Vice President Exempts His Office from the Requirements for Protecting Classified Information  —  The Oversight Committee has learned that over the objections of the National Archives, Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures …

White House near decision to close Guantanamo  —  WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and move the terror suspects there to military prisons elsewhere, The Associated Press has learned.

Poll: Bush hits lowest approval rating of presidency  —  President Bush registers the lowest approval rating of his presidency—making him the least popular president since Nixon—in the new NEWSWEEK Poll.  —  Iraq isn't the only issue dragging Bush's approval ratings down

Senate Approves Stricter Fuel Standards for Autos  —  The Senate voted this evening to raise fuel-economy requirements for cars and sport utility vehicles, demanding that they get 35 miles per gallon by 2020.  —  The lawmakers first announced their agreement on raising the standards …

Ashcroft Tells of Surveillance Disputes  —  House Panel Hears Of Battle Within Administration  —  Former attorney general John D. Ashcroft told the House intelligence committee yesterday about disputes in the Bush administration over aspects of its domestic surveillance program …

McConnell Wavering on Immigration Bill  —  AP Photo WX102, WX101  —  WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate's Republican leader says he is unsure whether he will vote for the immigration bill President Bush strongly supports, underscoring the measure's precarious status.

A Visit to Fatah's Torture Chamber  —  A building formerly occupied by Fatah's intelligence service in Gaza was long notorious for torture and execution.  Now Hamas is in control — and is letting former inmates visit the chamber of horrors.  —  The cells are small, perhaps six feet by six feet …

An Inconvenient Truth That Somehow Didn't Make The CEA Report  —  As I mentioned in a previous post, the CEA seems to have concluded that if one allows for complementarities between immigrants and natives who have the same education and work experience, the long-run gains from immigration …

The Man Who Knows Too Little  —  WHAT RUDY GIULIANI'S GREEDY DECISION TO QUIT THE IRAQ STUDY GROUP REVEALS ABOUT HIS CANDIDACY.  —  If you don't read Newsday, you might not know (I didn't until this week) that Rudy Giuliani was an original member of the Iraq Study Group …

IRAQ: Hundreds flee homes as Turkish forces battle Kurdish fighters  —  Hundreds of Iraqi Kurds have been forced to flee their homes after up to 30,000 Turkish soldiers massed on the Iraqi-Turkish border and launched attacks against Kurdish fighters, Iraqi border police say.

CIA to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry  —  Assassination Attempts Among Abuses Detailed  —  The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses — the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century …

The Film Take Back America Took Back  —  As a result of the attention surrounding my film about the 2007 Conservative Political Action Conference-it was a YouTube hit-the liberal Campaign for America's Future asked me to produce a similar video about their annual conference, Take Back America (TBA), held in Washington.

Muslims' Veils Test Limits of Britain's Tolerance  —  Increasingly, Muslim women in Britain take their children to school and run errands covered head to toe in flowing black gowns that allow only a slit for their eyes.  On a Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park, groups of black-clad Muslim women relaxed …