Ana Log

•DONALD RUMSFELD, facing the Senate Armed Services Committee, claims that "you'd have a dickens of a time trying to find instances where I've been excessively optimistic" about the Iraq war. Dickens is apparently Rummy-ese for "shockingly easy."

•Controversy erupts in the hotly contested Connecticut Senate primary after a free-lance blogstress posts an image of JOSEPH LIEBERMAN as Bill Clinton's "Little Black Sambo." Challenger Ned Lamont claims to not know nothin' about no bloggers. It's a comment on how badly the race has gone for Lieberman that his team seems to count the incident as a "win."

•White House spokesman Tony Snow holds the last press conference in the JAMES BRADY BRIEFING ROOM before the corps moves across the street and the dank former swimming pool gets a high-tech makeover. Even money on whether Bush will ever let the press back in.

•A p.r. firm connected to Exxon Mobil appears to be behind a ham-fisted youtube.com parody of AL GORE. (Hey, did you know he's considered boring? It's true!) In the Internet age, the only kind of political trick less trustworthy than a slick campaign ad is an amateurish one.

•JOHN MCCAIN'S political action committee hires Charlie Condon, one of the architects of George W. Bush's scurrilous South Carolina 2000 primary victory, during which third parties supposedly planted disturbing rumors about the Senator. McCain has gone from sucking up to conservatives to asking them to bandage the stab wounds in his back.