Bush Is Business as Usual Despite Party Grumbles  —  WASHINGTON, March 11 — Inside the White House, the staff is exhausted and the mood is defiant.  Republicans are clamoring for a new chief of staff, the West Wing just cut its losses on a deal that would have given a Dubai company control …

SRLC Straw Poll: Frist Wins; Romney Second  —  After five hours of voting and with more than 1,400 ballots cast, The Hotline SRLC Straw Poll has come to a close with a tremendous turnout.  Sen. Bill Frist (TN) led the pack with nearly 37% of the vote, followed by MA Gov. Mitt Romney with 14%.

Plame's identity, if truly a secret, was thinly veiled  —  WASHINGTON - The question of whether Valerie Plame's employment by the Central Intelligence Agency was a secret is the key issue in the two-year investigation to determine if someone broke the law by leaking her CIA affiliation to the news media.

Milosevic: Architect of Balkans carnage  —  Serb leader presided over ethnic cleansing in Bosnia  —  (CNN) — Former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic was regarded as the chief architect of the carnage unleashed during the breakup of Yugoslavia.  —  Milosevic, who died at the age …

Gatekeeper v. amateurs  —  The powerful — the rich and the elected — used to be the gatekeepers to information.  Then, with the advent of mass media, journalists took over that role.  They were the gatekeepers to the public.  A few decades ago, for reasons I'll go into in a moment …

US hostage in Iraq killed after torture: police  —  BAGHDAD (Reuters) - American hostage Tom Fox has been killed and his body, showing signs of torture, left at a garbage dump in Baghdad, police said on Saturday.  —  One of the policemen who found the body said the 54-year-old peace activist …

Bloggers at the Gates: What Was Good for EBay Should Be Good for Politics  —  After the disastrous 2004 election, prominent Democrats gathered in Monterey, Calif., to discuss what to do next.  The organizers scheduled a session on coalition building, but each special interest complained that its issue was being slighted.

Preview of 'Vanity Fair' Article on Plamegate: Too Much of Nothing?  —  NEW YORK A massive Vanity Affair review of the Plame/CIA case coming to newsstands on Tuesday is notable for the absence of major revelations.  The article, "Lies and Consequences," covers all or parts of 17 pages …

Even as U.S. Invaded, Hussein Saw Iraqi Unrest as Top Threat  —  As American warplanes streaked overhead two weeks after the invasion began, Lt. Gen. Raad Majid al-Hamdani drove to Baghdad for a crucial meeting with Iraqi leaders.  He pleaded for reinforcements to stiffen the capital's defenses …

Muslims Express Anger and Hope at Danish Conference  —  COPENHAGEN, March 10 — Denmark sought Friday to tamp down the fierce Muslim protests over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad at a conference with Muslim preachers and scholars that produced calls for dialogue but also fresh protests …

Donald Rumsfeld makes $5m killing on bird flu drug  —  Donald Rumsfeld has made a killing out of bird flu.  The US Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (£2.9m) in capital gains from selling shares in the biotechnology firm that discovered and developed Tamiflu …

The Fallback  —  If you harbor serious thoughts of running for the presidency, the first thing you do — long before you commission any polls or make any ads, years before you charter planes to take you back and forth between Iowa and New Hampshire — is to sit down with guys like Chris Korge.

A Sharp Debate Erupts in China Over Ideologies  —  BEIJING, March 11 — For the first time in perhaps a decade, the National People's Congress, the Communist Party-run legislature now convened in its annual two-week session, is consumed with an ideological debate over socialism and capitalism …