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A seven-page questionnaire being sent by the office of President-elect Barack Obama to those seeking cabinet and other high-ranking posts may be the most extensive - some say invasive - application ever.

Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I have friends and colleagues whom I respect deeply who are on all sides of this bailout issue. One of them just spoke. We all to want do what is right for America, and I believe those who have crafted this plan had pure and noble motives. They want this country to succeed. They want prosperity. I just do not believe that this bill gets the job done. In fact, in the long term, I am convinced it will do more harm than good. We are the Nation that has been called the bastion of freedom,...

Just announced on morning Fox News program. Tony Snow dead at age 53.

WASHINGTON -- Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is narrowing the description of his powers in an effort to counter calls for dismissal of the criminal case he brought against Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, defense lawyers said Friday. In a 24-page filing in federal court, the legal team for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby said Fitzgerald and the former Justice Department official who appointed him, James Comey, are changing the broad mandate the prosecutor was handed to probe the leak in the Valerie Plame affair. ... The defense attorneys say assignment of unsupervised and undirected power to Fitzgerald requires...

GENEVA (AP) - The United Nations' special investigator on torture said Thursday he was certain that there are secret U.S. prisons in Europe and he wants access to them. Manfred Nowak said he had proof that secret U.S. prisons continue to operate in Europe. "I am 100 percent sure. I have evidence," Nowak said in an interview with The Associated Press. He cited a U.S. refusal to provide details or records of interrogations later used in terrorism trials in Germany. He did not explain how that was proof of the ongoing existence of U.S. prisons in Europe, and he did...

Page A03 A former federal prosecutor and a State Department security officer were indicted yesterday on charges that they lied during a bungled terrorism trial in Detroit and then sought to cover up their deceptions once the case began to fall apart. Former assistant U.S. attorney Richard G. Convertino, 45, and State Department special agent Harry R. Smith III, 49, were charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice and making false statements in connection with the 2003 prosecution, according to an indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in Detroit. ... Convertino led the prosecution of Karim Koubriti and three...

Telegrams sent by the British security service led to the "extraordinary rendition" of two UK residents now in Guantanamo Bay, BBC News has learned. Flight details sent to US authorities allowed Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna to be arrested in Gambia. The UK government has always said it opposes "extraordinary rendition" - secret flights taking terror suspects for interrogation in other countries. The Foreign Office denies requesting the men's detention. Mr al-Rawi and Mr al-Banna were arrested at Gatwick airport in November 2002, BBC2's Newsnight has learned. British intelligence then sent US authorities a telegram saying one of them had...

Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, thinks that congressional officials were mistaken to send a bill on the president's program of warrantless counterterrorism surveillance to another panel. ... The Senate parliamentarian, a little-known but influential official who makes decisions about the legislative procedure for Senate bills, referred Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine's Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006 to the Senate Judiciary Committee, after much behind-the-scenes negotiations, according to other Senate aides. The judiciary committee, which is also working on a very different bill dealing with the program drafted by its Chairman Sen. Arlen...

President Bush yesterday told Congress to increase legal immigration and temporary visas as part of the debate over illegal aliens and enforcement. "I've called on Congress to increase the number of green cards that can lead to citizenship," Mr. Bush said. "I support increasing the number of visas available for foreign-born workers in highly skilled fields like science, medicine and technology." ... The president first called for more green cards in 2004 when he announced his guest-worker proposal. Green cards signify permanent legal residence and are the key intermediate step toward citizenship. Mr. Bush has not said how big an...

Page A22 THE UNITED STATES has never had an Official Secrets Act -- a law that would forbid anyone, even a private citizen, from disclosing information the government wants to keep under wraps. But if the Justice Department has its way in the prosecution of two former officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), it will effectively have created one -- without even going to Congress for a change in the law. The case against Steven J. Rosen and Keith Weissman is heading toward trial. Their conviction would herald a dangerous aggrandizement of the government's power not merely...

