BEIJING — Michael Phelps won his record eighth gold medal Sunday at the Beijing Olympics as a member of the victorious U.S. 400-meter medley relay team, breaking a tie with Mark Spitz for most golds in a single games.

Aaron Peirsol, Brendan Hansen, Phelps and Jason Lezak won in a world-record of 3 minutes, 29.34 seconds, lowering the old mark of 3:30.68 set four years ago in Athens.

The U.S. swept the men's relays in Beijing, with Phelps leading off in the 400 and 800 free relays. Lezak anchored the 400 free to a narrow victory over France to preserve Phelps' historic bid.

Australia took the silver in 3:30.04.

Japan earned the bronze in 3:31.18.

JERUSALEM — Israel's Cabinet on Sunday approved the release of some 200 Palestinian prisoners as a goodwill gesture to the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Abbas he would free some of the 11,000 Palestinians held by Israel to help energize peace talks between the two sides.

The prisoner issue is an emotional one for Palestinians, many of whom know somebody behind bars or have been imprisoned themselves. Palestinians see Israel's justice system as unfair and have elevated prisoners to hero status.

Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, has repeatedly called for a large release to boost his public standing.

"This is a gesture to Abu Mazen and the Palestinian people for the upcoming month of Ramadan," Olmert told the Cabinet, according to a meeting participant who spoke on condition of anonymity because the proceedings were closed.

In the West Bank, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad welcomed the gesture, but said Israel should release even larger numbers of prisoners.

"We welcome the release of any Palestinian prisoner. It is considered a victory for Palestinians," he told The Associated Press during a tour of the northern village of Tubas. "We ask Israeli to change its conditions for releasing prisoners and we ask for the release of all prisoners without exception."

Israeli security officials must still approve the list of prisoners to be freed under Sunday's decision. But the Cabinet official said the release would likely include two Palestinians involved in deadly attacks on Israelis. The official said officials believe the two men, convicted in attacks that occurred in the late 1970s, were unlikely to return to violence.

Israel's official position is that Palestinians involved in fatal attacks cannot be freed. However, it has made exceptions, most recently last month when it released a Lebanese prisoner convicted of killing three Israelis as part of a swap with the Hezbollah guerrilla group.

The Cabinet decision followed Olmert's announcement last month that he will leave office as he battles a corruption investigation. Palestinians have been seeking assurances that the peace talks, which began with great fanfare at a U.S.-sponsored conference last November, will continue despite Israel's political turmoil.

Olmert has said he is determined to press ahead with peace efforts as long as he is in office. His Kadima Party is scheduled to choose a new leader next month, but because of Israel's complicated political system, his term could extend into next year.

Olmert and Abbas had hoped to reach a peace agreement by the end of the year, though both sides have scaled back those expectations.

Israeli officials also said Sunday's vote was meant to send a message that Abbas can make progress through peaceful means, in contrast to his opponents' efforts to use force and abductions against the Jewish state.

Abbas' rival, the Hamas militant group, is demanding the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a captured Israeli soldier held in the Gaza Strip for more than a year.

As Israel tries to negotiate a peace deal with Abbas, it has boycotted Hamas, which it considers a terrorist group. Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip from Abbas' forces in June 2006.

In Gaza, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the Israeli prisoner release aimed to widen internal Palestinian divisions between Hamas and Abbas' Fatah movement.

___

Associated Press correspondents Ali Daraghmeh in Tubas, West Bank, and Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.

Oh boy. We better brace for a tremendous outpouring from talk radio and such outlets of right wing ire as Instapundit, littlegreenfootballs, Powerline, and Free Republic. And I have to admit, even as an Obama partisan, I was shocked by the news that John McCain is receiving six times as much money from active duty service personnel. It's hard to interpret this as anything but a profound indictment of Obama's message that our Iraq war policy is fatally flawed. Clearly the people closest to the action believe in John McCain's plan to win the war and reject Obama's cut and run foolishness. We shouldn't be surprised, I suppose, McCain is the war hero and Obama never served in the military and then there's the traditional military affinity for Republicans...

Wait a minute--ha ha, sorry about that. Turns out it's Barack Obama who is receiving six times as much in donations from active duty service personnel as John McCain! Well, never mind, can't really draw any conclusions from that at all. Just a weird factoid.

GORI, Georgia — Russia said its military began to withdraw from the conflict zone in Georgia on Monday, but left unclear exactly where troops and tanks will operate under the cease-fire that ended days of fighting in the former Soviet republic.

Russian troops and tanks have controlled a wide swath of Georgia for days after a short but intense war that reignited Cold War tensions.

In Moscow, Col.-Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn told a briefing that "today, according to the peace plan, the withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers and reinforcements has begun." He added that forces were leaving Gori, which sits on Georgia's main east-west highway.

Earlier in the day, Russian forces around Gori appeared to be solidifying their positions, and it was not immediately possible to confirm the withdrawal with AP journalists there.

A U.S. official said Monday that the Russian military had moved missile launchers into the breakaway region of South Ossetia.

