UBL #2 mock US President

In a new video , al-Qaida's No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri mocked President Bush as a "failure" in the war on terror, called him a "butcher" for killing innocent Pakistanis in a miscarried airstrike and chastised the United States for rejecting Osama bin Laden's offer of a truce.
Al-Zawahri, wearing white robes and a white turban and speaking in a forceful and angry voice, also threatened a new attack in the United States — "God willing, on your own land."
The video, broadcast on Al-Jazeera TV a day before Bush delivers his State of the Union address, provided the first concrete evidence that al-Zawahri was still alive after the Jan. 13 airstrike in eastern Pakistan that targeted him but killed four other al-Qaida leaders and 13 villagers.
The message came on the heels of a Jan. 19 audiotape by bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader's first tape in more than a year. Bin Laden said his followers were preparing an attack in the United States and offered the Americans a conditional truce, though he did not spell out terms.
A U.S. counterterrorism official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in compliance with office policy, said there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the al-Zawahri video, which U.S. intelligence officials were analyzing.

Bush Looks for Boost From State of Union

President Bush, in his State of the Union speech Tuesday, will offer ideas for dealing with domestic problems like high energy prices and health care and international troubles like Iran's suspected nuclear ambitions. The unspoken agenda underpinning the address, Bush's fifth, is the rescue of his presidency from arguably its worst year.
His poll numbers fell to the lowest point of his presidency under the weight of missteps following Hurricane Katrina, soaring energy costs, the withdrawal of a Supreme Court nominee, the failure of his high-profile effort to drive a Social Security overhaul, and increasing scrutiny from the public and Congress of the unpopular Iraq war.
While Bush's approval rating has recovered slightly, it remains in the still-anemic low 40s. It is a matter of concern for Republicans as they worry about maintaining control of Congress in this fall's midterm elections.
''I can't tell you how upbeat I am about our future, so long as we're willing to lead,'' Bush said at a photo opportunity Monday with his Cabinet. Referring to the bitter political tone in Washington, Bush said, ''I'll do my best to elevate the tone here in Washington, D.C., so we can work together to achieve big things for the American people.''
Unlike last year's focus on Social Security, an initiative that failed, Bush's emphasis will be more diffuse, with proposals aimed at taming health care costs, moving America away from its dependence on foreign energy sources, remaining competitive in the global economy, and getting the ballooning federal deficit under control.

White House Declines to Provide Storm Papers

The Bush administration, citing the confidentiality of executive branch communications, said Tuesday that it did not plan to turn over certain documents about Hurricane Katrina or make senior White House officials available for sworn testimony before two Congressional committees investigating the storm response.
The White House this week also formally notified Representative Richard H. Baker, Republican of Louisiana, that it would not support his legislation creating a federally financed reconstruction program for the state that would bail out homeowners and mortgage lenders. Many Louisiana officials consider the bill crucial to recovery, but administration officials said the state would have to use community development money appropriated by Congress.
The White House's stance on storm-related documents, along with slow or incomplete responses by other agencies, threatens to undermine efforts to identify what went wrong, Democrats on the committees said Tuesday.
"There has been a near total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do," Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said at Tuesday's hearing of the Senate committee investigating the response. His spokeswoman said he would ask for a subpoena for documents and testimony if the White House did not comply

White House Had Early Warning on Katrina

Documents obtained by The Washington Post reveal, according to the newspaper, that in the 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit last August, the White House "received detailed warnings about the storm's likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property."
The 41-page assessment by the Department of Homeland Security's National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC) was delivered by e-mail to the White House's "situation room" in the early hours of Aug. 29, the day the storm hit, according to an e-mail cover sheet.The NISAC paper warned that a storm of Katrina's size would "likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching" and noted the potential for levee failures along Lake Pontchartrain. "It predicted economic losses in the tens of billions of dollars, including damage to public utilities and industry that would take years to fully repair," writes Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick in the Tuesday paper. "Initial response and rescue operations would be hampered by disruption of telecommunications networks and the loss of power to fire, police and emergency workers, it said.

