As we all know now, that story about Obama refusing to "fist bump" with a kid in Ohio turned out to be not only trivial but quite false.  What you might not know is that one of those who helped spread it, Maureen Dowd, was slapped today with a prominent Correction box right on The New York Times' op-ed page.

It reads:  "In describing an encounter between Barack Obama and a schoolboy in Zanesville, Ohio, Maureen Dowd's column on Wednesday used a campaign pool report.  The report said tha Mr. Obama had declined to bump fists with the boy.  The campaign now says that the boy was trying to get Mr. Obama to autogrpah his hand, but the candidate declined, citing the possible reaction of the boy's mother."

Evangelical leader Jim Wallis, author of The Great Awakening and founder of Sojourners, which bills itself as the largest network of progressive Christians in the United States, today issued a statement in response to Obama's proposal on Tuesday to form a new President's Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships within the White House.

Wallis just last week blasted James Dobson's attacks on Obama. The Obama Faith plan has drawn support and criticism (for continuing to bridge the church/state divide, and for other reasons) in the past 24 hours.

Here is Wallis's full statement.

So some good will come from the death of Ryan Maseth after all. The Pentagon -- after Ryan's mother, and my friend, Cheryl Harris, brought his death by electrocution to national attention --  has just ordered electrical inspections of all buildings in Iraq maintained by KBR, the major military contractor.

Cheryl, as I have written here previously, has  researched other electrocutions and pressed a wrongful death lawsuit against KBR. You remember: the military lied to her in trying to blame it all on him.

The senator from Cheryl's state, Pennsylvania, Bob Casey made public on Monday afternoon a written statement by Gen. David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq.  Petraeus informed Congress of the new inspections -- while also disclosing that at least 13 U.S. soldiers had been electrocuted in Iraq since the war began, and many others had received electrical shocks. Until now, the Pentagon had said 12 had been electrocuted.

With Fox News still trumpeting on its site that Bill Clinton wants Barack to "kiss my ass," came reports this afternoon that Obama and the former President  spoke cordially by telephone today, their first chat since the  primary season ended.

I'll record some of the reporting here as it comes in.

The New York Times' Caucus blog says  Obama  telephoned Clinton after leaving messages for him last week while Bill was in Europe.

With a 1994 article by McCain V.P. candidate Bobby Jindal gaining fresh attention, the Texas Supreme Court on Friday overturned a judgment against the Pleasant Glade Assembly of God Church on Friday in a civil case surrounding exorcism. The justices ruled 6-3 decision that the jury's decision infringed on First Amendment rights.

A county jury had awarded Laura Schubert $300,000 in damages for injuries, both physical and psychological, during a 1996 exorcism performed by the church when she was 17. Schubert said she had been, essentially, kidnapped and suffered injures and psychological trauma, leading to self-mutilation and a suicide attempt.

Justice David Medina wrote in the new opinion that awarding a judgment against the church would "would have an unconstitutional 'chilling effect' by compelling the church to abandon core principles of its religious beliefs."

The military has finally, after nine months, announced the results of its probe into the death by gunshot of a gay soldier in Afghanistan, who was engaged to marry her partner in Massachusetts, last fall but her family doesn't seem to be buying it.

The military's handling of the case has been disturbing from the outset, with claims of murder voiced by friends and family due to the fact that the victim was known to be gay and had written home that she had seen some troubling things that might cause her not to survive.

Officials first reported that Ciara Durkin, 30, of Quincy, Mass., who served in the National Guard, had died "in action," then revealed that she was killed in a "noncombat" incident that was being investigated.

"I'm not going back to Iraq," Army Sgt. Benjamin Miller, 24,  told friends back home in Minnesota. And, indeed, he is not. Three days ago, he was buried, having committed suicide while home on leave. He had been scheduled to get out of the service in January but was "stop-lossed."

For several years,  I have covered the suicides of U.S. military personnel in Iraq or when they returned home.  Now it has become an epidemic.

In most cases, the news only emerges because a local reporter gets on the case. It happened again this week, with the reporter this time Elizabeth Mohr of the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

A cover story coming in tomorrow's TIME magazine, on The Real Meaning of Patriotism,  is timed to next week's July 4 holiday -- and the current race for the White House.   In fact, it includes pieces written by both Barack Obama and John McCain, along with the main story by columnist Peter Beinart.  

Obama writes:  "The true genius of America [is] a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles. It's the idea that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted.

"For me, it is the love and defense of these ideals that constitutes the true meaning of patriotism. They are ideals that do not belong to any particular party or group of people but call each of us to service and sacrifice for the sake of our common good."

Years ago, when I was editor of Nuclear Times magazine, I knew Evangelical leader Jim Wallis, author of The Great Awakening and founder of Sojourners -- the largest network of progressive Christians in the United States -- a little, as we were on the same "antinuclear" team.  

My own spiritual leader may be L.V. Beethoven, but I've followed Jim's  growing influence since then and so I was not surprised this morning to see that he has just chastized James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, for distorting Barack Obama's statements on faith and politics.  

He concludes: "Many evangelical votes are in play this election year, especially among a new generation, and are no longer captive to the Religious Right. Perhaps that is the real reason for James Dobson's attack today on Barack Obama."

Since announcing his retirement as executive editor at The Washington Post yesterday, Leonard Downie, Jr. has received plaudits from colleagues and peers and TV pundits.  He is coming off a six-Pulitzer season -- including the Walter Reed probe-- and, before that, Dana Priest's "black sites" revelations and more.  And I often remind my friends, he had no control over the paper's editorial page.

