Today's Details

-In a shift from trends of the past decade, violent crime is on the rise, fueling criticism of Bush administration policies as a wave of murders and shootings hits smaller cities and states with little experience with serious urban violence. From Kansas City, Missouri, to Indianapolis, Indiana, places that rarely attract notice on annual FBI crime surveys are seeing significant increases in murder. DETAILS

-President Bush said Monday the Iraq war is "straining the psyche of our country" but leaving now would be a disaster. Bush served notice at a news conference that he would not change course or flinch from debate about the unpopular war as he campaigns for Republicans in the fall congressional elections. In fact, he suggested that national security and the economy should be the top political issues, and criticized the Democrats' approach on both. (Translation: "You don't like my foreign policy. Get over it. I'm the decider and I get to decide. We will stay on this road to nowhere - no matter the cost in lives to our troops or to the Iraqi people we are liberating. Democrats who feel differently - are unpatriotic, supporting the terrorists and want to cut and run - blah, blah, blah...............) DETAILS

-Opposition among Americans to the war in Iraq has reached a new high, with only about a third of respondents saying they favor it, according to a poll released Monday. DETAILS

-A group of reservist soldiers, angry about the conduct of the war in Lebanon, carried out a protest today demanding the resignations of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Amir Peretz and the army chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz. One of the marchers, Roni Zwiegenboim of the Alexandroni Brigade, said, “Beyond the whole issue of the ammunition, the food and the water that wasn’t, the issue was that there was no leadership.” He added with disgust, “In the end it was just a mess and it all starts at the top.” (Seems the Israeli's run their military actions with the same level of incompetence we do!!!!!! We are perfect bumbling allies. Dumb and Dumber. You figure out which is which.) DETAILS

-U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold told a group of Madison area residents this morning that the ongoing U.S. presence in Iraq is the result of an "outrageous pile of lies" and called for more accountability. "The Bush administration should take accountability for being stuck there and not admitting mistakes," he told a group of about 60 people this morning. DETAILS

-The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation joined "a few dozen banks, insurance companies, mutual funds and others entities" in loaning $350 million to MediaNews Group Inc. to purchase four newspapers from Sacramento-based publisher McClatchy, which werein turn purchased in the Knight-Ridder deal earlier this year. DETAILS

-Osama loves Witney Houston? According to Bin Laden’s former sex slave Kola Boof the Saudi native is obsessed with the crack addicts work. She told Harpers Bazaar: “He told me Whitney was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.” DETAILS