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The budget news is stunning.

War, tax cuts and a third year of a flailing economy may push this year's budget deficit past $450 billion, according to congressional sources familiar with new White House budget forecasts. That would be 50 percent higher than the Bush administration forecast five months ago.

The deficit projection due out today is nearly $50 billion more than economists anticipated just last week, and it underscores the continuing deterioration of the government's fortunes since 2000, when the Treasury posted a $236 billion surplus.

The article goes on to note that this "easily tops the previous record $290 billion deficit of 1992". Why is it that only Democratic administrations are fiscally responsible?

Surprise! Faced with less federal assistance, state and local governments are raising taxes. Could we have predicted this before the tax cut? Of course we could, and did. Was the administration straightforward about it? Not that I can recall.

Surprise! The Third Infantry Division will stay in Iraq indefinitely. Could we have predicted this before the war? You know how this goes. I don't even know why I'm bothering to mention this stuff.

Today's Papers is full of good tidbits today, like this:

The Post also notices another, ahem, misstatement by yesterday Bush: He said Saddam "wouldn't let [U.N. inspectors] in." The paper notes, too politely, that the president's assertion "appeared to contradict the events leading up to war." Appeared?

Also in Slate: William Saletan reviews the current state of finger-pointing from a president who ran on a straight-shooter image, and Michael Kinsley condemns it:

3) The final argument: It was only 16 words! What's the big deal? The bulk of the case for war remains intact. Logically, of course, this argument will work for any single thread of the pro-war argument. Perhaps the president will tell us which particular points among those he and his administration have made are the ones we are supposed to take seriously.