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Bush Renews Support for Ports Deal -- During an Oval Office meeting with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi:

"What kind of signal does it send throughout the world if its OK for a British company to mange the ports but not a company that has been secured -- that has been cleared for security purposes from the Arab world?" he said. After his remarks on port security, Bush told the translator not to translate his answer into Italian, unlike his other responses.

Discovery in News archives leads to publication of unseen images of civil rights movement in Birmingham.

No Safe Harbor Here -- How a routine sale became a political gale -- and what's next for Bush in the ports storm.

If the United States launches an attack on Iran, the Islamic republic will retaliate with a military strike on Israel's main nuclear facility, an advisor to Iran's Revolutionary Guard said.

Governors crossing party lines are criticizing Bush administration policies on the National Guard, questioning a budget plan they say will cut National Guard strength and leave states less able to respond to homegrown emergencies like hurricanes or a feared pandemic.

The top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee accused the Bush administration of hypocrisy when assigning blame for leaks about government tapping of US citizens' phones. "Clearly, 'leaks' and damaging revelations of intelligence sources and methods are generated primarily by executive branch officials pushing a particular policy and not by rank-and-file employees of the intelligence agencies."

The Army has recommended that seven 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers be discharged following allegations they engaged in sex acts shown on a gay pornographic Web site.

The Kansas Senate didn't go as far as it wanted in restricting the Rev. Fred Phelps and his followers from picketing and protesting at funerals of U.S. soldiers killed in combat, but it got its message across.

Three dozen contests for governor next fall promise to shake up the nation's political map, with Republicans fighting to hold on to several critical states and the results offering clues to the bigger prize ahead -- the White House in 2008.

The Homeland Security Department objected at first to a United Arab Emirates company's taking over significant operations at six U.S. ports. It was the lone protest among members of the government committee that eventually approved the deal without dissent.

Six years after battling her way to a Senate seat from her newly adopted state by campaigning night and day, Hillary Rodham Clinton is coasting toward re-election -- and piling up money that could go toward a run for the White House in 2008.

Bar Ohio adoptions by Republicans. (via Metafilter)

Black Box Voting successfully sued former Palm Beach County (FL) Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore to get the audit records for the 2004 presidential election.

The internal logs of at least 40 Sequoia touch-screen voting machines reveal that votes were time and date-stamped as cast two weeks before the election, sometimes in the middle of the night.

Group challenges science on biblically correct museum tours. "It's different ways of knowing. How people reconcile the ways of knowing is an individual choice."

After a year in which he lurched right, then left, many in California are wondering this: What does Arnold Schwarzenegger believe in?

The US military rejected the idea of a brewing civil war in Iraq, saying the number of confirmed major attacks on mosques across the country were only seven.

South Dakota became the first U.S. state to pass a law banning abortion in virtually all cases, with the intention of forcing the Supreme Court to reconsider its 1973 decision legalizing the procedure.

Unfortunate President Bush Photo of the Day

A written report from Secret Service agents guarding Vice President Dick Cheney when he shot Texas lawyer Harry Whittington on a hunting outing two weeks ago says Cheney was "clearly inebriated" at the time of the shooting.

President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates until the deal already had been approved by his administration.

Unfortunate President Bush Photo of the Day

Overriding objections from Republicans and Democrats alike, President Bush endorsed the takeover of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports by a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates. He pledged to veto efforts in Congress to block the agreement.

President Bush on Tuesday acknowledged that Washington has sent "mixed signals" to one of the nation's premiere labs studying renewable energies -- by first laying off, then reinstating, 32 workers just before his visit.

Efforts to ban gays and lesbians from adopting children are emerging across the USA as a second front in the culture wars that began during the 2004 elections over same-sex marriage. "Now that we've defined what marriage is, we need to take that further and say children deserve to be in that relationship."

The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will consider the constitutionality of banning a type of late-term abortion, teeing up a contentious issue for a newly-constituted court already in a state of flux over privacy rights.

The face on the one-dollar bill is not the real George Washington. So say experts who are re-creating what our first president really looked like in 3-dimensions.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, standing firmly with the White House on the administration's eavesdropping program, said he doesn't think new or updated legislation is needed to govern domestic surveillance to foil terrorists.

Handout (Staged) Photos -- A review of Associated Press archives found that during the entire eight years of the Clinton administration, only 100 handout photos of events were released to the press. During the first five years of Bush's presidency, more than 500 have been distributed.

Top 10 Presidential Blunders.

Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff on Sunday defended the government's security review of an Arab company given permission to take over operations at six major U.S. ports.

Fellow conservative religious leaders have expressed concern and even open criticism over Pat Robertson's habit of shooting from the hip on his daily religious news-and-talk television program, "The 700 Club."

The Supreme Court on Friday granted the Bush administration's request to join Texas in defending a Republican-friendly congressional map engineered by Rep. Tom DeLay.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, breaking ranks with the president on domestic eavesdropping, says he wants a special court to oversee the program.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales brushed aside requests on Thursday that he remove himself from the investigation of Jack Abramoff and the lobbyist's ties to Bush administration officials and members of Congress.

"The way I look at it, Cheney took the opportunity to show the White House press corps that it is not the natural conduit to the nation-at-large; and it has no special place in the information chain. Cheney does not grant legitimacy to the large news organizations with brand names who think of themselves as proxies for the public and its right to know. Nor does he think the press should know where he is, what he’s doing, or who he’s doing it with."

Russia's top military chief on Thursday warned the United States against launching a military strike against Iran and a top diplomat voiced hope that close cooperation with China could help resolve the Tehran nuclear crisis.

