As the Senate gets ready to vote on a new bill to stave off economic disaster, and Sarah prepares (feverishly) to debate, and George Will joins the ranks of those who see her as unqualified to serve ... and some (unfortunately) find themselves feeling sorry for the lipsticked pitbull ... my thoughts turn (feverishly) to [.

Heather O'Reilly scored just 40 seconds into the game, USC striker Amy Rodriguez also scored and Torrance's Shannon Boxx was named player of the game as the U.S. crushed New Zealand (much much) earlier today 4-0 to win its group.

The U.S. needed a big win and a large Norway loss against Japan to take the group.

Kudos to Nancy Lieberman who, at age 50, showed her stuff in an appearance for the suspension and injury-depleted Detroit Shock last night. She scored no points, but made a no-look pass that brought the house down! The Shock and the LA Sparks were both seriously understaffed due to suspensions and both lost their games [.

The USWNT kicks off against Japan tomorrow morning at 5AM ET and will (hopefully) field a team with its heads screwed on more securely than on Wednesday! I like to think that Wednesday's game was a collective test, to see whether "Boom Ball" really doesn't work. Lesson learned, guys? Gayle Bryan has written about [.

The Women's Professional Soccer League announced its allocation of members of the U.S. women's national team on Tuesday, establishing a foundation for the seven-team league set to kick off next spring.

U.S. Olympic team star Hope Solo and U.S. national team striker Abby Wambach were among the 21 players assigned to the seven teams.

Former South (Torrance) High star Shannon Boxx, Olympian Stephanie Cox and midfielder Aly Wagner were allocated to Los Angeles' Women's Professional Soccer franchise today.

"This is a big day for Women's Professional Soccer, as teams now have Olympic gold medalists from Beijing allocated to their home cities along with other talented national team players," said WPS Commissioner Tonya Antonucci.

Given a choice between watching soccer and blogging about it, I'd much rather do the former, but the scant rewards Wednesday for doing so included a tepid Manchester United 0-0 draw with Spain's Villareal in the UEFA Champions League and a surprising 2-0 win by Marathon of Honduras over Cruz Azul in the CONCACAF version

I will likely impose radio silence again today with two UEFA Cup games on Fox Soccer Channel (Spurs-Wisla Krakow at noon followed by Tim Howard's Everton against Oguchi Onyewu's Standard Liege) and New York meeting Sigi Schmid's Columbus Crew over on ESPN2 at 4 p.

Okay - it's up! Here's the 18-woman USWNT Roster for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. No big surprises, as far as I can tell. Aly Wagner played herself back into the mix after a long, injury-ridden hiatus - and it would be awesome to see her fulfill her potential on the Olympic [...]SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "The Roster", url: "http://www.