Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

IS THIS A VAN GOGH? OH NO! MORE HERE.

They won the Asian Cup on the most public of stages, but Iraq's soccer heroes returned home on Friday to celebrate behind the blast walls and razor wire of Baghdad’s Green Zone, far from the gaze of their disappointed fans.

Welcomed with a bagpipe fanfare, the team was granted an honor guard in scarlet, blue, white and khaki when they flew back to the Iraqi capital, five days after their 1-0 victory over Saudi Arabia in Indonesia.

Looking exhausted, the players were ushered along a red carpet to a late-night reception at Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki's heavily guarded Baghdad compound.

Missing were Younes Mahmoud, the captain and scorer of the winning goal, who said he feared for his life if he returned (he had said he would go to Syria to visit his family), and a handful of players who officials said have other contractual obligations.

-- STEPHEN FARRELL

War vote or not, Democrats know that Clinton is one of them. They know that she’ll fight to roll back Republican gains that the last 30 years have brought. They are also coming around to the idea that whatever merit Obama’s feel-good bipartisan strategy may have, the only use he has for being a Democrat is to avoid having to do the work required of a serious third party candidate. This may be a viable general election strategy, but when you ask Democrats in 2007 about who they like and dislike, don’t drop your monocle when Obama has high negatives. He simply doesn’t care about the Democratic party.

-- MATT

Did Trent Lott really suggest that DC residents should abandon the city during August unless Democrats immediately agree to pass President Bush's proposal to broaden the NSA's surveillance powers? Yes he did. It's the latest entry in the "they just don't know when to quit" sweepstakes.

-- KEVIN DRUM

The world of stem cell research was set reeling two years ago when its most successful practitioner, the Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk, was found to have fabricated much of his work. But according to a new post-mortem of his research, he did achieve a scientific first, though not the one he claimed.

Dr. Hwang said he had derived embryonic stem cells from the adult cells of a patient, but the claim was discredited after parts of his research were found to have been faked. A team of Boston scientists has now re-examined stocks of Dr. Hwang’s purported embryonic stem cells and arrived at a surprising conclusion: His embryonic stem cells were the product of parthenogenesis, or virgin birth, meaning they were derived from an unfertilized egg.

-- NICHOLAS WADE

It would be Philip Morris’s standards and products that would define the Food and Drug Administration’s definition of reduced-risk cigarettes in a proposed law to regulate tobacco.

-- PATRICK BASHAM

A referee accused of fixing NBA games. One of the few NFL players who isn't suffering from a concussion is indicted for running dogfights and killing dogs. David Beckham arrives in America as damaged goods, and his missus, Posh Spice, has her ballyhooed TV show cancelled. If Alberto Gonzales were a sport, he'd be the Tour de France. And hanging over it all, like our disgruntled man in the moon, looms the gigantic round noggin of Barry Bonds.

Is there no end to this national misery?

-- TOM ELIA

News today of a new study that demonstrates that young single women living in big cities earn more than their male counterparts.

This of course stands in stark opposition to the fact that fathers earn more than anyone else, single, married, parenting or not parenting.

And with that I will return to my no-paying internship.

-- BEAN