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Some of the biggest stories I haven't had time to blog about over the last 48 hours:

+ Susan Ralston, Karl Rove's personal assistant, has resigned. The reason? The slowly unfolding Jack Abramoff scandal. Her connection? Before working for Rove, she served as Abramoff's PA. Nice to see her resignation was timed for 5pm on a Friday.

+ Meanwhile, the scandal his inched much closer to Karl himself. Thanks to a National Journal highlighted by TPMMuckraker, we now have direct evidence of financial improprieties by Karl himself. Yes, he does seem to have found himself an out in this one, but nevertheless, a violation is a violation. And anyone who doubts that should go back and read the transcripts of Republican remarks during the Clinton impeachment.

+ Via the AP, more word that US soldiers are regularly beating prisoners at Guantanamo. And the worst part is that they think its both "funny" and "entertaining."

+ A fabulous new lie - I mean "talking point" - put forward by Republican leaders in defense of Hastert has emerged. Despite the fact that the timeline of events clearly shows otherwise, they're claiming that it was Hastert, not ABC, who confronted Foley and forced him to resign. I know they're desperate, but this really is ridiculous. Then again, since the media so rarely is willing to calla lie a lie....

+ One thing to keep in mind as you follow the Foley story... Speaker Hastert and his Chief of Staff Scott Palmer are roommates during the week in DC. Any version of the story that has Palmer knowing and not mentioning it to Hastert should be seen in light of that fact.

+ And about those claims that this is all the fault of the Democrats. One little noticed but highly inconvenient truth: the former page at the center of the storm is now known to be the deputy campaign manager for Rep. Ernest J. Istook Jr.'s campaign for Oklahoma governor. Istook's partisan affiliation? Republican.

+ Sen. John Warner (R-VA) has once again sent a shot across the bow of the White House. An excerpt:

The White House, caught off guard by a leading Republican senator who said the situation in Iraq was “drifting sideways,” responded cautiously on Friday, with a spokeswoman for President Bush stopping short of saying outright that Mr. Bush disagreed with the assessment[...]

Speaking to reporters on Thursday after returning from a trip that included a one-day stop in Baghdad, Mr. Warner said the United States should consider “a change of course” if the violence there did not diminish soon. He did not specify what shift might be necessary, but said that the American military had done what it could to stabilize Iraq and that no policy options should be taken “off the table.”

[...]Now, Mr. Warner’s comments are pushing up that timeline, forcing Republicans to confront the issue before some are ready. In an interview on Friday, Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who has been critical of the administration’s approach in the past, said there was a “growing sense of unease” among other Republicans, which she said could deepen because of Senator Warner’s comments.

Ms. Collins, who is the chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, echoed Mr. Warner’s calls for a shift in strategy in Iraq. “When Chairman Warner, who has been a steadfast ally of this administration, calls for a new strategy,” she said, “that is clearly significant.”

+ And stories like this might have something to do with Warner's change of heart:

Three and a half years after the American invasion, the relentless violence that has disfigured much of Iraqi society is hitting young Iraqis in new ways. Young people from five Baghdad neighborhoods say that their lives have shrunk to the size of their bedrooms and that their dreams have been packed away and largely forgotten. Life is lived in moments. It is no longer possible to make plans.

“I can’t go outside, I can’t go to college,” said Noor, sitting in the kitchen waiting for tea to boil. “If I’m killed, it doesn’t even matter because I’m dead right now.”

Or maybe stories like this:

Consider a recent day — an average 24 hours in Iraq.

Here in the capital, the bodies of eight young men were found chained together, stripped of identification papers, shot and dumped in a parking lot, the first of 20 corpses found in the city that day.

In northern Iraq, a man detonated a bomb vest amid a group of women, children and men lining up for cooking oil, killing himself and 21 others. In the south, police found the bullet-torn body of a senior anti-terrorism official. And in Al Anbar province, in the west, a car smashed into a line of police recruits and exploded, killing 13 by fire and shrapnel.

In all, at least 57 people died and 17 were injured in the violence that day, Sept. 18.

They were all killed in the same country, but not in the same war. The fighting in Iraq is not a single conflict, but an overlapping set of conflicts, fought on multiple battlegrounds, with different combatants. Increasingly, American troops are caught between the competing forces.

In western Iraq's deserts, Sunni Arab insurgent groups, some homegrown and others dominated by foreign fighters, attack Iraqi government forces and the U.S. troops who back them up. In Baghdad and surrounding provinces, Sunni and Shiite fighters attack each other and their rivals' civilians in a burgeoning civil war that U.S. troops have tried to quell.

In southern Iraq, the Shiites dominate. But they are divided, with rival militias fighting over oil and commerce. And in the north of the country, Arabs and Kurds battle for control.