Olmert, declaring victory, appeals to Abbas for peace talks  —  Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, declaring an election victory, appealed to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas early Wednesday to enter into negotiations over the permanent borders of Israel, but added that Israel …

Bush Says Chief Of Staff Andrew Card Resigns  —  NEW YORK -  —  White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card has resigned.  —  President George W. Bush announced the resignation in a press conference Tuesday morning.  —  Card was not only a longtime friend of his boss, but had served …

Analysis: Hard day for government in Hamdan case  —  With Justice Antonin Scalia taking part — and, in fact, providing the only clearcut signs of unstinting support for the federal government's arguments — the Supreme Court on Tuesday probed deeply into the validity of the war crimes tribunals set …

Hillary too sexy to win back the White House, screen siren says  —  ACTOR Sharon Stone has warned Hillary Rodham Clinton to stay out of the 2008 US presidential race, saying the New York senator and former first lady is too sexy to win back the keys to the White House.

Shiites Say U.S. Is Pressuring Iraqi Leader to Step Aside  —  BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 28 — Senior Shiite politicians said today that the American ambassador has told Shiite officials to inform the Iraqi prime minister that President Bush does not want him to remain the country's leader in the next government.

RNC Memo Warns GOPers Not To Distance Themselves From Bush  —  Republican pollster Jan van Lohuizen, in a memo written for RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, warns that if members of Congress try to drive a wedge between themselves and Pres.  Bush, it'd be akin to adding weight to an anchor.

Unfathomable Zealotry  —  What strikes me about the threat to execute Abdul Rahman, the Afghan who converted to Christianity, is not that Afghanistan remains deeply medieval and not even remotely the democracy that George W. Bush would like it to be, but that with the exception of the (largely) …

A Maverick No More?  —  In April 2004 I put in a call to John McCain's office to see if he would respond to a group of House Republicans who had attacked his fellow Vietnam veteran John Kerry.  —  In a preview of coming assaults, the Republicans accused Kerry of, among other things …

The Secret of George Mason  —  What its Final Four basketball team and its unusual economics department have in common.  —  Unlike his neighbors, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, founding father George Mason has rarely gotten his props from historians and the public.

Ins and Outs of Immigration  —  Yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the McCain-Kennedy immigration reform bill out of committee, sending it to the floor.  Of course, under the arcane and byzantine rules of the U.S. Senate, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) …

How Stupid are the US Media?!?!  —  Open letter to CNN and other mainstream US media outlets:  —  1. The vast majority of Hispanics/Latinos in the U.S. (75 percent of us) were born and raised here, including many of us who have roots here that predate the arrival of the pilgrims.

Caspar Weinberger Dies at Age 88  —  WASHINGTON — Caspar W. Weinberger, a conservative Republican and consummate Cold Warrior who served in the Cabinets of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan and got ensnared in the Iran-Contra scandal, died Tuesday at 88.  —  Weinberger had been hospitalized …

"THE MIRACLE FISH OF ALLAH"  —  I kid you not: … LGF has a photo of the other fish:  —  Question: What if I draw a cartoon of the Allah and Mohammed fish and post it on my blog?  —  Update: You can watch video of the Allah fish at BareKnucklePolitics.

ISSUES &  —  INSIGHTS  —  Religion Of Peace?  —  War On Terror: In the wake of the cartoon jihad and mosque-on-mosque violence in Iraq, most Americans now think Islam has more violent believers than any other faith.  Yet many still view it as a "peaceful religion."

Jack Abramoff Sentencing Wednesday: Lawyers Say He's Broke  —  Jack Abramoff faces sentencing tomorrow in federal court in Miami for his admitted fraud in the purchase of the Sun Cruz Casinos.  260 letters, some from prominent persons, including Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, have written letters on his behalf.

Q1 '06: MSNBC's Olbermann Beats CNN's Zahn & HLN's Grace In The Demo  —  In the first quarter of 2006, MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann beat CNN's Paula Zahn Now in the 25-54 demographic.  "This marks MSNBC's first quarterly primetime victory over CNN in the demo in almost five years …

Avoiding attacking suspected terrorist mastermind  —  Abu Musab Zarqawi blamed for more than 700 killings in Iraq … With Tuesday's attacks, Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is now blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq.

Overstating Jewish Power  —  Mearsheimer and Walt give too much credit to the Israeli lobby.  —  It's slightly hard to understand the fuss generated by the article on the Israeli lobby produced by the joint labors of John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt that was published in the London Review of Books.

State Dept. Offers Record Pay in 2 Hot Spots  —  To help recruit U.S. government civilians for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, the State Department has boosted the pay allowances for both hardship and danger to the highest levels ever granted, department officials said.