Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D), running for the open U.S. Senate seat there, sought to quash the controversy bubbling around him with regard to his military service.

The embattled Democratic candidate for senator, has probably already made plans for the Memorial Day weekend. He’s got a lot of campaigning to do, and some explaining, too.

The New York Times has reported on instances when Blumenthal has said he served “in” Vietnam, when he actually served in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves and was never deployed to the combat zone.

“On a few occasions, I have misspoken about my service, and I regret that, and I take full responsibility,” Blumenthal said at a news conference today surrounded by supportive veterans from Connecticut. “But I will not allow anyone to take a few misplaced words and impugn my record of service to our country.”

Blumenthal stressed that he has referred to his service in the reserves on a number of occasions and that the events, illuminated by the Times and the Republican campaign for Linda McMahon, were “absolutely unintentional.”

He added that he incorrectly used the word “in” instead of “during.”

“A few misplaced words,” Blumenthal said. “Totally unintentional.”

But if he can find time, he may want to drive down to New York and visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Water Street in the financial district. There, he could learn a thing or two about that war from men who actually fought it—unlike Mr. Blumenthal, who has on occasion claimed to have been there, though the closest he may have gotten to a Vietnam experience is at Saigon Kitchen in Hartford.

New York’s Vietnam memorial, tucked between two office buildings, doesn’t get many visitors, even on days devoted to remembering America’s war dead.

It is a simple monument but also a moving one. Two rows of granite blocks bear the names of 1,741 New Yorkers who died in the war. The dominant feature, however, is a long wall of thick glass. Etched into it are soldiers’ haunting reflections on war, taken from diary entries and letters home.

“I have aged greatly,” Cpl. Kevin Macaulay wrote to his parents in 1968. “I feel like an old man now. I have seen enough of war and its destruction. I am scarred by it but not scared enough to quit.”

Pfc. William A. Maguire Jr. wrote in 1969: “We are all scared. They say when fear is in a man, he is prepared for anything. When fear possesses the man he is prepared for nothing. As of now fear is in me. I hope I can keep it from possessing me.” Three weeks after writing that, Private Maguire died of a fever. He was 20.

Should Mr. Blumenthal come to New York, he would find much to contemplate. Not everything on the wall is heartbreaking. Some soldiers spoke of their mission with pride. Some asked what was up back home. One man, Sgt. Raymond Wahl, said he would “give just about anything for a hot bath, some clean clothes and a cold drink of good old New York City water.” All of it is intensely human.

Even without a visit to the memorial, Mr. Blumenthal probably knows this. He is 64, a product of the Vietnam era. He’s just not a product of the Vietnam War, despite an impression he has at times given that he is, as he did in 2008, when he said point-blank that he had served in Vietnam.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wisc.), a liberal lion first elected at the height of the Vietnam War in 1969, is set to announce Wednesday he will not seek re-election in November, according to a senior Democratic official. The move will deal a blow to Democratic chances of holding the northern Wisconsin seat.

Obey, 71, has called a meeting of his staff and issued a news release declaring a “major” announcement set for 1 p.m. on Capitol Hill. Obey, whose committee gavel gives him oversight of more than $1 trillion in annual federal spending, was facing his toughest re-election battle in years, as Ashland County District Attorney Sean Duffy (R) was running a promising campaign against him. The chairman’s plan to retire was first reported by David Rogers of Politico.

Republicans have focused their recruiting efforts on finding young, energetic challengers to veteran chairmen such as Obey. GOP recruits considered Duffy–a telegenic 37-year-old former star of MTV’s “Real World: Boston”–a textbook example of a challenger ready to take on an incumbent who took office before Duffy was even born.

“There is no question that David Obey was facing the race of his life and that is why it is understandable that the architect of President Obama’s failed stimulus plan has decided to call it quits,” said Ken Spain, a spokesman for the Republican campaign committee.

Obey has had a political lock on this seat, only drawing drew less than 60 percent of the vote in his 1994 and 1996 re-election battles. However, the district is much more evenly divided politically. While President Obama took 56 percent of the vote in 2008, Wisconsin’s 7th district split almost evenly in the 2004 and 2000 elections.

Rep. Obey will become the second chairman of a House Committee to retire this cycle. In late 2009, Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., Chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology, announced that he would not seek re-election.

Four people were killed and at least six others were wounded Tuesday night when two drive-by shootings struck in one of Washington’s poorest southeast neighborhoods.

The toll rose overnight as a fourth victim was reported dead early Wednesday, according to police sources.

At the peak of the violence, an AK-47 assault rifle was used to spray bullets at a crowd on a street corner in Washington, D.C.–in scenes witnesses likened to the Vietnam War.

Three suspects were eventually arrested, but only after five D.C. cops were also hurt when their cruisers crashed during a car chase.

The suspects had fled the scene and headed toward Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Police said the AK-47 used in the attacks was found near the shooting scene, having apparently been thrown from the suspect vehicle.

The situation began at approximately 7:30 p.m. EDT with a separate shooting incident on Galveston Street SW in the District, where an 18-year-old man was shot, police said. His injuries were non life-threatening.

D.C. Fire and EMS spokesman Pete Piringer said all of the victims were in their 20s and 30s except for the teenager.

At least two of the survivors were described by emergency services as in a life-threatening “priority one” condition late Tuesday, as reports said the violence may become the city’s most deadly attack in 15 years.

The police officers injured chasing the suspects were expected to survive, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said.

Authorities gave no indication of a motive in the shootings.

Police continued their search Thursday for a fourth suspect wanted in connection with a shooting spree that killed four people and wounded five others in southern Washington D.C.

Authorities have already charged three other suspects–including a 14-year-old boy–with ‘first degree murder while armed’ in the twin shootings that took place Tuesday night.

The arrested suspects are: Nathaniel Dwight Simms, 26; Orlando Carter, 20, and a 14-year-old whose name was withheld because he is a juvenile.

Simms and Carter were arraigned in D.C. Superior Court on Wednesday. Both are being held without bond until a preliminary hearing set for April 15

Rep. Murtha died at Virginia Hospital Center in Arlington, Va., surrounded by his family, his office announced. He had been hospitalized for a little more than a week with complications from gallbladder surgery.

The Democratic congressman recently underwent scheduled laparoscopic surgery at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, to remove his gallbladder. The procedure was “routine minimally invasive surgery,” but doctors “hit his intestines,” a source close to the late congressman revealed to the press.

Murtha was initially hospitalized in December and had to postpone a hearing with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the administration’s strategy in Afghanistan. The congressman returned to work after a few days in the hospital and helped oversee final passage of the 2010 defense appropriations bill.

Although his turn against the war in 2005 made him a national figure, Rep. Murtha was known inside Washington for decades as the consummate behind-the-scenes dealmaker, an old-line power broker who unrepentantly delivered billions of federal dollars to his home state. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a longtime ally of Murtha’s, said in a statement that he always put “the troops and their families first.”

Murtha was “incredibly effective in his service in the House,” said Wisconsin Rep. David Obey, chairman of the Appropriations Committee. “Every person who serves in the military has lost an advocate and a good friend.”

A right-hand man of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, he was considered one of the most influential lawmakers on Capitol Hill and credited for her ascension.

Murtha “will be missed,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio. “The House of Representatives has lost one of its own.”

Murtha had represented Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District since 1974, making him the chamber’s eighth most senior member. According to his biography on the House of Representatives Web site, Murtha was the first Vietnam War combat veteran elected to Congress.

“Our military’s done everything that has been asked of them,” Rep. Murtha said then. “The U.S. cannot accomplish anything further in Iraq militarily. It’s time to bring the troops home.”