Google shares hammered after government challenge

After climbing for a year and a ,Google shares fell 8.5 percent on Friday to $399.46 a share. It was the largest one-day percentage drop for the company and the highest volume -- more than 41 million trades -- since August 18, 2004, when the search giant went public.
The market move comes one day after news that Google is challenging a U.S. Department of Justice request for Web search data. While Yahoo, AOL and MSN have complied with a subpoena to provide information on random Web searches and Web sites indexed, Google said "no."
The government is trying to resurrect the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, which would make it a crime for commercial Web sites to post material that could be deemed harmful if minors came across it, such as pornography. The administration wants the information to help bolster its argument that Web filtering software is ineffective.
Google contends that the government's request for information -- one million random Web addresses indexed by the search engine and all the keywords used in searches for a specified one week period -- is overreaching and too broad. None of the information sought could be traced back to any individual users.
Privacy advocates applauded Google's action, saying that while the government's subpoena covers Web search data that is not personally identifiable, future requests could go further and invade Web surfers' privacy.

U.S. Approves Cuba for World Baseball Event

By JACK CURRY
Cuba has been granted a license to participate in the World Baseball Classic by the Treasury Department, two people with direct knowledge of the process said today, enabling the country to compete in the 16-team tournament that runs from March 3-20. The license eliminates a thorny complication and potentially fatal blow to the event. If Cuba had been denied a license, the inaugural event would have been jeopardized because the International Baseball Federation said it would remove its sanction.

The two people with knowledge of the decision spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not yet authorized to discuss it. Officials from Major League Baseball and the Players Association were certain to be relieved that Cuba, which won the 2004 Olympic gold medal, could participate in the World Baseball Classic. Cuba, a traditional baseball power, is in Pool C in the four-pool event, with Puerto Rico, Panama and the Netherlands. An official announcement about the license was expected this afternoon.
When the World Baseball Classic first sought a license for Cuba, the Treasury Department denied it because the Cubans would have made American dollars. That would have violated the United States' trade embargo against Cuba. The tournament organizers submitted a second license request on Dec. 22 and eliminated any possibility that the Cubans would earn money. Paul Archey, baseball's senior vice president for international matters, and Doyle Pryor, a union lawyer, met with Cuban officials last week to gather information that had been requested by the Office of Foreign Assets Control, a division of the Treasury Department. After Mr. Archey and Mr. Pryor gave the information to the Treasury Department, they were optimistic that Cuba would soon get a license, and the approval came through today. The deadline for provisional rosters has already passed so Cuba will have to provide its roster as soon as possible.

Sunni Parties Net Gains After Boycotting Previous Election

A coalition of Shiite parties won 128 of 275 seats in last month's parliamentary elections, falling 10 votes short of a majority, Iraqi election officials announced today.
The results mean that the Shiite group will remain the dominant force in Iraq's new government, but will still need to form a coalition. In second place came a coalition of Kurdish parties, who took 53 seats. The largest Sunni party, the Iraqi Accordance Front, won 44 seats and another Sunni party won 11. A party headed by former prime minister Ayad Allawi, a secular Shiite, took 25 seats. The Sunnis will have more representatives in the new parliament than they did in the old, whose elections they mostly boycotted last January.

Google Rebuffs Feds on Search Requests

Google Inc. is rebuffing the Bush administration's demand for a peek at what millions of people have been looking up on the Internet's leading search engine — a request that underscores the potential for online databases to become tools for government surveillance.
Mountain View-based Google has refused to comply with a White House subpoena first issued last summer, prompting U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales this week to ask a federal judge in San Jose for an order to hand over the requested records.
The government wants a list all requests entered into Google's search engine during an unspecified single week — a breakdown that could conceivably span tens of millions of queries. In addition, it seeks 1 million randomly selected Web addresses from various Google databases.
In court papers that the San Jose Mercury News reported on after seeing them Wednesday, the Bush administration depicts the information as vital in its effort to restore online child protection laws that have been struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Release of prisoners 'not linked' to kidnap deadline

Iraqi officials called for the release of six women prisoners held by the US military but emphasised that the move had not been made in response to demands set out by the kidnappers of an American reporter.
A Justice Ministry official said that its decision to free six of the eight women held in US-controlled prisons had been taken by a review board last Monday, the day before the kidnappers of Jill Carroll said that they would kill her unless all women prisoners were released by the Americans. “There was no outside pressure on the commission” to release the women, another Human Rights Ministry official said. The women are due to be released in the coming days, leading to hopes that the kidnappers will extend their 72-hour deadline, set on Tuesday night, to murder the freelance journalist if their conditions are not met.

