Cheney Aide Explains Stance on Classified Material  —  Vice President Cheney's office offered its first public written explanation yesterday for its refusal to comply with an executive order regulating the handling of classified material, arguing that the order makes clear that the vice president …

GOP Skepticism On Iraq Growing  —  Key Republican senators, signaling increasing GOP skepticism about President Bush's strategy in Iraq, have called for a reduction in U.S. forces and launched preemptive efforts to counter a much-awaited administration progress report due in September.

New Poll Finds That Young Americans Are Leaning Left  —  Young Americans are more likely than the general public to favor a government-run universal health care insurance system, an open-door policy on immigration and the legalization of gay marriage, according to a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll.

Ms. Edwards asks Coulter to stop attacks  —  RALEIGH, N.C. - Elizabeth Edwards pleaded Tuesday with Ann Coulter to "stop the personal attacks," a day after the conservative commentator said she wished Edwards' husband, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, had been killed by terrorists.

Leaving No Tracks  —  Sue Ellen Wooldridge, the 19th-ranking Interior Department official, arrived at her desk in Room 6140 a few months after Inauguration Day 2001.  A phone message awaited her.  —  "This is Dick Cheney," said the man on her voice mail, Wooldridge recalled in an interview.

Protests rage over petrol rationing in Iran  —  Angry Iranians have torched petrol stations in protests against the sudden imposition of fuel rationing in one of the world's most oil rich nations.  —  The rationing was announced on Tuesday only three hours before it was due to begin at midnight …

Bowling With Our Own  —  Robert Putnam's sobering new diversity research scares its author.  —  Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, is very nervous about releasing his new research, and understandably so.  His five-year study shows that immigration …

[TS] Op-Ed Columnist: The Whole World Is Watching  —  The blogosphere has made the global discussion so much richer — and each of us so much more transparent.

GOP preps for talk radio confrontation  —  House Republican lawmakers are preparing to fight anticipated Democratic efforts to regulate talk radio by reviving rules requiring stations to balance conservative hosts such as Rush Limbaugh with liberals such as Al Franken.

Giuliani Slams Bill Clinton on Terrorism  —  VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) - Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani on Tuesday accused former President Clinton of not responding forcefully enough to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or later terrorist attacks.

Blair not my poodle, Bush says  —  Outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair, often caricatured as US President George W. Bush's poodle, is no such thing, Bush said in an interview published Wednesday.  —  In comments printed the day Blair is set to vacate his Downing Street offices …

The Cheney Irony  —  I'm a longtime member of a pretty select group: the Dick Cheney Fan Club.  Chapters gather in phone booths, refrigerator boxes and, at the annual convention, we take up three whole booths in the back of a nearby Arby's.  —  Why do I like Dick Cheney?