White House Asked Dubai Ports to Pull Out  —  Stunning Defeat for Bush, but Republicans in Congress Promise to Put It Behind Them  —  March 10, 2006 — The White House asked Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the United Arab Emirates, to give up its management stake in U.S. ports …

Gale Norton resigns from Cabinet  —  Washington - Gale Norton resigned 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.  —  But the former Colorado attorney general …

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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" …

VIEW: Colonisation of Palestine precludes peace— Jimmy Carter  —  This is obvious to most Israelis, who also view this as a distortion of their moral and religious values  —  For more than a quarter century, Israeli policy has been in conflict with that of the United States and the international community.

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.

Anti-Castro Sign at Ballgame Causes Stir  —  1cbeabdc2ba6@news.ap.org While Cuba played the Netherlands in the World Baseball Classic, a spectator in the stands raised a sign saying: "Down with Fidel," sparking an international incident that escalated Friday with the velocity of a major league fastball.

THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION: FEBRUARY 2006  —  Nonfarm payroll employment grew by 243,000 in February, and the unemploy-  —  ment rate was little changed at 4.8 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics  —  of the U.S. Department of Labor reported today.  Job gains occurred in con-

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.

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.

McCain To Urge Ballots Be Cast For Bush  —  Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) will urge SRLC conference registrants tonight to write in the name of Pres.  George W. Bush when they vote in the Hotline's '08 presidential straw poll.  —  McCain, in a copy of his prepared remarks distributed to reporters …