Letter Shows Iran's President Seeking Bond  —  UNITED NATIONS - With his 18-page letter, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered President Bush a history lesson, philosophy lecture and religious sermon laced with references to Jesus Christ.  —  The document gives rare insight …

GOP Reaches Deal on Tax Cuts  —  $70 Billion Measure Would Extend Breaks  —  House and Senate Republican negotiators reached a final agreement yesterday on a five-year, nearly $70 billion tax package that extends President Bush's deep cuts to tax rates on dividends and capital gains …

Costly Words: 'I Don't Like President Bush'  —  Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson was back home in Dallas on April 28 giving a speech to minority real estate folks and offering a most interesting take on how business is done in Washington.

Bush's Public Approval at New Low Point  —  Americans have a bleaker view of the country's direction than at any time in more than two decades, and sharp disapproval of President Bush's handling of gasoline prices has combined with intensified unhappiness about Iraq to create a grim political environment …

Ayaan Hirsi Ali  —  Please note that I typed out my notes as quickly as I could, attempting to comply with security's request that no recording devices be used and that everything was "strictly off-the-record".  Everything here is as accurate as I could get it without a playback, and cannot, therefore, be considered verbatim.

Records will reveal Abramoff's White House visits  —  WASHINGTON - Secret Service logs set for release Wednesday should reveal some of convicted ex-lobbyist Jack Abramoff's White House connections, according to conservative group Judicial Watch.  —  As part of a court-sanctioned deal …

The Year of the Black Republican?  —  GOP Targets Democratic Constituency in 3 High-Profile Races  —  COLUMBUS, Ohio — When J. Kenneth Blackwell took the stage here on May 2 to claim the Republican nomination for governor, he became something more than his party's standard-bearer in a bellwether state.

CUBA ON UN RIGHTS BOARD  —  Cuba has secured a spot on the new United Nations human rights council, the board that replaced a previous one, which was intended to keep countries like Zimbabwe and Burma off these boards.  —  Cuba is the biggest human rights violator in the hemisphere.

DHS: DENY, HEDGE, SPIN  —  The Customs and Border Protection agency at DHS has issued a statement, much-ballyhooed by blind Bush supporters, which calls the Inland Valley Bulletin's story on the Border Patrol/Minutemen/Mexican government "inaccurate."  Let's examine the full bluster:

Study: 7 of 10 Journalists Surveyed Accused of Bias in Past Year  —  NEW YORK More than half of newspaper journalists in a recent survey believe an unethical or unprofessional incident occurred in their newsroom within the past five years, while seven out of 10 said they had been accused …

Egyptians look to Islam for answers  —  A religious ruling condemning the display of statues has angered Egyptian liberals and intellectuals who fear it could encourage religious zealots to attack the country's pharaonic heritage.  —  The ruling was issued by the Mufti, the most senior religious scholar in Egypt.

Is It Genocide?  —  Before we start dropping bombs, we should first ask whether the situation in Darfur is in fact a genocide.  —  As everyone knows by now, terrible atrocities have been and are continuing to be committed against the civilian population of Darfur in Sudan.

Israel Gives Hamas Deadline to Negotiate  —  JERUSALEM - Israel will give the Palestinians until the end of the year to prove they are willing to negotiate a final peace deal, and will unilaterally set its final borders by 2008 if they don't, Israel's justice minister said Wednesday.

Iraq War Is Drawing Less Support Than Vietnam Did at Same Stage  —  May 9 (Bloomberg) — Three years into major combat in Vietnam, 28,500 U.S. service members had perished, millions of families were anxious about the military draft and antiwar protests had spread to dozens of college campuses.

A Tale of Two Judges  —  New skirmishes in the judicial nomination wars are brewing.  But their merits aren't the same.  —  SENATE REPUBLICAN leaders have decided to reignite the judicial nomination wars.  The reason is politics.  Majority Leader Bill Frist's strategy, with elections coming …

Howard Shelves "Da Vinci" Disclaimer  —  Tarnation!  Opie's done got himself into another scrape.  —  The Da Vinci Code director Ron Howard has rejected demands by Opus Dei to attach a disclaimer to his would-be blockbuster labeling the film as a work of fiction, spurring a rebuke from the religious sect.

It's Only $300 Billion  —  For the United States, the cost of the Iraq war will soon exceed the anticipated cost of the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement designed to control greenhouse gases.  For both, the cost is somewhere in excess of $300 billion.

Bush Faces Tricky Political Situation in Florida  —  SUN CITY CENTER, Fla., May 9 — President Bush and his brother continued their awkward dance today with Representative Katherine Harris of Florida, whose run for the Republican Senate nomination this year they have met with chilliness.