In what The Associated Press decribes as a "strong voice," former International Monetary Fund leader Dominique Strauss-Kahn this morning pleaded not guilty to the charge that he attempted to rape a maid at a Manhattan hotel last month.

As the AP adds, "the 62-year-old Strauss-Kahn is on house arrest under armed guard. The French politician resigned his IMF post after his May 14 arrest."

After a hiatus caused by traveling, royalty, and other inconveniences, the morning roundup returns.

In the beginning, God created light and dark, severed day from night, land from sea, and created all the birds of the air, fish of the sea, and plants and animals of the world. Then he created Adam and Eve in His very image and set humanity in dominion over all of creation.

We of the Abrahamic religions were, and many remain, enchanted. In the West, this enchantment lasted until the 16th century with the black and white magi. The former sought by occult magic to stand nature on her head and wrest their due.

The deaths of five American troops today in central Iraq makes for an awful milestone. It is "the single largest loss of life for the American military in Iraq in the past two years," The Associated Press notes.

And, "the deaths raised to 4,459 the number of American service members who have died in Iraq, according to an Associated Press count."

There's been a bit of a kerfuffle the past couple days over something Sarah Palin said about Paul Revere.

The former Alaska governor, 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, potential 2012 GOP presidential contender and Fox News contributor told reporters in New England that Revere "warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms by ringing those bells and making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free."

Jack White is a regular contributor to The Root.

My old pal Paul Delaney, a fellow contributor to The Root, recently asked me what kind of speech I thought Barack Obama's Republican challenger would make to a mainstream black audience during next year's presidential campaign.

It's a good question because every four years, the GOP and its standard-bearer reaffirm their determination to go after every vote, including those of black America — and then proceed to prove their insincerity.

Christopher Caldwell is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.

Jamie Holmes is a policy analyst at the New America Foundation.

Good morning.

A "tenuous truce," as we just reported, seems to be holding in Yemen. But much uncertainty remains — over whether President Ali Abdullah Saleh will return following his medical treatment in Saudi Arabia and over whether the fractious and heavily armed opposition forces can unite.

Meanwhile, other stories making headlines include:

Every morning, as the school bus pulled up, Rain Price's father donned a different costume to wave him off to school. His costumes included Elvis, Chiquita Banana and the Little Mermaid. Rain admits his schoolmates warmed to the idea sooner than he did. But eventually, he too discovered the charm in his dad's morning send-offs.