The presidential campaign strategies these days are clear. For the Democrats, it's time to stop the bickering and rally round Barack Obama, who dominates the Democratic National Committee's Web site.

Quote of the Week: The winner, despite intense competition, is senior International Olympic Committee official Arne Ljungqvist, who said the deadly air pollution in Beijing is "mist," not a "major risk" and blamed the media for hyping the non-problem.

Attention, Hill staffers: Washington summer getting to you? Thinking about how your boss has never taken you on a congressional delegation junket overseas? Beat the heat and conquer that lingering resentment! Sign up now for a fabulous staff delegation (staffdel) trip to lovely Copenhagen, Denmark, courtesy of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Doesn't appear that Office of Special Counsel chief Scott J. Bloch, steadfast protector of government whistle-blowers and staunch guardian against political activity in the federal workplace, is going to be leaving office anytime soon.

Many Americans worry these days about the state of the economy. Some are concerned about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still others fret about environmental matters.

-- Sky Mobile: In addition to a few other exec departures, BSkyB ( NYSE: BSY) is losing its head of mobile, Tim Satchell, who is going to pursue his own business interests, NMA reports. Satchell had been 365's mobile head prior to its acquisition by BSkyB and launched the football goal flash mobile service.More at PCUK?

There may have been some hints of progress to report from the annual Asia-Pacific security meeting this week in Singapore. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met "informally" with her North Korean counterpart during the 27-country regional forum. More talks, at the foreign minister level, are scheduled among the key players working on the North Korean nukes problem.

Sometimes even the most altruistic notions come to naught. Take the nifty idea of Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) to help the neediest of the needy: the 230,000 refugees in Chad who have fled the slaughter in Darfur and are desperately in need of food.

The country's looking for independence from foreign oil. Lawmakers are listening to ethanol promoters tout the value of plant-based fuels -- corn or switch grass or sugar cane -- as an alternative.

B arbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, asked Vice President Cheney on Nov. 1 for documents on the White House's reported watering down of testimony by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about global warming's harmful effects on public health.

It's customary for nations to do a bit of chest-thumping as they are about to begin negotiations, which Iran has agreed to consider in a meeting next week with European Union official Javier Solana. The idea is to do something that your opponents will see as a sign of strength before talks begin, especially, in this case, when the talks involve your nuclear program.

Six months to go and the wheels seem to be seriously wobbling on the Bush administration. First, the White House had to apologize to South Korea for announcing prematurely that President Bush would be visiting that country in conjunction with his trip to the Olympics in Beijing.

First he popped up at Friday night's baseball game between the Nats and the O's. Next thing you know, he's in the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday as an op-ed columnist.

Having an "auto-replace" filter seemed like a good notion at the time to folks at the conservative American Family Association's OneNewsNow.com Web site. There were certain words that would pop up from time to time in the Associated Press stories that moved onto the site that were a bit salacious, or unacceptable to post.

Loopt, the mobile social network which is backed by Sequoia and NEA, has filed a lawsuit against Loop'd Network, a social network for action sports athletes and enthusiasts, over alleged trademark infringement, alleging that the two names are too similar and cause confusion. Loopt is asking the court to enjoin Loop'd Network from continuing to use the name, and is also seeking damages and three times the profit that Loop'd Network has earned, PEHub reports.

Thousands of National Guard troops are fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Others have been rushed to the flood-ravaged Midwest.

Disabled employees at Department of Transportation headquarters are most unhappy these days with their new digs down by the Navy Yard in Southeast Washington.

The stage was set Wednesday afternoon at the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights and civil liberties to hear former deputy undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith testify about the use of harsh interrogation techniques on detainees.

Tales of life here in the nation's capital.

Everyone who's anyone is gathering in Paris these days for the big international donors conference on Afghanistan. Laura Bush was there for the opening yesterday. Her husband arrives late tonight. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other senior State Department officials, joined by delegates from 65 other countries and 15 international organizations, will be on hand.

Bummed that you missed that spectacular congressional trip last month to Slovenia and Italy? Not to worry. There's an even better one leaving tomorrow for . . . drumroll . . . the Galapagos!

Al Kamen is away. His column will resume when he returns.

