Bush press secretary says gay marriage amendment civil rights measure; Stumbles when asked to define civil rights  —  At the White House press briefing today, Bush press secretary Tony Snow signaled that Bush considers an amendment barring same-sex marriage a "civil rights" matter …

Army Manual to Skip Geneva Detainee Rule  —  The Pentagon's move to omit a ban on prisoner humiliation from the basic guide to soldier conduct faces strong State Dept. opposition.  —  WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention …

Show Me the Bodies  —  FOR war photography, Vietnam remains the bloody yardstick.  During the Tet offensive, on Feb. 9, 1968, Time magazine ran a story that was accompanied by photos showing dozens of dead American soldiers stacked like cordwood.  The images remind that the dead are both the most patient and affecting of all subjects.

Orders: Court to rule on race in K-12 education  —  The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to consider the use of race in student assignments in two urban school districts — the first time it will take up the affirmative action issue since its rulings in 2003 on college admissions.

In Bomb Plot News Coverage, a Toronto Newspaper Shines  —  TORONTO, June 4 — The competition between Toronto's four major daily newspapers is often intense, particularly over crime news.  But its results are rarely as one-sided as the coverage that followed the arrests of 17 Ontario residents …

And Now For Some Good News  —  By now Americans know the litany: The nation is engaged in a difficult and costly war in Iraq; Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon; gas prices are high; the costs of reconstructing the Gulf Coast region are huge; illegal immigration is a major problem — and more.

Pluribus Sine Unum  —  Will the Senate impose race-based government on Hawaii?  —  America's motto is "E pluribus unum," Latin for "Out of many, one."  Some U.S. senators seem to be reading it backward.  This week the Senate will consider legislation that would create an independent, race-based government for Native Hawaiians.

Reward for the Hereditary Elite . . .  It doesn't matter if you are liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican.  There is no possible excuse for doing what Congress is poised to do this week: Abolish the estate tax.  —  The federal government faces a future of expanding deficits.

US confronts brutal culture among its finest sons  —  In the wake of the Haditha massacre come further allegations of outlaw killings in Iraq.  They add to growing unease about US military culture that fails to distinguish civilian from insurgent  —  Paul Harris in New York, Peter Beaumont in London, and Mohammed al-Ubeidy in Baghdad

Cavuto: Media biased if they cover Iraqi insurgency, biased if they don't … On the June 1 edition of Fox News' Your World, host Neil Cavuto complained that "the media is all over" the alleged killings of Iraqi civilians by U.S. Marines in Haditha, Iraq, but that there has been …

Iran's China Syndrome  —  In the middle of a tirade about the pointlessness of talking with the Bush administration, a senior Iranian official I met in Tehran last month abruptly paused and asked if he could speak off the record.  Then he said: "What we need is an American president …