Below The Beltway

For the boys in pinstripes that is:
Daisuke Matsuzaka described himself as a slow starter, saying that he usually did not pitch his best in Japan until the summer months. So Matsuzaka theorized that the same pattern would occur now that he was with the Boston Red Sox. The more Matsuzaka pitched, he said, the better [...]

Last month, Philip Thompson, an aide to Virginia Senator Jim Webb was arrested trying to bring a gun into the building where Webb’s Senate office is located. At the time, there was much speculation that the gun that Thompson was carrying was, in fact, Webb’s which Thompson had been given earlier that day before Webb [...]

The scandal revolving around Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called D.C. Madam, has claimed it’s first victim and he’s a pretty big fish:
WASHINGTON — Randall Tobias, head of the Bush administration’s foreign aid programs, abruptly resigned Friday after his name surfaced in an investigation into a high-priced call-girl ring, said two people in a position to [...]

The Saudis are saying that they’ve broken up what appears to have been a major plot against their oilfields:
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — Police have arrested 172 Islamic militants, some of whom were being trained abroad as pilots so they could fly aircraft in attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, the Interior Ministry said Friday.
The [...]

John McWhorter makes the case at The Economist:
Mr Obama has a once-in-a-lifetime charisma that Hillary Clinton could never approximate, and she also suffers from the handicap of not being black. For all of his other plusses, part of Mr Obama?s appeal lies in the fact that many whites feel that voting for a black presidential [...]

Not much to say about it, this is just cool:
CAPE CANAVERAL, April 26 — It might not seem like a brilliant idea, allowing a frail 65-year-old paralytic to float free from gravity aboard a rising and plunging roller-coaster stunt flight.
But who’s to argue with Stephen Hawking?
The celebrated British astrophysicist and black-hole theorist, author of “A [...]

The Yankees brought Phil Hughes up from the Minor League earlier than planned on the hope that he’d be able to turn their pitching around. Unfortunately, that doesn’t look to be the case:
Phil Hughes woke up in his hotel room at 8:30 a.m. yesterday. It was much earlier than he had hoped, and he stayed [...]

Former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore formally announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination:
DES MOINES, Iowa — Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore on Thursday entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination with an Internet-driven announcement he said allows him to talk directly to voters.
“This is going to be something unique in American politics and something [...]

A guy takes his pants to a Washington, D.C. dry cleaner to be cleaned, they lose the pants, legal hilarity ensues:
When the neighborhood dry cleaner misplaced Roy Pearson’s pants, he took action. He complained. He demanded compensation. And then he sued. Man, did he sue.
Two years, thousands of pages of legal documents and many hundreds [...]

According to the latest MSNBC poll, most Americans support the Democratic position on the Iraq War and don’t believe victory is possible:
WASHINGTON - As the Democrat-controlled Congress and the White House clash over an Iraq spending bill, with President Bush vowing to veto it because it contains withdrawal deadlines, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal [...]