No plans for Memorial Day? Then hurry: Seats are still available for one of the best, not-to-be-missed congressional delegations of the spring season -- featuring a night at the opera -- "Tosca," of course -- in Venice!

President Bush has been ridiculed and chastised in the liberal blogosphere for saying he gave up golf to show solidarity with the troops fighting in Iraq.

President Bush took off last night for the Middle East and another round of peace chats. With Israel's prime minister weakened by scandal and the Palestinian half-president rumored to be resigning, it doesn't seem as though much is going to happen.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) made it clear this week that he's just itching to get into the Oval Office to end "the common and systematic abuse of our federal courts" by out-of-control, wackadoodle, ACLU-loving judges.

Tough news last night in the closely watched Republican primary in Indiana's 2nd Congressional District.

Antiwar folks and media critics were preparing all week for the annual Bush-bashing yesterday on the fifth anniversary of the president's appearance on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln with that "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him.

The New York Times has been taking hits of late for its new policy of boycotting the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner. The Times apparently has decided that the media-politician chumminess is unseemly and maybe even borderline unethical.

Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff caused a little ruckus up north a couple weeks ago as he was pushing his plan to share databases of international air travelers' fingerprints with the Canadians, Brits and Aussies.

There's been constant grousing that the gigantic, $750 million U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is way too big and expensive, even though it came in at scarcely more than 20 percent over budget (and nearly a year late).

Virgin Mobile Canada, which has been featuring U.S. political figures in newspaper ads for its cellular telephone service, has, as promised, unveiled a trio featuring Sen. Barack Obama (D- Ill.). These follow ads starring former New York governor Eliot L. Spitzer as Love Client No. 9, who is tired of being "treated like a number," and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), depicted thinking, "I wish my bill weren't so out of control."

Monday's unveiling of former secretary of state Madeleine K. Albright's stunning official portrait brought back many folks from her days in charge, including former deputy secretary Strobe Talbott, undersecretary Thomas Pickering, chief of staff Elaine Shocas and spokesman Jamie Rubin.

When the elevator doors slide open, and you're in Willem de Looper's big show of big Washington paintings at American University Museum, the first one you see is a 1965 abstraction that isn't only an abstraction: It's also a tulip. Elegiac, transitory, decorous and Dutch, it sets a tone.

Okay. Everyone says Iraq and other commitments have stretched the armed forces dangerously thin. But how much longer will Washington tolerate Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's deliberate provocations?

Check your calendars! We got an e-mail Wednesday evening from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker will not, repeat, will not, be able to make it to the Chamber on Monday.

You could call it Cash From the Living Dead. No, not a sequel by George Romero, but a way some folks stay politically active and influential even after their demise.

President Bush hates long, windy meetings, and NATO sessions can drag on and on. That may be why Bush suddenly left the final session of the Bucharest summit last night -- not bothering to wait for the official group photo. He hustled back to the hotel so unexpectedly that he left some of his motorcade behind, including the press pool, our colleague Peter Baker reports.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, is quite put out these days with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. Seems Boxer had been working for several weeks to have Johnson -- no stranger to being hauled before her committee -- come up and chat about ozone, mercury, global warming . . . that sort of thing. Committee aides had been trying to get dates in April when Johnson might be able to testify. But the EPA folks didn't seem to want to commit to a specific time.

At the State Department, the ideological splits usually divide the hawks and doves, the internationalists and the isolationists, the pragmatists and the human rights supporters.

Media reports on the Pentagon's five-volume translation of truckloads of Saddam Hussein- era documents tended to skim the surface, picking the highlights and the obvious, such as the absence of evidence of an "operational relationship" between Hussein and al-Qaeda.

The mystery is solved. Thanks to a devoted Loop Fan, we now know that the host of Friday's $1.4 million Republican National Committee fundraiser at the famed Beresford co-op in New York -- headlined by President Bush -- was none other than Paul Singer, the hedge fund billionaire and renowned "vulture capitalist."

Seems just about everyone has been seizing on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's misfortune to score legislative points or make a buck.

The illegal immigration issue seems to have quieted some on the presidential campaign trail. But Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) tried valiantly to highlight the problem at a House Homeland Security Committee markup of a bill designed to protect the country from chemical attack.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff apparently forgot the adage "When you're in a hole, stop digging."

