Records Show Ex-Senator's Work for Family Planning Unit  —  Billing records show that former Senator Fred Thompson spent nearly 20 hours working as a lobbyist on behalf of a group seeking to ease restrictive federal rules on abortion counseling in the 1990s, even though he recently …

Bush: No Deal On Children's Health Plan  —  President Says He Objects On Philosophical Grounds  —  President Bush yesterday rejected entreaties by his Republican allies that he compromise with Democrats on legislation to renew a popular program that provides health coverage to poor children …

Steam Pipe Explosion Jolts Midtown; One Person Is Confirmed Dead  —  A view of the hole created by the explosion at Lexington Avenue near Grand Central Station.  (Photo: Peter Foley/European Pressphoto Agency) More Photographs  —  A steam pipe installed in 1924 ruptured in a thunderous explosion shortly …

Study group chair: Hit al Qaeda in Pakistan  —  (CNN) — U.S. forces should go into Pakistan to rout al Qaeda from the safe haven it has found in the mountains on the border with Afghanistan, a co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group said.  —  Former Rep. Lee Hamilton, who also served …

Sex Ed for Kindergarteners 'Right Thing to Do,' Says Obama  —  ABC News' Teddy Davis and Lindsey Ellerson Report: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Planned Parenthood Tuesday that sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is "age-appropriate," is "the right thing to do."

North to Alaska  —  Rep. Don Young attacked his fellow Republicans on the House floor Wednesday, as he defended education funds allocated to his home-state of Alaska.  —  "You want my money, my money," Young stridently declared before warning conservatives that, "Those who bite me will be bitten back."

Whose Conspiracy?  —  The government has concluded its case against Jose Padilla and yesterday, to no one's surprise U.S. District Court Judge Marcia Cooke refused a defense request for directed verdict of not guilty.  Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier claimed "I think it is a very tightly knit conspiracy."

General David Petraeus on the conditions on the ground in Iraq  —  The Hugh Hewitt Show  —  HH: Welcome, General.  You took over command of the multinational forces in February of this year, February 10.  In the past five months, how have conditions in Iraq changed?

The Courage to Conjoin  —  Ramesh Ponnuru writes: … This is a stupefyingly widespread view that flows from an elementary error in thinking.  —  Suppose you know that there is free will or that moral reasoning is not futile.  Next, suppose you find that the universe is made out of only whatever the universe is made out of.

Senior Qaeda figure in Iraq a myth: U.S. military  —  BAGHDAD (Reuters) - A senior operative for al Qaeda in Iraq who was caught this month has told his U.S. military interrogators a prominent al Qaeda-led group is just a front and its leader fictitious, a military spokesman said on Wednesday.

How Murdoch had a hotline to the PM in the run-up to Iraq war  —  Tony Blair had three conversations with the media magnate Rupert Murdoch in the nine days before the start of the Iraq war, the Government has disclosed.  —  Details of the former prime minister's contacts with Mr Murdoch …

Bush's Agencies Of Mass Politicization  —  This week's report that officials in the Office of National Drug Control Policy made politically motivated appearances in the months leading up to the 2006 elections are only the latest example of the Bush administration's misuse of federal employees.

Candidates Shift as G.O.P. Field Alters  —  The decline of John McCain's presidential campaign, and the rising profile of Fred D. Thompson as a prospective contender, are forcing candidates to rewrite their strategies as they adjust to a playing field vastly different from just one month ago.

Two Israeli journalists scrap ethics for scoop  —  Jewish reporters endanger lives of lebanese citizens interviewed under false pretenses  —  BEIRUT: When two Israeli re-porters entered Lebanon under false pretenses last week to conduct reports on Lebanese life a year after the summer 2006 war with Israel …

Recognition for the Silent Jewish Refugees  —  The bicameral Congressional Human Rights Caucus (CHRC) will hold a landmark hearing on Thursday July 19th regarding the hundreds of thousands of Jews forced to flee their communities in the Arab Muslim nations as a result of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

FBI remotely installs spyware to trace bomb threat  —  The FBI used a novel type of remotely installed spyware last month to investigate who was e-mailing bomb threats to a high school near Olympia, Wash.  —  Federal agents obtained a court order on June 12 to send spyware called CIPAV …