TODAY'S TOP FIVE: Balls Go Here.

Those Fiscal Conservatives Will Stop at Nothing in Their Ruthless Belt-Tightening Spend, spend, spend. Presidential Appointee Bush, the man who obliterated the Clinton surplus with bribes for the wealthy, has once again brought us to the brink of financial ruin. For what seems the umpteenth time since Bush's appointment, the federal government will have to raise its debt ceiling to avoid losing its authority to borrow money. The only question now is whether Congress will do so this summer (the debt ceiling, currently at $7.3 trillion, will be reached in October). Republicans are hoping to do so, as having to raise it in the fall will hand John Kerry a timely campaign issue. Didn't the Republicans used to be the party of fiscal responsibility?

The Nexus of Poisonous Error Remember Colin Powell's landmark speech before the UN in 2003? Boy, it sure was a moment like Adlai Stevenson's devastating rebuke of the Soviet Union's claim that they didn't have nuclear missiles in Cuba. Then, of course, it wasn't: the speech (during which Powell famously described a Kurdish TV studio as "the nexus of poisons and terror"), turned out to be mostly baloney. But that wasn't Noble Powell's fault: "I believed in what they gave me," he said, 2 months ago. Now, as it turns out, maybe Noble Powell isn't so noble after all: the Senate report into pre-war intelligence has found that the State Department flagged dozens of factual errors in his speech, errors that he nonetheless included in the final draft.

All Together Now: "Ralph Nader is a Paid Operative of the Republican Party" One-third of the contributors to Ralph Nader's campaign in Florida (you remember Florida...it brought us the Bush administration, etc.) are also contributors to Bush's campaign. Once again: Ralph Nader is being helped by Republicans in Oregon, Arizona, Michigan, and Florida, all of which are "key battleground states." When will the Nader people either admit they're wrong and stop backing this fraud, or at least confess that they support a candidate who is, effectively, a Republican?

Wait...Fox News Is Biased? Incredible, but true. According to 33 internal memos analyzed by Media Matters, the 24-hour vanilla gorilla cable channel is outrageously biased, with top executives directing slanted news coverage on a daily basis. Some highlights include: The Iraq War ("Do not fall into the easy trap of mourning the loss of US lives"); John Kerry ("his coarse description of his opponents has cast a lurid glow over the campaign"); Presidential Appointee Bush ("His political courage and tactical cunning are worth noting in our reporting through the day"); the G-8 ("Let's keep in mind that the G-8 contains the most obstreperous dissidents against the war on terror"); and, naturally, the American Civil Liberties Union ("let the ACLU stick it where the sun don't shine").

Col. Flagg Captures the A-Team! Now here's a bizarre story: A former U.S. soldier is being tried in Afghanistan for running a "vigilante group" in the country. Apparently this wacko duped NATO peacekeeping troops into joining missions of his group, wonderfully named Task Force Saber 7, and operated a private jail.

-Consider Arms