GOP Struggles To Define Its Message for 2006 Elections  —  Republican efforts to craft a policy and political agenda to carry the party into the midterm elections have stumbled repeatedly as GOP leaders face widespread disaffection and disagreement within the ranks.

On Anniversary, Bush and Cheney See Iraq Success  —  WASHINGTON, March 19 — On the third anniversary of a war that they once expected to be over by now, President Bush and senior officials argued Sunday that their strategy was working despite escalating violence in Iraq …

David Duke Claims to Be Vindicated By a Harvard Dean  —  A paper recently co-authored by the academic dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government about the allegedly far-reaching influence of an "Israel lobby" is winning praise from white supremacist David Duke.

Contractor tiers swell Katrina costs  —  Normalcy eludes city as bodies are still being found  —  NEW ORLEANS — How many contractors does it take to haul a pile of tree branches?  If it's government work, at least four: a contractor, his subcontractor, the subcontractor's subcontractor …

Plight Deepens for Black Men, Studies Warn  —  BALTIMORE — Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics, a flurry of new scholarly studies warn, and it has worsened in recent years even as an economic boom …

'Iraq was awash in cash.  We played football with bricks of $100 bills'  —  At the beginning of the Iraq war, the UN entrusted $23bn of Iraqi money to the US-led coalition to redevelop the country.  With the infrastructure of the country still in ruins, where has all that money gone?

Sayed and de Man at Yale  —  The campus that ran off a Nazi propagandist today welcomes one from the Taliban.  —  Three weeks after the New York Times revealed that former Taliban official Sayed Rahmatullah Hashemi is attending classes at Yale, many at the university still have little to say about the controversy.

He thought it was stylish!  —  Wherever you walk in Cairo, you gonna see something strange... something new!  But that guy in the picture really drew my attention to some new kind of ignorance.  I was standing near my university campus when I saw this guy.

Rumsfeld's Iraq-Germany analogy disputed  —  Former top officials disagree with comparison  —  WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former top officials in two presidential administrations — one Democratic, one Republican — disagreed Sunday with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's characterization …

Defiantly Shaky  —  Sen. Harry Reid told reporters last week that it might be true that American voters don't know where Democrats stand, but that they will know by November.  —  That may be a little too late for undecided voters, which is why both House and Senate Democrats …

Deaths fall for U.S., rise for Iraqis  —  BAGHDAD — U.S. military deaths during the past month have dropped to an average of about one a day, approaching the lowest level since the insurgency began two years ago, according to a USA TODAY analysis of U.S. military data.

Defining protectionism down  —  Economic "protectionism" is back in the news, with the conventional wisdom saying that it's bad.  Trouble is, this isn't really what "protectionism" means.  —  · Read today's paper  · Jobs  — Home - Contributors A-Z - Subjects A-Z …

How to spot a baby conservative  —  Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints?  Chances are he grew up to be a conservative.  —  At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids …

Anti-war protesters in SLC, elsewhere lament apathy  —  By the time the war protesters began their march Saturday morning in Salt Lake City, only about 50 people had gathered.  Their numbers had swelled to about 200 by noon - and that was with a little high-tech help from a marcher who text-messaged friends to join him.

OBL Sought 'Joint Operations' with Saddam  —  An Iraqi intelligence document released last week indicates that Osama bin Laden sought to conduct "joint operations" with Saddam Hussein's regime six years before the 9/11 attacks - and was given the green light by the Iraqi dictator.