgents, followed by his comments in that CNN video explicitly stating "Mission Accomplished", followed by every graphic video clip of bombs going off, shootings, etc. from Iraq. Followed by some facts from Iraq, like the casualty count and/or a timeline of the average number of attacks per week, in cold white text on a black background. The DNC, or some other well funded group needs to lay down the gauntlet.