Rush to Sell Shuts Down Tokyo Stock Exchange

TOKYO, Japan ­- An avalanche of sell orders forced Tokyo’s stock market to close early Wednesday, with the main benchmark closing down 2.94 percent, after plunging almost as much on Tuesday when it lost 2.84 percent.
The trigger was a prosecutors' raid Monday night on the offices of Livedoor Co., a fastgrowing Internet services group. Livedoor shares did not trade Wednesday for lack of buy orders but were marked down by the daily 100-yen limit for a second day in a row to 496 yen.
At that price, more than $1.8 billion of the company's market value would be wiped out.
With the abrupt tumble, analysts debated whether the damage would stop Thursday with Internet stocks or whether it would pull down the world’s second largest market, a bourse that grew 40 percent last year, drawing investors from around the world.

New Zogby Survey shows Iraq a Partisan War

In the face of rising gas prices, partisan sniping over Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, and a resumption of insurgent violence in Iraq, President Bush’s job approval rating has slipped into a post-holiday funk, again dipping below 40%, a new telephone poll by Zogby International shows. His approval rating almost mirrors the percentage of respondents (40%) who said the nation overall is headed in the right direction.
The deterioration in the President’s numbers appears to be the result of eroding support among the investor class and others who supported him in his 2004 re-election bid, said Pollster John Zogby, President and CEO of Zogby International. And the problem is the Iraq war – just 34% of respondents said Mr. Bush was doing a good or excellent job managing the war, down from 38% approval in a Zogby poll taken in mid-October.
Bush’s overall job approval rating in that poll was at 46%.
Among investors, Bush’s support for managing the war dropped five points since October, from 45% to 40%, Zogby data shows. But Zogby said the glaring split between how Republicans, Democrats and independents think the President is handling Iraq is remarkable.
“The numbers in support for the war in Iraq are extremely low among Democrats and independents,” Zogby said. “This is a partisan war.”
While 61% of Republicans said he was doing a good job managing the war (down from 70% in October), just 11% of Democrats and 28% of independents gave him good marks in that area. Among Democrats, 71% said Bush was doing a “poor” job with the war, while 17% said he was doing only a “fair” job.
Among men, 36% said the President was handling the war well, while 31% of women agreed

Ethics Committees Won't Commit to Action

The leaders of Congress' ethics committees are not committing to any investigation of misconduct despite the growing revelations about the favors that lobbyist Jack Abramoff won for clients and the largesse he arranged for lawmakers.The committees, for now, are poised to remain on the sidelines.
The House committee, stymied by partisan disagreements, launched no investigations in 2005 even after former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, requested an inquiry into his foreign travel arranged by Abramoff.
The lack of commitment to investigate issues about lawmakers' conduct with Abramoff, his lobbying team and his clients is raising anew the question of whether Congress adequately can discipline its own.
"There have always been questions about whether Congress can police itself," said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in ethics. "The situation in the House removes all doubt. The House is not policing itself."

Saddam judge stands by resignation: court spokesman

The chief judge in the trial of Saddam Hussein is standing by his resignation and efforts by Iraqi officials to dissuade him were not expected to reach a conclusion on Monday, a spokesman for the court said.
"It won't be settled today," said the spokesman, who in keeping with tribunal practice, declined to give his name.
He also declined to name the senior High Tribunal judge who was dispatched to Judge Rizgar Amin's Kurdish home city of Sulaimaniya to negotiate with him after the Iraqi government in cabinet rejected the resignation he submitted last week.
In the first direct comment from the U.S.-sponsored High Tribunal's administration since the head of the five-judge panel made public his resignation on Friday, the spokesman said: "The administrative magistrates responsible for cabinet issues delivered the resignation request to the cabinet.
"It will take some time in cabinet before a final decision."
The trial of Saddam and seven others for crimes against humanity is due to resume on January 24 after a month-long recess.
Amin has made no formal statement himself but has made clear he is unhappy about interference in the trial and pressure put on him personally by the government and other Shi'ite political leaders who accuse the Kurdish judge of being soft on Saddam.

DeLay Associate Expects to be handed GOP House Leadership

Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri says he has firm commitments from enough House Republicans to be elected majority leader, replacing Tom DeLay in an internal party election Feb. 2.