"My other invitation was to go quail hunting with Dick Cheney." -- Microsoft chairman Bill Gates

Experienced hunters yesterday said Vice President Dick Cheney alone bears the blame for a weekend mishap in which he accidentally shot a hunting companion in the face and chest with a shotgun.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department said it will classify the Saturday shooting as an error in judgment by Cheney.

The deaths and suffering of thousands of Hurricane Katrina's victims might have been avoided if the government had heeded lessons from the 2001 terror attacks and taken a proactive stance toward disaster preparedness, a House inquiry concludes.

Harry Whittington, the man US Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot while hunting, suffered a minor heart attack after pieces of birdshot lodged in his heart.

Abramoff hearts Rove.

The government concluded its "Cyber Storm" wargame Friday, its biggest-ever exercise to test how it would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers.

President George W. Bush knew hours after Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a fellow quail hunter but the White House came under fire on Monday for not making the information public until the next day.

"What concerns us is all the talk about not wanting our oil." -- Saudi Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi

Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot and injured a man during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas.

Really Unfortunate President Bush Photo of the Day

Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

New York Democrat Sen. Hillary Clinton has entered the debate over Wal-Mart's controversial bank application, telling regulators she has "serious reservations" about allowing companies to enter financial services by exploiting a "loophole" in U.S. law. (Wal-Mart hasn't been getting much good press lately.)

My Dear President: Letters Between Presidents and Their Wives

The eavesdropping tables were turned on President Bush on Friday.

The Air Force released new guidelines for religious expression that no longer caution top officers about promoting their personal religious views and removes a guideline saying that chaplains "should respect the rights of others to their own religious beliefs, including the right to hold no beliefs." (via Metafilter)

Jack Abramoff had brief conversations with President Bush almost a dozen times and the president knew him well enough to make joking references to Abramoff's family, according to an e-mail the fallen lobbyist sent a magazine editor.

A former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney told a federal grand jury that his superiors authorized him to give secret information to reporters as part of the Bush administration's defense of intelligence used to justify invading Iraq, according to court papers.

Heck of a job, Brownie -- Top Department of Homeland Security officials were told about New Orleans' levee failures the day Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, former disaster chief Michael Brown said Friday, contradicting agency officials who said earlier they were unaware of the severity of the problems until the next day.

Indicted Rep. Tom DeLay, forced to step down as the No. 2 Republican in the House, scored a soft landing Wednesday as GOP leaders rewarded him with a coveted seat on the Appropriations Committee.

With the midterm elections just nine months away, many states are lagging behind in meeting requirements under a 2002 election reform law that they modernize voting machines, create voter databases and establish ID systems, according to a report released Tuesday.

The United States and its allies thwarted an al Qaeda plot after the September 11 attacks to use bombs hidden in shoes to breach the cockpit door of an airplane and fly it into the tallest building in Los Angeles, President George W. Bush said on Thursday.

Last year, even though Bush talked endlessly about the supposed joys of private accounts, he never proposed a specific plan to Congress and never put privatization costs in the budget. But this year, with no fanfare whatsoever, Bush stuck a big Social Security privatization plan in the federal budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday.

George C. Deutsch, the Bush appointee at NASA who told public affairs workers to limit reporters' access to a top climate scientist and told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday.

Mr. Deutsch's resignation came on the same day that officials at Texas A&M University confirmed that he did not graduate from there, as his résumé on file at the agency asserted.

Women and children first? If President Bush gets his way, the venerable $255 Social Security death benefit will fade into history. And 16- and 17-year-old high school dropouts will lose their monthly survivor payments.

Is Rock the Vote going out of business?

Pravda: "The US Secretary of State released a coarse anti-Russian statement. This is because she is a single woman who has no children"

Democrat Jack Carter, 58, the son of former President Jimmy Carter formally announced a run for the U.S. Senate on Monday in his first bid for elected office.

States are rushing to limit when and where people may protest at funerals -- all because of a small Kansas church whose members picket soldiers' burials, arguing that Americans are dying for a country that harbors homosexuals.

Denmark's Prime Minister on Tuesday called protests over drawings of the Prophet Muhammad a global crisis and appealed for calm.

President Bush today proposed a $2.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2007 that would cut billions of dollars from domestic programs ranging from Medicare and food stamps to local law enforcement and disease control, while extending most of his tax cuts beyond their 2010 expiration date.

Blogger Gains Following With Iraq Reports

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales insisted Monday that President Bush is fully empowered to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants as part of the war on terror. He exhorted Congress not to end or tinker with the program.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has not adequately justified why the Bush administration failed to seek court approval for domestic surveillance, said Sen. Arlen Specter.

Congress sent President Bush a second five-week extension of the Patriot Act as Senate negotiators worked to close a deal with the White House on renewing the antiterrorism law with some new civil liberties protections.

Jack Bauer needs the Patriot Act to fight terrorists on the TV show 24? "During a commercial break while the fictional Bauer was desperately searching for canisters of deadly nerve gas that had fallen into the hands of terrorists, viewers saw an advertisement questioning the wisdom of real-life senators who would 'weaken' the Patriot Act. 'What if they are wrong?' the commercial asked."

New York's Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made a $100 million donation toward stem cell research in the latest quiet move against his own party's policies.

Bush "This Much" Photo of the Day

Capitol Police dropped a charge of unlawful conduct against anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan on Wednesday and apologized for ejecting her and a congressman's wife from President Bush's State of the Union address for wearing T-shirts with war messages.

President Bush believes Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she says she does not want to be president, and he says he does not know what role he will play in picking the GOP presidential nominee in 2008.

Wanted: a new man to replace scandal-scarred Rep. Tom DeLay as House majority leader.

What Really Happened by Cindy Sheehan.

Prince Harry is to be sent to Iraq next year as a troop commander and is likely to patrol the hazardous border with Iran.

"America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." -- Some Former Texas Oil Man

Unfortunate Senator Clinton Photo of the Day