GOP narrowing its congressional agenda  —  Focus is on pleasing base ahead of elections  —  WASHINGTON — Republican leaders in Congress have all but abandoned efforts to pass major policy initiatives this year, and are instead focusing their energies on a series of conservative favorites …

Cheney's daughter provokes mixed reaction on gay issues  —  WASHINGTON - Throughout the last U.S. presidential election, Mary Cheney was known to American voters simply as Vice-President Dick Cheney's quiet gay daughter.  —  No more.  —  In a memoir published Tuesday …

J. Michael Luttig Resigns From Appeals Court  —  Appeals court Judge J. Michael Luttig, a leading conservative jurist and a short-list Bush administration candidate for the Supreme Court, announced today that he is resigning from the bench to serve as senior vice president and general counsel of the Boeing Co.

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.

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.

Bush Backs Brother Jeb for White House  —  President Bush suggested Wednesday that he'd like to see his family's White House legacy continue, perhaps with his younger brother Jeb as the chief executive.  —  The president said Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is well-suited for another office and would make "a great president."

New U.N. Rights Group Includes Six Nations With Poor Records  —  UNITED NATIONS, May 9 — Six nations with poor human rights records were among those elected to the new Human Rights Council on Tuesday, although notorious violators that had belonged to the predecessor Human Rights Commission …

Quartet Statement  —  Representatives of the Quartet — U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, High Representative for European Common Foreign and Security Policy Javier Solana …

Affluence and Its Discontents  —  You hear the refrain all the time: The economy looks good statistically (4.7 percent unemployment), but it doesn't feel good.  Although the United States is the wealthiest nation in history, our quarrels and quibbles with our prosperity are unending.

America's new "silent majority"  —  And so tonight-to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans-I ask for your support.  — Richard Nixon, Nov. 3, 1969.  —  We were reading the New York Times on Sunday, which had an interesting article about the political situation in Ohio …

Should George Bush Be Impeached?  —  According to Article II, Section 4, of the United States Constitution:  —  The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

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.

More Good News!  Iraqi Tribal Leaders Unite & Denounce Terror  —  Wow!  Here is some very encouraging news translated by Iraqi-American Haider Ajina from the Iraqi media.  Iraqi Sunni, Shia and Kurdish tribal leaders are meeting today to sign a pact to unite and fight terror!

Huffington beats odds as blogger … It was not supposed to work this way.  —  In a medium started by guys typing at computers in their bedrooms, she was a glamorous socialite with an A-list address book of investors and endless media coverage.  —  Critics swore Arianna Huffington's dream …

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.