Blunt's rivals, Representatives John Boehner of Ohio and John Shadegg of Arizona, were not ready to concede.
"This will be a long campaign, leading up to a secret ballot election," Boehner said. He called on Blunt to give up his whip's position formally, a post he could retain under current rules if he lost the majority leader's race.
Shadegg, a conservative who entered the race on Friday, said he had already cut into Blunt's support.
"We already have defections from the Blunt list and we expect more," he said. "Vote counts in this sort of race are notoriously inaccurate. I am in this race to the finish."
With the current House Republican membership at 231, with one vacancy, 116 would constitute a majority. Blunt said he had commitments from more than 117 lawmakers.
Blunt has come under criticism for his links to Washington's lobbyists in a party fight that has been dominated by talk of reforms and ethics related to the lobbying scandal surrounding the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, once a close associate of DeLay.

Qaeda No.2 Away During Attack: Pakistan Official

A U.S. airstrike in Pakistan targeted al Qaeda's second-in-command, U.S. sources said, but Ayman al-Zawahri was away at the time, according to a senior Pakistani official on Saturday. The strike on Friday killed at least 18 people, including women and children, and three houses were destroyed in a village near the Afghan border, residents said.
Pakistan condemned the airstrike and would summon the U.S. ambassador to protest the attack, Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said. He had no information about Zawahri.
CIA-operated unmanned drones were believed to have been used in the attack on Damadola village, across the border from Kunar province in eastern Afghanistan, the U.S. sources said.
A high-ranking Pakistani official said Zawahri, deputy to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was not in the village. The United States has offered $25 million for either Zawahri or bin Laden.
``Al-Zawahri was not there at the time,'' the Pakistani official told Reuters.
Pakistani intelligence sources said Zawahri was believed to have made visits to the Bajaur area, though on Friday he was not in Damadola, 200 km (125 miles) northwest of Islamabad.
President Pervez Musharraf, addressing officials in the town of Swabi to the north of Islamabad, said only: ``There was an incident in Bajaur. We are looking into it, who did it -- people from outside have come.''
A military spokesman at U.S. Central Command in Florida said there had been no official report of an attack in Pakistan.

Clinton says he didn't use warrantless wiretaps

Former President Clinton said Thursday that he never ordered wiretaps of American citizens without obtaining a court order, as President Bush has acknowledged he has done. Clinton, in an interview broadcast Thursday on the ABC News program ''Nightline,'' said his administration either received court approval before authorizing a wiretap or went to court within three days after to get permission, as required by law.

''We either went there and asked for the approval or, if there was an emergency and we had to do it beforehand, then we filed within three days afterward and gave them a chance to second guess it,'' Clinton told ABC. Bush said in December that he authorized wiretaps without obtaining court permission and defended the practice as a ''vital tool'' in tracking terrorist suspects and accomplices.

Bush Admin. Launched Secret Smear Campaign Against Murtha

The Huffington Post has learned the Bush administration recently asked high ranking military leaders to denounce Congressman John Murtha. Congressman Murtha has called for the Bush Administration to withdraw US troops from Iraq.


The Bush Administration first attacked Rep. Murtha for his Iraq views by associating him with the filmmaker Michael Moore and Representative Jean Schmidt likened him to a coward on the floor of the House of Representatives. When those tactics backfired, Dick Cheney called Murtha "A good man, a marine, a patriot and he's taking a clear stand in an entirely legitimate discussion." Though the White House has backed off publicly, administration officials have nevertheless recently made calls to military leaders to condemn the congressman. So far they have refused.
Rep. Murtha spent 37 years in the Marine Corps earning a Bronze Star, two Purple Hearts and a Navy Distinguished Service Medal. His service has earned him the respect of the military, and made him a trusted adviser to both Republican and Democratic presidents and leaders of the armed forces.

