Laura Bush told a gathering at the US Library of Congress marking a weekend celebration of books in the nation's capital that her husband had written the poem while she was away in Russia this week and had presented it to her on her return on Thursday.
"Dear Laura," the poem began, "Roses are red, violets are blue, oh my lump in the bed, I miss you.
"The distance, my dear, has been such a barrier, next time you want an adventure, just land on a carrier."

In fact, condi suggested, if the U.N. Security Council knew last winter what Kay's group has uncovered now, it never would have rejected the U.S. call for war.

What's worse, the inconvenient conclusions about Iraq and al-Qaida were withheld from the unclassified version of the secret NIE report that Bush authorized for public release the day before his Cincinnati speech, as part of the launch of the White House's campaign to sell the war.

Terrorism is never random. Seldom is it the act of madmen. It has its logic, it has its reasons. And only when we grapple with those reasons will we begin to end it.

While President Clinton was trying to broker an elusive peace between Israelis and Palestinians, the FBI was secretly funneling money to suspected Hamas figures to see if the militant group would use it for terrorist attacks

A chief author of the bill the House will write next week for Iraq and Afghanistan said Thursday that it could have less than the $20.3 billion that President Bush wants for retooling Iraq's economy and government.

McClellan had said on Monday that Rumsfeld had been consulted and approved of the shake-up in advance, but he said on Wednesday: "Maybe I should not have characterized it that way."

Personally, I think as a culture we?ve become over-sensitive to insignificant offenses and insensitive to significant offenses

The Material Safety Data Sheet, dated 14 May 1984, shows the Navy has been aware of many of the problems associated with depleted uranium since that time.

Bush said: "I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is."
That's pure hogwash. Watergate era nonsense. With the PATRIOT Act, polygraph machines, NSA, FBI, CIA and TIA they "aren't sure" if they can find out who used a phone to talk with the newspaper reporter(s)?

On BBC radio the other morning, there was a poignant moment when the Pentagon adviser Kenneth Adelman was talking about the war in Iraq. "It bothers me that people in Britain don't see it as people in America see it," he said. "We did a beautiful thing."

Even though Jack Straw, Mr. Cook's successor at the Foreign Office, didn't resign, we have since learned that while he was prepared to give the Americans a friendly cheer from the bleachers, he too privately opposed the use of British troops. So did many other ministers, but they decided to swallow their principles and, as David Lloyd George once put it, to perish with their drawn salaries in their hands.

"I ask just one thing," Mr. Blair said about Iraq. "Attack my decision but at least understand why I took it and why I would take the same decision again." This sounded brave and sincere, except that his alleged "why I took it" is not the true one.

When the Cuba correspondent in "Citizen Kane" cables back to the newspaper that he could "send you prose poems" about the scenery but that "there is no war," Charles Foster Kane replies, "you provide the prose poems ? I'll provide the war." That, in effect, was the deal between George Bush and Tony Blair.

With nearly 100 percent of the votes counted, the recall question on the two-part ballot passed by 55.2 percent to 44.8 percent, reflecting deep dissatisfaction with Mr. Davis's performance in office and a profound desire for change in direction in California, the nation's largest state.
In the contest to replace Mr. Davis, Mr. Schwarzenegger beat his nearest competitor, Lt. Gov. Cruz M. Bustamante, 48.5 percent to 31.9 percent.

mred - if im not an idiot, then more people effectively voted for davis (45%) than arnie (27%)- why is there no mention of this?? i havent seen/heard anyone make that point! i know its an idiosyncracy of a 2 part question, but its still an interesting quirk at least? surely.
The candidates spent $83 million, more than $40 million of it on a downpour of television advertising in the race's closing weeks. The biggest single source of campaign money ? $10.3 million ? was Mr. Schwarzenegger's personal bank account.

Secretary of State Kevin Shelley estimated the turnout on Tuesday at 9.25 million voters, about 60 percent of the state's 15.4 million registered voters, compared with about 50 percent last November and 71 percent in the 2000 election.

"There is no constituency for a centrist," said Garry South, a longtime aide to Governor Davis. "He tried to do it from the middle, threw his body in front of the train, lost support among constituency groups, and when they came to get him, there was nobody to speak up for him. It is a very vivid lesson."

Mr. Schwarzenegger successfully led an initiative last year for after-school financing.

mr ed - presumably he was preparing for a run by then