The annual State Department human rights reports on conditions in various countries often spark internal tussling over tone and nuance.

The painful endorsement switch Wednesday by John Lewis, the Democratic congressman from Georgia and civil rights icon, from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) reflects the difficulties some members of former president Bill Clinton's Cabinet have been going through as they decide between the candidates.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is emerging as consensus pick for vice president among both Republicans and Democrats.

Let's face it. It's over. Teamsters President James P. Hoffa may have provided the last bit of muscle Wednesday with his union's endorsement of Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.). Barring a serious meltdown in the debates -- or a sensational revelation -- Obama will be the Democratic presidential nominee this fall.

Spring is almost here. And that means tourists are on their way to see the monuments, the pandas, and exhibits at the new National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery's East Building or the National Museum of Natural History.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has been tarring Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) as creatures of the bad old, really old, ways of Washington.

Save the date! Feb. 23. It's the black-tie gala Founders' Day Celebration and 104th birthday of the University Club. The club is giving the highly coveted William Howard Taft Public Service Award -- named in honor of the club founder, former president and Supreme Court justice -- to former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

The 2008 Loop Award for Water Ballet goes to . . . drumroll, please . . . Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he's not intervening for now in the controversial case of Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh, 23, a reporter and journalism student who was sentenced to death by a three-judge panel two weeks ago for blasphemy. Kambakhsh had handed classmates a report, perhaps a satire, he found on the Internet that questioned why Muslim men are allowed to have four spouses but women don't have the same right.

There's often something almost magical when government bureaucrats begin blogging. Take the extraordinary blog The Flow of the River (http://flowoftheriver.epa.gov), by Marcus Peacock, the Environmental Protection Agency deputy administrator. We're told it's been a source of great entertainment for the staff there.

Never too early to begin transition planning. So there were Vice President Cheney and spouse Lynne out in McLean on Sunday afternoon, strolling about the house they're building in that tony suburb.

With Congress deadlocked over how to fill four open seats on the Federal Election Commission, the two remaining commissioners sat surrounded by empty chairs yesterday during their first meeting of the year, our colleague Matthew Mosk reports.

J ay Lefkowitz-- President Bush's special envoy on North Korean human rights, or lack thereof -- sure created a fuss last week when he said the Commie regime of Kim Jong Il isn't serious about disarming and probably will still have nukes when a new president takes over, despite four years of six-party talks involving Washington, both Koreas, China, Japan and Russia.

When last we saw former congressman Mark Deli Siljander, he was at the Dec. 19 opening downtown of "Charlie Wilson's War," the movie about the heroic former Texas lawmaker's efforts to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan.

And now, the winners of the In the Loop contest to guess the real target of that suspicious fire last month in Vice President Cheney's office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

One of President Bush's most high-profile recess appointees, Ambassador to the European Union C. Boyden Gray-- is back in Washington and, for the moment, out of a job.

Seems everyone is riveted to news reports about the presidential campaign here. Everyone, that is, except some folks at the United Nations, where persistent chatter has it that Zalmay Khalilzad, our ambassador to the U.N., is also thinking of running for president . . . of Afghanistan.

Al Kamen is away, but don't forget to enter his contest. Guess what burned in the fire in Vice President Cheney's Eisenhower Executive Office Building digs. Send entries to hitthevault@ washpost.com .

That fire in Vice President Cheney's digs in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Wednesday naturally has everyone in Washington speculating about its origin. Arson might seem a bit far-fetched to folks outside the Beltway, but it would not be the first time a small conflagration was planned by a White House official.

The Nintendo Wii is hot this holiday season. So are those beautiful iPhones. Anything Hannah Montana is essential for daughters 8 to 12.

Christmas is usually a time when controversial nominees for top federal jobs wait for Santa, in the form of the president of the United States, to come down the chimney with their recess appointments.

In September 2005, when President Bush swore in pal Karen P. Hughes to be public diplomacy czar, he instructed her "to marshal all the resources of the federal government to this critical mission."

Al Kamen is away. His In the Loop column will resume when he returns.