The RIA-Novosti news agency reported that some Russian military vehicles were heading Monday out of the South Ossetian capital of Tskhinvali toward Russia. The leader of South Ossetia, Eduard Kokoity, also asked Russia on Monday to establish a permanent base there, the news agency said.

According to the European Union-brokered peace plan signed by both Medvedev and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, both sides are to pull forces back to the positions they held before fighting broke out Aug. 7 in the Russian-backed Georgian separatist region of South Ossetia.

Nogovitsyn said the Russian troops are pulling back to South Ossetia and a security zone defined by a 1999 agreement of the "joint control commission" that had been nominally in charge of South Ossetia's status since it split from Georgia in the early 1990s.

Georgian and Russian officials could not immediately clarify the dimensions of the security zone. Nogovitsyn said only that "troops should not be in the territory of Georgia," but it was unclear if that excluded patrols.

"I think the Russians will pull out, but will damage Georgia strongly," Tbilisi resident Givi Sikharulidze told an AP television crew. "Georgia will survive, but Russia has lost its credibility in the eyes of the world."

Top American officials said Washington would rethink its relationship with Moscow after its military drive deep into its much smaller neighbor and called for a swift Russian withdrawal.

"I think there needs to be a strong, unified response to Russia to send the message that this kind of behavior, characteristic of the Soviet period, has no place in the 21st century," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday.

But neither Gates nor Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would be specific about what punitive actions the United States or the international community might take.

Rice, who was flying to Europe for talks Tuesday with NATO allies about what message the West should send to Russia, said Russia can't use "disproportionate force" against its neighbor and still be welcome in international institutions.

"It's not going to happen that way," she said. "Russia will pay a price."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy warned Medvedev of "serious consequences" in Moscow's relations with the European Union if Russia does not comply with the cease-fire accord.

A U.S. official told The Associated Press that the Russian military moved SS-21 missile launchers into South Ossetia on Friday. From there, the missiles would be able to reach Tbilisi.

Nogovitsyn, the Russian military official, disputed the claim, saying Russia "sees no necessity" to place SS-21s in the region.

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By now, across the progressive spectrum, some familiar storylines tell us the meaning of the Obama campaign. In a groove, each narrative digs its truths. But whether those particular truths are the most important at this historical moment is another story.

We can set aside the plotline that touts Obama as a visionary pragmatist who has earned the complete trust of progressives. The belief has diminished in recent months -- in the wake of numerous Obama pronouncements on foreign policy, his FISA vote to damage the Fourth Amendment and the like -- but such belief was never really grounded in his record as a politician or his policy positions.

A more substantial narrative concedes that Obama has "compromised" on numerous fronts but assumes he has done so in order to get elected president, after which time his real self will emerge. This kind of dubious projection is as old as the political hills, and inevitably becomes a kind of murky exercise in armchair psychology. All in all, projection is not useful for assessing where political leaders are and where they're headed.

In contrast, quite a few on the left -- some from the outset of his presidential race, others beginning more recently -- express appreciable disdain for the Obama campaign. The critiques of Obama's positions on issues are often on the mark. Overall, the fact that Obama brings civility and intelligence to public discourse that would be a welcome change in the White House does not alter the corporate centrist core of his espoused policies.

No matter how much we might like to think that people's reasoning and logic are the essence of political judgments, actual experience tells us different: The political stances of many people, including on the left, are contoured around their own internal emotional terrain. And there may not be a lot of sorting through contradictions or analysis of the current historical circumstances.

Yet we're in great need of willingness to acknowledge contradictory truths, to sort through them as a means of finding the best progressive strategies for the here and now.

While some attacks on Obama from the left are overheated, overly ideological and mechanistic, there's scant basis for denying the reality that his campaign and his positions are way too cozy with corporate power. Meanwhile, his embrace of escalating the war in Afghanistan reflects acceptance rather than rejection of what Martin Luther King Jr. called "the madness of militarism."

To some, who evidently see voting as an act of moral witness rather than pragmatic choice (even in a general election), forces such as corporate power or militarism are binary -- like a toggle switch -- either totally on or totally off. This outlook says: either we reject entirely or we're complicit.

Such analysis tends to see Obama as just a little bit slower on the march to the same disasters that John McCain would lead us to. That analysis takes a long view -- but fails to see the profound importance of the crossroads right in front of us, where either Obama or McCain will be propelled into the White House.

Any progressive who watched the "faith" forum that Obama and McCain participated in on Aug. 16 would have good reasons to be negative when assessing some of Obama's answers. But McCain's responses were vastly more jingoistic, militaristic, fanatical and pro-corporate, while also making clear his enthusiasm for the worst of the current Supreme Court justices.

In an odd and ironic way, progressives who are unequivocal Obama boosters and unequivocal Obama bashers embrace similar concepts of limited alternatives in electoral work. They seem to rule out candidly critical support of a candidate -- viewing such an option as either a betrayal of the candidate or a betrayal read more »
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In contrast, quite a few on the left -- some from the outset of his presidential race, others beginning more recently -- express appreciable disdain for the Obama campaign. The critiques of Obama's positions on issues are often on the mark. Overall, the fact that Obama brings civility and intelligence to public discourse that would be a welcome change in the White House does not alter the corporate centrist core of his espoused policies.