Activity Guide  —  Democrats want 'John Doe' provision cut  —  Democrats are trying to pull a provision from a homeland security bill that will protect the public from being sued for reporting suspicious behavior that may lead to a terrorist attack, according to House Republican leadership aides.

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 …

Mysterious insurgent a sham, U.S. says  —  BAGHDAD — Over the past year, Iraqis heard several audio recordings by a mysterious terrorist leader named Omar al-Baghdadi singing the praises of al-Qaida and urging his followers to attack U.S. troops.  —  The whole thing was a sham, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

McCain's comeback plan  —  Sen. John McCain is circulating talking points to supporters making the case for why he can still win despite his precarious money situation and loss of key staff.  In two documents obtained from a Republican source outside McCain's circle, the campaign compares …

Democrats Fail to Win Troop Withdrawal From Iraq  —  · After more than a week of debating Iraq, including a climactic all-night session, the Senate moved on to an education bill Thursday.  —  Republicans on Wednesday blocked a proposal calling for most U.S. troops to be out of Iraq by next spring.

Harry Potter And The Fact That I Hate The New York Times  —  ? No WMD rumors to plaster on the front page, no Jayson Blair to make things up for posterity, no Alessandra Stanley to mangle TV show names?  I'm mad so I'm lashing out, but come on: How on earth could you run a review of the last Harry Potter?

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?

Murdoch's Arrival Worries Journal Employees  —  On May 14, more than 100 reporters, editors and executives clustered in The Wall Street Journal's main newsroom to mark the retirement of Peter R. Kann, the longtime leader of their corporate parent, Dow Jones & Company.

Author of His Own Undoing  —  At noon on April 25, in Prescott Park in Portsmouth, N.H., John McCain announced his presidential candidacy.  Less than two hours earlier, in the U.S. Supreme Court, a lawyer who had been solicitor general in the Clinton administration spoke in the name of McCain.

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.

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 …

None of the above  —  Bill offers voters a way to put action in dissatisfaction: force a new election  —  Massachusetts voters sick of holding their noses on Election Day could get another option: none of the above.  —  The proposal would let voters reject all candidates and demand a new election.

'Brandeis Boys' come to D.C. Madam's rescue with website of phone listings  —  As the phone records of the "D.C. Madam," Deborah Jeane Palfrey, became public last week, curious Washingtonians started searching a mysterious database at dcphonelist.com that had organized mountains of her documents.

No Such Thing As a Paid Vacation  —  Last week I was talking to one of the sharpest knives in the progressive economic policy drawer and he made what struck me as an odd claim about what he claimed as an important divide in progressive thinking.  Some people (including the two of us) …