White House to Name Hayden for CIA Job  —  White House to Name Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden As Pick to Be Next Director of CIA  —  WASHINGTON May 8, 2006 (AP)— Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden will be named as the next chief of the CIA, President Bush's national security adviser said Monday …

Captured AQ Documents: "Every Year Is Worse Than The Previous Year"  —  CENTCOM announced today that they had captured al-Qaeda correspondence in Iraq that discusses the state of the insurgency, especially around Baghdad but also around the entire country.  Far from optimistic …

Iran Letter to Bush Criticizes U.S. Govt  —  NEW YORK - Iran's president declared in a letter to President Bush that democracy had failed worldwide and lamented "an ever-increasing global hatred" of the U.S. government.  Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice swiftly rejected the letter …

Digital Lynch Mob  —  Two weeks ago I wrote about Al Gore's new movie on global warming.  I liked the film.  In response, I instantly got more than 1,000 e-mails, most of them praising Gore, some calling him the usual names and some concluding there was no such thing as global warming, if only because Gore said there was.

Rove prepares 20 judges  —  Presidential adviser Karl Rove and White House counsel Harriet Miers yesterday told conservative activists and Senate staff that the administration would soon send the names of more than 20 judicial nominees to Capitol Hill for confirmation.

Murdoch to host fundraiser for Hillary Clinton campaign  —  Rupert Murdoch, the conservative media mogul whose New York Post tabloid savaged Hillary Clinton's initial aspirations to become a US senator for New York, has agreed to host a political fundraiser for her re-election campaign.

Optimistic, Democrats Debate the Party's Vision  —  WASHINGTON, May 8 — With Democrats increasingly optimistic about this year's midterm elections and the landscape for 2008, intellectuals in the center and on the left are debating how to sharpen the party's identity and present a clear alternative …

We're the Decider  —  Drum provides the regular lament that there ain't enough wonk talk in the blogosphere.  There's more than he gives credit for - there's certainly a lot of reacting to the atrocity-in-Congress-of-the- day - and as Stoller points out it is to a great degree a waste of time.

Out and About  —  The Vice President's Daughter Tells The Inside Story in Her New Book.  But the Subject Is Politics.  —  NEW YORK  —  "Are the eyes too much?"  —  Mary Cheney is peering into the makeup artist's mirror in the early hours of the morning, getting "done" for her appearance on …

Another Possible Bump to the Debt Ceiling  —  A $2.7 trillion budget plan pending before the House would raise the federal debt ceiling to nearly $10 trillion, less than two months after Congress last raised the federal government's borrowing limit.  —  The provision — buried on page 121 …

Lesbians' brains respond differently from those of heterosexual women  —  WASHINGTON — Homosexuals' brains respond differently from those of straight men and women when exposed to sex hormones, but researchers now say the difference is less pronounced in lesbians than in gay men.

Flying robot attack "unstoppable": experts  —  It may sound like science fiction, but the prospect that suicide bombers and hijackers could be made redundant by flying robots is a real one, according to experts.  —  The technology for remote-controlled light aircraft is now highly advanced …

In Men, 'Trigger-Happy' May Be a Hormonal Impulse  —  Handling a gun stirs a hormonal reaction in men that primes them for aggression, new research suggests.  —  Psychologists at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., enrolled 30 male students in what they described as a taste study.

Campaigning on the Blogs  —  For Washington pols and presidential candidates, a new staffer is becoming indispensible: the internet specialist  —  House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi is one of the many Washington politicians trying to the adapt to the world of blogs.

CT-Sen: A Campaign of Convergence and Accountability  —  Liz and I spent this morning in Lamont campaign HQ in Meriden.  We met around nine or ten staffers, conducted a bunch of interviews, and began gathering some video that Liz will edit (she is studying media arts) to prepare …

Vaccine makers helped write Frist-backed shield law  —  WASHINGTON — Vaccine industry officials helped shape legislation behind the scenes that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist secretly amended into a bill to shield them from lawsuits, according to e-mails obtained by a public advocacy group.

Support for Labour at lowest level since 1992  —  LABOUR'S poll rating has fallen to its lowest level for years amid the turmoil at the top of the party and the bad local election results, a poll for The Times suggests today.  —  Tony Blair and Gordon Brown are given the starkest warning …