Documents tie shadowy US unit to inmate abuse case

Newly released military documents show U.S. Army investigators closed a probe into allegations an Iraqi detainee had been abused by a shadowy military task force after its members used fake names and asserted that key computer files had been lost.
The documents shed light on Task Force 6-26, a special operations unit, and confirmed the existence of a secret military "Special Access Program" associated with it, ACLU lawyer Amrit Singh said on Thursday.
The documents were released by the Army to the American Civil Liberties Union under court order through the Freedom of Information Act. They were the latest files to provide details of the numerous investigations carried out by the Army into allegations of detainee abuse in Iraq.
A June 2005 document by the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command in Iraq described its investigation into suspected abuse of a detainee captured in January 2004 by Task Force 6-26 in Tikrit, deposed President Saddam Hussein's hometown. His name was redacted, but he was mentioned as the son of a Saddam bodyguard.
The man was taken to Baghdad international airport, documents stated. The United States maintains a prison there for "high-value" detainees.
He told Army investigators that U.S. personnel forced him one night to remove his clothes, walk into walls with a box over his head connected to a rope around his neck, punched him in the spinal area until he fainted, placed him in front of an air conditioner while cold water was poured on him, and kicked him in the stomach until he vomited, the documents stated.

Clinton Strikes Deal for AIDS Drugs

NEW YORK - Former President announced Thursday that his foundation has negotiated agreements to lower the prices of rapid tests and anti- AIDS drugs in the developing world, potentially saving "hundreds of thousands of lives."

Under the agreement, four companies will offer the tests for 49 cents to 65 cents apiece, slicing the cost of a diagnosis in half. Four more companies will provide the antiretroviral drugs efavirenz and abacavir at prices about 30 percent less than the current market rates, Clinton said.
"Too many people die because they can't afford or don't have access to the drugs," Clinton said at his office in Harlem. "Too many people are being infected because most of the people who have the virus today have not been tested."

General Asserts Right On Self-Incrimination In Iraq Abuse Cases

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, a central figure in the U.S. detainee-abuse scandal, this week invoked his right not to incriminate himself in court-martial proceedings against two soldiers accused of using dogs to intimidate captives at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, according to lawyers involved in the case.
The move by Miller -- who once supervised the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and helped set up operations at Abu Ghraib -- is the first time the general has given an indication that he might have information that could implicate him in wrongdoing, according to military lawyers.Miller, now based at the Pentagon as a senior official managing Army installations, was recommended for administrative punishment for his alleged mishandling of interrogations of a valuable detainee in Guantanamo Bay. But high-ranking military officials have declined to impose the penalty.

NSA Employee Admits to Being Source For NYT

Russell Tice, a longtime insider at the National Security Agency, is now a whistleblower the agency would like to keep quiet. For 20 years, Tice worked in the shadows as he helped the United States spy on other people's conversations around the world.

President Bush has admitted that he gave orders that allowed the NSA to eavesdrop on a small number of Americans without the usual requisite warrants. But Tice disagrees. He says the number of Americans subject to eavesdropping by the NSA could be in the millions if the full range of secret NSA programs is used.
"That would mean for most Americans that if they conducted, or you know, placed an overseas communication, more than likely they were sucked into that vacuum," Tice said.The same day The New York Times broke the story of the NSA eavesdropping without warrants, Tice surfaced as a whistleblower in the agency. He told ABC News that he was a source for the Times' reporters. But Tice maintains that his conscience is clear."As far as I'm concerned, as long as I don't say anything that's classified, I'm not worried," he said. "We need to clean up the intelligence community. We've had abuses, and they need to be addressed."

Over Medicated: V.P. Rushed to Hospital Overnight

Vice President Dick Cheney was taken to George Washington Hospital early Monday experiencing shortness of breath, a spokeswoman said. He was released four and a half hours later.
Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride said Cheney was taken to the hospital at 3 a.m. He was released about 7:30 a.m. Doctors found his EKG, or electrocardiogram, unchanged and determined he was retaining fluid because of medication he was taking for a foot problem. Cheney, who has a long history of heart problems and has a pacemaker, was placed on a diuretic at the hospital. The foot ailment forced Cheney to use a cane on Friday.

Ministers Say They Blessed Seats Ahead of Alito Hearing

Insisting that God "certainly needs to be involved" in the Supreme Court confirmation process, three Christian ministers [Friday] blessed the doors of the hearing room where Senate Judiciary Committee members will begin considering the nomination of Judge Samuel Alito on Monday.
Capitol Hill police barred them from entering the room to continue what they called a consecration service. But in a bit of one-upsmanship, the three announced that they had let themselves in a day earlier, touching holy oil to the seats where Judge Alito, the senators, witnesses, Senate staffers and the press will sit, and praying for each of the 13 committee members by name.
"We did adequately apply oil to all the seats," said the Rev. Rob Schenck, who identified himself as an evangelical Christian and as president of the National Clergy Council in Washington.

