It has been said that when the United States economy sneezes, the world catches a cold. Now might be a good time to start passing out the tissues.

For this episode of On The Record, we speak with Tammie Hartgroves, delegate to the 2004 Democratic National Convention, president of the Central Texas Democratic Women and precinct chair for precinct 63 in McLennan County.

Yesterday's big story was the testimony before Congress by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on Iraq, at least until late last night when the runoff for the Democratic candidate for railroad commissioner was decided.

The Lone Star Project is calling on Fort Worth State Senator Kim Brimer to fork over $357,000 to charity after the sale of a condo owned by his wife that Senator Brimer rented with campaign funds. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram's Jay Root does some due diligence and not only delivers fine reporting, but totally destroys the protestations of Brimer's spokesperson.

Today is the day of the primary election runoff for the Democratic nomination to the railroad commissioner's race. Make sure to get out there and vote!

I'm a fan of the Washington Post, and their work over the last year has been recognized with 6 Pulitzer Prizes. I was particularly glad to see the excellent reporting by Dana Priest and Anne Hull on the Walter Reed scandal, and the work of Barton Gellman and Jo Becker for their series on the Cheney Vice Presidency on the winner's list. If you haven't read those, the fact that they are examples of Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting should be enough of a reason to go check them out.

News items rarely split the weekend into distinct categories of A) unbelievable and B) unsurprising, but that's what happened from Friday to Sunday.

Long the subject of much debate, Clinton's chief strategist Mark Penn had attracted everything from wild praise to dark criticism, depending on the source. For the last several months, it was usually more criticism than praise. Late last week it came out that Mark Penn's PR firm had been working for the Colombian government in their efforts to nail down a free trade deal with the United States. Clinton opposes the deal, and the fairly quick result was Penn's resignation from his role on the campaign.

This is an interesting turn of events, even though it isn't quite surprising: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is lobbying to be McCain's running mate. Rice has said before that she wasn't interested in such a thing, but don't they all say that?

Remember how Blackwater's conduct and operations in Iraq were horrifying and embarrassing? Well, the State Department just renewed their contract in Iraq for another year.

I tried to come up with something snappy to say here, but I failed.