Burning Allies — and Ourselves  —  DUBAI — Officials here heard late Thursday that Karl Rove had decided to pull the plug.  President Bush's political adviser was said to have conveyed to a top manager of Dubai Ports World in Washington that the White House couldn't hold out any longer …

Bush's Approval Rating Falls to New Low  —  WASHINGTON - More and more people, particularly Republicans, disapprove of President Bush's performance, question his character and no longer consider him a strong leader against terrorism, according to an AP-Ipsos poll documenting one of the bleakest points of his presidency.

Gale Norton to resign from Cabinet  —  Washington - Gale Norton is announcing her resignation today after serving more than five years as secretary of the Interior and overseeing a dramatic expansion of drilling, logging and development on the public lands of the West.

Retired Supreme Court Justice hits attacks on courts and warns of dictatorship  —  RAW STORY  —  Via NPR.  Rush transcript by RAW STORY.  Listen to the audio report here.  —  Supreme Court justices keep many opinions private but Sandra Day O'Connor no longer faces that obligation.

The Kurd Card  —  Lost amid the news of all the bloodletting in Iraq is an important political development: The Kurds have switched sides.  In the first parliament after the first set of elections, they allied themselves with the Shiite slate to produce the current Shiite-dominated government led by Ibrahim al-Jafari.

Elizabeth Dole is a racist  —  Check out FancyFord.com, a racist attack site created by the National Republican Senatorial Committee to oppose Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., who's running for Senate in Tennessee.  —  What's the message behind this site?  The line of white women on the front page …

ROOTS PROJECT: Pennsylvania  —  (Last updated: Friday March 10 @ 11:30 am Penna. time)  —  The Roots Project  —  The Roots Project is a coordinated effort by national and local bloggers to develop the netroots in each state, and convert them into what I call "netboots" …

$25,000 to Lobby Group Is Tied to Access to Bush  —  WASHINGTON, March 9 — The chief of an Indian tribe represented by the lobbyist Jack Abramoff was admitted to a meeting with President Bush in 2001 days after the tribe paid a prominent conservative lobbying group $25,000 at Mr. Abramoff's direction …

Pentagon admits errors in spying on protesters  —  NBC: Official says peaceful demonstrators' names erased from database  —  The Department of Defense admitted in a letter obtained by NBC News on Thursday that it had wrongly added peaceful demonstrators to a database of possible domestic terrorist threats.

Racially charged e-mail stirs outrage  —  Rep. Welker cites his 'poor judgment' in forwarding essay  —  A Loveland lawmaker has been blasted by his colleagues for e-mailing an essay written by someone else that accused "welfare-pampered blacks" of waiting for the government to save them from Hurricane Katrina.

The New Protectionists  —  How to create a real security crisis.  —  Dubai Ports World finally threw in the kaffiyah on its American operations yesterday, agreeing to sell them "to a U.S. entity."  We hope that entity turns out to be Halliburton, if only for the torment that would cause certain eminences on Capitol Hill.

Vernon Robinson's sick commercial  —  Vernon Robinson's sick commercial  —  This is isn't a joke or a parody commercial.  It's just insane.  Robinson is running for Congress in North Carolina and he uses the Twilight Zone theme to attack gays, judges, African Americans and just about anything or anyone else you can think of.

UPDATE #3: Pulitzer Finalists—Here's Likely List  —  NEW YORK With leaks pouring in, all confirmed by two or more sources, E&P presents below a list of alleged/likely finalists for this year's Pulitzer prizes in journalism.  Those apparently doing very well with multiple nods include The Washington Post …