That said, I also have to mention the greatest stain on his record: The Post's tragically poor performance in the run-up to the Iraq war, and Downie's failure (as far as I've seen) to fully admit that. His paper, given its influence, stands out as a "complicit enabler," in Scott McClellan's phrase.

I couldn't let this day pass without observing that it was exactly two years ago today that my old friend Bruce Springsteen took a verbal swing at my old nemesis Ann Coulter.

It started after CNN asked him about his views on Coulter after she had suggested that maybe some soldiers in Iraq might think about "fragging" John Murtha the next time they had a chance.   Coulter had also famously knocked entertainers like Springsteen taking part in politics (he campaigned for Kerry and later endorsed Obama).  

I wrote the followed two years ago for E&P.  It is reprinted in my new book (for which Bruce also wrote the preface).  Enjoy.

The "soldier suicide" epidemic in Iraq continues.  Another young American soldier, this one age 19, has apparently killed himself in Iraq, and at least two other reports  of "noncombat" deaths in the past week or so may fall in the same category.  

As usual, the latest case emerged from a local newspaper, while the Pentagon continues an investigation that usually leads to no public announcement.  I had followed this incident from the beginning, so the report of a likely suicide does not surprise me.  

He was Pvt. Eugene D.M. Kanakaole, who hailed from  Hawaii, and was assigned to the 87th Engineer Company.  According to the report this weekend in the Anderson Daily Herald in Indiana (where his mother once lived),  he was found in Balad, Iraq, on June 11 with a single bullet wound in his head.

With Florida Governor Charlie Crist  now being seriously floated as a VP candidate for John McCain, all those old rumors that the longtime bachelor may be gay (we wouldn't care but the GOP sure would) have gained new currency -- along with reports about Crist dating several women.  

For this Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Deborah Solomon coyly  sort of raises that issue at the very end.

Solomon kicks it off by stating, "Your personal life is not that of a typical Republican candidate.  For starters, I hear you're"-- wait for it  -- "not a property owner." Crist replies, "It is true.  I do not own property."

For five years now, I have been chronicling the disturbing number of "noncombat" deaths in Iraq, often suicides, which usually come to light only due to the diligence of local newspapers.  As part of that effort, last August I briefly described  yet another case, involving a 20-year-old Texas woman named Kamisha Block, who apparently was much loved in her Vidor hometown.  It was said to be death by "friendly fire," which officially is fairly rare in Iraq, so I kept an eye on it for days, in case of an update.

Many more nonhostile deaths arrived, and so I forgot about Kamisha.  Last night, a reader sent me a link to a diary here by "greenies,"  which in turn led me to a news article in yesterday’s Beaumont Enterprise.    I'm updating and expanding that diary now.

Forget friendly fire.  It turns out that Spc. Block was actually murdered, and the killer, another soldier, Staff Sgt. Brandon Norris, then turned the gun on himself.

In this week's issue of TIME magazine, arriving in print and online tomorrow, columnist James Poniewozik uses the passing of Tim Russert to highlight the decline of the Old Media and the rise of the New Media, described as  "bloggers and YouTubers: a diffuse army of the uncredentialed, uninhibited and - most terrifyingly - unpaid.  In Russert, the press lost its most authoritative mass-market journalist, just as it is losing its authority and its mass market."

Poniewozik  explains: "It's too simple to say that the new media are killing off the old media.  ...What's happening instead is a kind of melding of roles.  Old and new media are still symbiotic, but it's getting hard to tell who's the rhino and who's the tickbird."

So, rhino or tickbird, hear this: He goes on to cite a DailyKos "scoop" this week in his evidence of the trend.

Thanks to the revelation here that Jeff Gannon is now blogging at the esteemed National Press Club, and is now a quite active member there, I had ace reporter Joe Strupp at E&P interview him yesterday and also find out how this came to pass. As some of you may know, E&P was the first "mainstream" site to closely follow the Gannon/Guckert story years ago and credit SusanG and DailyKos along the way.

I will link to our full story in a few minutes when it is posted but here is a preview.  

Among other things we learn that Jeff has no full-time position at a news outlet, but as he explains,  "for a single person, blogging can be profitable."   Since he serves on a committe that invites "newsmakers" to speak at the club, one wonders if it was Gannon who invited Rev. Wright to appear there.

As if the "soldier suicide" problem wasn't bad enough already,  word has just emerged from ABC News and (the unlikely) Washington Times that our government is testing drugs with severe side effects, including promoting suicidal behavior,  on hundreds of  vets.  

In one case, the V.A. took three months to alert the veterans to the severe mental effects caused by one of the drugs, the controversial Chantix, used to halt smoking.

They are even using cash payments to attract patients into medical experiments "that often target distressed soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan," the newspaper puts it today.

Last December, a remarkable article appeared in  Army Times, titled: "Not us. We're not going: Soldiers in 2nd Platoon, Charlie 1-26 stage a 'mutiny' that pulls the unit apart."  It was written by Kelly Kennedy, who had been embedded with a platoon in Iraq, and was just one part of her far-reaching series on that unit.  Kennedy has continued to write about the plight of soldiers and veterans as a top Military Times reporter.

Kennedy back then described several incidents that caused many soldiers in the unit to take a stand -- and "stand down" in Iraq due largely to the unbearable stress they had been under, particularly after witnessing many colleagues brutally killed.  Among other things, they were afraid they would take their anger and frustration out on innocent Iraqis.  After the mutiny, many were transfered elsewhere.

One of the triggers for the mutiny, Kennedy explained, was a quite shocking and, as far as we knew, a first in this war:  Last July, a much respected first sergeant  had taken out his weapon while out on a mission and, after shouting, "F--- this!",  killed himself right in front of his men.