DeLay won't seek to regain leader post

Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, says he won't fight for the leadership post he left after being indicted on state political money laundering charges.

The concession came in a letter to U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., Saturday, a day after a group of fellow house Republicans circulated a petition calling for a Jan. 31 leadership election. GOP Reps. Jeff Flake of Arizona and Charlie Bass of New Hampshire, the authors of the petition, said it was a message to DeLay to let someone else lead the party.
If 50 Republican representatives would have signed the petition it would forced a new election. DeLay's letter to Hastert made the petition moot. The Chicago Tribune reports DeLay said in the letter to Hastert that the Republican Party would be threatened by his problems if he were to push for reinstatement. DeLay was indicted Sept. 28 on conspiracy and money laundering charges in Texas and subsequently stepped down from his position as U.S. House majority leader.

Extra Armor Could Have Saved Many Lives, Study Shows

A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor. That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.
The ceramic plates in vests currently worn by the majority of military personnel in Iraq cover only some of the chest and back. In at least 74 of the 93 fatal wounds that were analyzed in the Pentagon study of marines from March 2003 through June 2005, bullets and shrapnel struck the marines' shoulders, sides or areas of the torso where the plates do not reach.
Thirty-one of the deadly wounds struck the chest or back so close to the plates that simply enlarging the existing shields "would have had the potential to alter the fatal outcome," according to the study, which was obtained by The New York Times.
For the first time, the study by the military's medical examiner shows the cost in lost lives from inadequate armor, even as the Pentagon continues to publicly defend its protection of the troops. Officials have said they are shipping the best armor to Iraq as quickly as possible. At the same time, they have maintained that it is impossible to shield forces from the increasingly powerful improvised explosive devices used by insurgents. Yet the Pentagon's own study reveals the equally lethal threat of bullets.
The vulnerability of the military's body armor has been known since the start of the war, and is part of a series of problems that have surrounded the protection of American troops. Still, the Marine Corps did not begin buying additional plates to cover the sides of their troops until this September, when it ordered 28,800 sets, Marine Corps officials acknowledge.
The Army, which has the largest force in Iraq, is still deciding what to purchase, according to Army procurement officials. They said the Army is deciding between various sizes of plates to give its 130,000 soldiers; the officials said they hope to issue contracts this month.
Additional forensic studies by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner's unit that were obtained by The Times indicate that about 340 American troops have died solely from torso wounds

Report: Rep. Cunningham wore a wire

Former U.S. Rep Randy Cunningham, R-Calif., wore a wire to help prosecutors get evidence against others in the corruption scheme that drove him from office.
Citing sources familiar with the investigation Time magazine reported Friday that Cunningham began cooperating with prosecutors who were looking into his dealings with defense contractors, and wore a wire at some point between that time and Nov. 28, 2005, when the government announced he had pleaded guilty to corruption charges.
The names of those with whom Cunningham met while wearing the wire were not known, but were the focus of furious -- and nervous -- speculation among congressional Republicans, Time said.

Author of 'Bush's Brain' Placed on "No Fly" List

"I have been on the No Fly Watch List for a year. I will never be told the official reason. No one ever is. You cannot sue to get the information. Nothing I have done has moved me any closer to getting off the list. There were 35,000 Americans in that database last year".

James Moore is an Emmy-winning former television news correspondent and the co-author of the bestselling, Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential. He has been writing and reporting from Texas for the past 25 years on the rise of Rove and Bush and has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976. This author was placed on the no fly list.

NBC Removed Reference To Amanpour

Andrea Mitchell asked James Risen if he had uncovered evidence that CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour was eavesdropped upon.

Yesterday, MSNBC.com published a transcript of Andrea Mitchell's interview with author James Risen about the CIA's domestic spying program. In it, Mitchell asked Risen if he had uncovered evidence that CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour was eavesdropped upon. It was a specific and pointed question that led AMERICAblog to ask if the veteran journalist had been spied on by the Bush administration. This afternoon, MSNBC.com removed the portion of the transcript that referred to Amanpour. (Here's what it originally said.) In a statement to TVNewser tonight, NBC explained why.

UPDATE 1/6/6

Bush could bypass new torture ban

When President Bush last week signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees, he quietly reserved the right to bypass the law under his powers as commander in chief.