A mixed bag this week for the axis of not-quite-evil. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president and former KGB thug, scored big on his alleged free elections, which effectively could make him prime minister for life of that budding democracy.

On Oct. 23, the day of FEMA's now infamous phony news conference, the agency's former external affairs chief, Pat Philbin, announced plans to promote a number of people in the shop as part of an effort to build a "new FEMA."

Sen. Trent Lott's resignation announcement Monday stunned the political cognoscenti, but the rationale seems pretty obvious. Lott (R-Miss.), 66, needed to cash in before he got much older. Being GOP whip isn't much of a job when you're in the minority and prospects are not good for a change in that status anytime soon.

It's holiday shopping time, and you're once again scurrying about looking for something besides the usual earrings, ties, shirts or sweaters.

Places it might be best to avoid for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow:

It was, let's face it, inevitable. And so, on Wednesday, at the swearing-in of Attorney General Michael Mukasey at the Justice Department, former attorney general John D. Ashcroft was reunited with "The Spirit of Justice," the 12-foot Art Deco-era sculpture his aides once famously covered with giant blue drapes at a cost of more than $8,000.

FEMA's internal investigation into its infamous phony news conference is over, but the topic is sure to come up when acting Deputy Administrator Harvey Johnson goes to the Senate for his confirmation hearing. (His name mysteriously failed to make the Senate hearing list last week, however.) Administrator R. David Paulison has strongly defended Johnson, saying he was "set up" by horrific staff work.

FEMA has had some bad publicity lately, but that doesn't mean its work -- often nasty, even dangerous -- doesn't continue. And of course such things as planning meetings don't have to take place in uncomfortable settings or in chilly Washington.

On Oct. 23, the day of FEMA's now infamous phony news conference, the agency's former external affairs chief, Pat Philbin, announced plans to promote a number of people in the shop as part of an effort to build a "new FEMA."

Seems that Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff has become a serial apologist of late. Every time you turn on the tube, there he is, apologizing for some bonehead move by a senior agency official. Might as well just book a daily half-hour into his schedule for the morning mea culpa.

Fall is finally upon us, and that means one thing: time to gear up for trips to warmer climes.

Liberals are accusing the Bush-Cheney folks of trying to foment World War III or IV with all that reckless saber-rattling about Iranian nukes.

FEMA has truly learned the lessons of Katrina. Even its handling of the media has improved dramatically. For example, as the California wildfires raged Tuesday, Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson, the deputy administrator, had a 1 p.m. news briefing.

Hard to keep up with the voting rights section of the Justice Department's civil rights division. Division chief John Tanner recently made some news with a fascinating analysis of how photo IDs for voters actually help minorities.

Folks at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission just can't stop fussing about their eviction next summer from the posh headquarters at 18th and L streets NW to the wasteland -- or "developing" neighborhood -- known as NoMA.

The White House and the Senate are gearing up for their last battles over appointments as the Bush administration enters its final year.

Back in 2005, when last we checked with John K. Tanner, chief of the voting rights section in the Justice Department's civil rights division, he was rippin' about the leak of a document that showed most of the section's lawyers -- but not Tanner -- thought a Georgia voter-ID law discriminated against black voters.

In response to Friday's column, Loop Fans have been sending in fine sightings of the oft-reclusive Vice President Cheney on his travels.

Seems famously secretive Vice President Cheney has been, for most of his tenure, at an undisclosed location, even if he's really just at his office, his residence, Camp David, his house in St. Michaels or the Paul Nelson hunting club in South Dakota.

Fox News, launched with such high hopes 11 years ago as the "fair and balanced" network, apparently hasn't lived up to its billing. CNN never had a chance. The other networks? Please. No citizen could dare trust the agenda-driven print media -- The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times -- to figure out, let alone accurately tell, the "real" story.

Just because things are pretty much peachy in Baghdad doesn't mean there aren't small areas of the city where you might want to be careful, take note of your surroundings, avoid darkened areas and so on.

Once he had a whole list of countries to invade, a huge security detail, choppers overhead guarding him, and an entourage of aides and gofers. Until the recent unpleasantness, he was the world's banker, greeted as a head of state when he traveled abroad, often in his own chartered plane.