Greetings from New Hampshire, where I'll be joining Anderson Cooper to analyze the Democratic presidential debate tonight (and the GOP debate on Tuesday). The CNN-sponsored event kicks off at 7 pm ET, with the post-debate show following immediately afterward. (I'll also be doing live streamed commentary on CNN.com during the debate.) In the meantime, if you haven't visited our new Politics, Media, Business, Entertainment, and Living Now pages, please check them out. We're featuring the top blog posts from the past week on each of these new sections. On a much sadder note, our thoughts are with the family of beloved political blogger Steve Gilliard, who died yesterday at the age of 41. Jane Hamsher and Markos have lovely remembrances of him. All of us in the blogosphere will miss him very much.

Hillary's success was due in part to what she did during the debate, and in part to what Obama failed to do.

As is usually the case in a Republican debate, the big winner of the night was God. But John McCain finished a close second.

The JFK pipeline plot appears to be the work of yet another gang that couldn't jihad straight. And people wonder why the public has become cynical about how the war on terror is being used for political purposes.

It was a very busy week in that cold dark place known as Cheneyland. We learned that the vindictive Veep had blocked the promotion of Justice Department official Patrick Philbin for having the temerity to oppose the administration's warrantless eavesdropping program. We learned that he had given yet another speech, this time to high schoolers, in which he linked the invasion of Iraq to 9/11. We learned that he was not among the luminaries who took the time to write letters urging leniency for "Cheney's Cheney" (he did, however, have his office send a letter to the New York Times demanding corrections to a recent editorial). And we learned that he would need yet another operation on his heart. A search and rescue mission, no doubt.

For the Beltway's Democratic dinosaurs, Bush still has credibility on Iraq, Democrats still need to tread lightly in opposing the war for fear of alienating swing voters, and Iraq is still a right vs left issue. This sclerotic framing is wrong on every level: moral, strategic, and psychological.

Even as a steady stream of bad news pours out of Iraq, Democrats are once more divided over how much of their focus to put on Iraq. The ghosts of campaigns past are once again haunting the Democratic Party.

It's Father's Day; what better time for a final farewell blog salute to one of the most complex paterfamilias to ever capture our attention: Tony Soprano. Our Entertainment group blog was filled with impassioned takes on The Sopranos finale. Check out the bada-bing blogging of Matt Cooper, Tony Hendra, Ken Levine, Marvin Kitman, Robert Brustein, Jordan Safirstein, Tom Gliatto, Scott McLemee, Susan Madrak, Dennis Perrin, and RJ Eskow. Also this week, Rick Hilton was shopping a post-penitentiary bash in Las Vegas for daughter Paris, with a 50 grand fee for her to show up at her own party. Sleazy Father of the Year? I smell a front runner! As Tony would say, Whatchagonnado? Then he'd whack him. Happy Father's Day, dads!

Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, demonstrated that along with the surge in troops, there's also been a surge in BS. Crocker's talking points offer a preview of the spin the administration will surely use come September.

The ongoing debate over raising fuel efficiency standards is a perfect example of Washington at its most dysfunctional.

It was a big week for Torture News. For starters, the White House has decided to close Gitmo. Apparently, it came down to a face-off between the women in Bush's life -- Laura, Barbara, Condi, and Karen Hughes -- who argued that the detention facility is a stain on America's reputation in the world, and the pro-torture tag team of Cheney and Gonzales, who argued that moving enemy combatants to U.S. jails would give them more legal rights. Score one for the ladies. And the rule of law. On the other hand, we had Justice Scalia singing the praises of torture fetishist Jack Bauer, a man prone to pronouncements such as: "I don't want to bypass the Constitution, but these are extraordinary circumstances." When you stop shuddering, check out our Sunday Roundup below.

When it comes to the issue of secrecy and an administration operating in the shadows, there's an argument to be made that the candidate least likely to turn on the lights is Hillary Clinton.

What do you say, MSM, can we please, please -- once and for all -- put aside the moldy notion that wanting to end the war is something only "crazy lefties" want to do?

It was a busy week in all four branches of the U.S. government. The Executive Branch rejected Congressional subpoenas issued to Harriet Miers and Karl Rove's former assistant Sara Taylor. The Legislative Branch shot down the President's prized Immigration bill (what will Mickey Kaus blog about now?). The Judicial Branch sucker punched free speech and Brown v. Board of Education. And, in the newly-established Go F Yourself Branch, Dick Cheney pulled off another act of political evil sorcery, keeping the press so atwitter over his claims of being a political hermaphrodite that attention was deflected from WaPo's devastating four-part series exposing him as the administration's top torture enthusiast and head shredder of the Constitution. Elsewhere, Madonna's arms frightened me.