After approving the bill last Friday, Bush issued a ''signing statement" -- an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law -- declaring that he will view the interrogation limits in the context of his broader powers to protect national security. This means Bush believes he can waive the restrictions, the White House and legal specialists said.
Some legal specialists said yesterday that the president's signing statement, which was posted on the White House website but had gone unnoticed over the New Year's weekend, raises serious questions about whether he intends to follow the law.

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that the signing statement means that Bush believes he can still authorize harsh interrogation tactics when he sees fit. ''The signing statement is saying 'I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it's important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me,' " he said. ''They don't want to come out and say it directly because it doesn't sound very nice, but it's unmistakable to anyone who has been following what's going on."

US lobbyist Abramoff pleads guilty

Abramoff pleaded guilty to defrauding his lobbying clients, breaking federal lobbying laws and conspiring to bribe lawmakers and congressional aides with campaign contributions, meals, trips and sports tickets.

Jack Abramoff, the central figure in an influence-peddling scandal with reverberations throughout Washington, on Tuesday pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges and agreed to help prosecutors investigate the activities of top US lawmakers, including Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader

Muslim Scholars Were Paid to Aid U.S. Propaganda

A Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print positive articles written by American soldiers has also been compensating Sunni religious scholars in Iraq in return for assistance with its propaganda work,

The Lincoln Group, a Washington-based public relations company, was told early in 2005 by the Pentagon to identify religious leaders who could help produce messages that would persuade Sunnis in violence-ridden Anbar Province to participate in national elections and reject the insurgency, according to a former employee.
Since then, the company has retained three or four Sunni religious scholars to offer advice and write reports for military commanders on the content of propaganda campaigns, the former employee said. But documents and Lincoln executives say the company's ties to religious leaders and dozens of other prominent Iraqis is aimed also at enabling it to exercise influence in Iraqi communities on behalf of clients, including the military.
"We do reach out to clerics," Paige Craig, a Lincoln executive vice president, said in an interview. "We meet with local government officials and with local businessmen. We need to have relationships that are broad enough and deep enough that we can touch all the various aspects of society." He declined to discuss specific projects the company has with the military or commercial clients.
"We have on staff people who are experts in religious and cultural matters," Mr. Craig said. "We meet with a wide variety of people to get their input. Most of the people we meet with overseas don't want or need compensation, they want a dialogue."
Internal company financial records show that Lincoln spent about $144,000 on the program from May to September. It is unclear how much of this money, if any, went to the religious scholars, whose identities could not be learned. The amount is a tiny portion of the contracts, worth tens of millions, that Lincoln has received from the military for "information operations," but the effort is especially sensitive.
Sunni religious scholars are considered highly influential within the country's minority Sunni population. Sunnis form the core of the insurgency.

Justice Deputy Resisted Parts of Spy Program

A top Justice Department official objected in 2004 to aspects of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and refused to sign on to its continued use amid concerns about its legality and oversight according to officials with knowledge of the tense internal debate. The concerns appear to have played a part in the temporary suspension of the secret program.

The concerns prompted two of President Bush's most senior aides - Andrew H. Card Jr., his chief of staff, and Alberto R. Gonzales, then White House counsel and now attorney general - to make an emergency visit to a Washington hospital in March 2004 to discuss the program's future and try to win the needed approval from Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery, the officials said.
The unusual meeting was prompted because Mr. Ashcroft's top deputy, James B. Comey, who was acting as attorney general in his absence, had indicated he was unwilling to give his approval to certifying central aspects of the program, as required under the White House procedures set up to oversee it.

Bush Defends Domestic Spying Program

President Bush on Sunday strongly defended his domestic spying program, saying it's a limited initiative that tracks only incoming calls to the United States

"It's seems logical to me that if we know there's a phone number associated with al-Qaida or an al-Qaida affiliate and they're making phone calls, it makes sense to find out why," Bush said. "They attacked us before, they'll attack us again."
Bush spoke to reporters at Brooke Army Medical Center where he was visiting wounded troops. He said the leak of information about the secret order to eavesdrop on Americans with suspected ties to terrorists causes "great harm to the nation."
Asked how he responds to Americans worried about violations of their privacy, he responded, "If somebody from al-Qaida is calling you, we'd like to know why."