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 …

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.

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.

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.

EXCLUSIVE: Presidential Plans Found In Trash  —  How much do you think Osama bin Laden would pay to know exactly when and where the President was traveling, and who was with him?  Turns out, he wouldn't have had to pay a dime.  All he had to do was go through the trash early Tuesday morning.

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.

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 …

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:

US claim of Qaeda Iraq weakness may reflect reality  —  BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A purported al Qaeda document published by the U.S. military may or may not be authentic but its message that the Sunni Islamist guerrillas face problems in Iraq could reflect reality, security experts said on Tuesday.

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 …

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 …

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

Bolten said to push Goss's exit  —  Intelligence insiders say that former CIA Director Porter Goss was given less than a day to pack his bags by new White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, who is moving swiftly to put a new and more aggressive face on the administration.

FREE ADVICE FOR PRESIDENT BUSH  —  The President hasn't asked for my advice, but here it is anyway.  —  You know how the Democrats are always after you to admit that you made a mistake?  You've wisely ignored them; they don't have your interests at heart, and the policies they're talking about weren't mistakes.