WASHINGTON -- An executive with a Dubai-owned company withdrew his nomination as head of the agency that oversees ports in a letter to President Bush on Monday. ... Sanborn, a graduate of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy and a retired Naval officer, said in his letter that the day he was nominated was the proudest of his life. Former presidential candidate John Kerry, D-Mass., and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., put holds on Sanborn's nomination, saying they needed to know more about his role in the process that allowed DP World to purchase the port operations in the first place. "I...

The Other Side of the Story A third update on good news from Iraq. By Bill Crawford Welcome to another dose of good news about Iraq. (See here and here for more.) After my last report, I received an avalanche of positive feedback about the story of the bullet-proof cross, requesting more stories like that. So I've done that, and at the end of this update there are several more stories about the wonderful men and women in our armed forces. ... A major theme of my first two updates was that people who actually go to Iraq are far...

No one who's actually read the Afghan constitution should be surprised by the Abdul Rahman case. Heres a riddle: What begins with words In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, a formal Islamic salutation also commonly used by militants in their warnings, fatwas, and claims of responsibility regarding terrorist acts? What extols the virtues of rightful jehad (also known as jihad) in its very first sentence? What in its first article declares its sovereignty to be an Islamic Republic, and in its second installs Islam as the official religion of the state? What, in its third article announces...

RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS FROM CHAIRMAN SENSENBRENNER 1. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, as the Congressional Research Service (CRS) concedes in its 2006 examination of the NSA program, "is a court of appeals and is the highest court with express authority over [the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,] FISA to address the issue, its reference to inherent constitutional authority for the President to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance might be interpreted to carry considerable weight." 6 The FISA Court of Review issued an opinion in 2002 that stated "all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that...

WASHINGTON -- Chronicling a long list of delays by the Bush administration at the Guantanamo Bay prison, a federal magistrate has ordered the government to stop blocking a private attorney from meeting with one of the 500 detainees at the facility. The 33-page opinion released last week by U.S. Magistrate Alan Kay may be among the last by lower-court judges criticizing the administration's conduct at Guantanamo Bay. President Bush signed the Detainee Treatment Act on Dec. 30, which sharply curtails the prisoners' ability to go to court. The Bush administration is seeking to apply the new law to existing detainee...

[JURIST] US Chief Justice John Roberts has appointed US District Judge and former Whitewater prosecutor John D. Bates [official profile] to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) [FJC backgrounder] to replace US District Judge James Robertson [official profile], who resigned [JURIST report] last December, purportedly in protest over the controversial warrantless domestic eavesdropping program [JURIST news archive] promulgated by the Bush administration. Roberts secretly chose Bates to replace Robertson in February, but news of the appointment only came Friday after the Federation of American Scientists [advocacy website] reported in its Secrecy News [report] newsletter that Bates' appointment had appeared in...

[JURIST] Abortion rights activists in South Dakota [JURIST news archive] on Friday announced that they will seek a referendum [press release] that will overturn the state's newly-enacted abortion ban [PDF text]. The campaign [Reuters report], led by the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families [advocacy website], must collect 16,728 signatures by June 19 in order to get the issue on the November 7 ballot. If enough signatures are collected, the law will not take effect as scheduled on July 1. Gov. Mike Rounds [official website] signed the legislation [JURIST report] two weeks ago, after it passed the Senate [JURIST report]...

Case 1:05-cr-00394-RBW Document 70 Filed 03/24/2006 Page 1 of 1 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ) ) CR. NO 05-394 (RBW) v. ) ) I. LEWIS LIBBY, ) also known as "Scooter Libby" ) NOTICE OF PROPOSED CONSENT ORDER The United States hereby submits, with the agreement of defense counsel, the attached Proposed Consent Order. /s/ Kathleen M. Kedian DC Bar No. 473579 Office of Special Counsel United States Department of Justice 1400 New York Ave., N.W. Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 514-1187 Attorney for the United States Case 1:05-cr-00394-RBW Document 70...

Increasing international pressure over the case of Christian convert Abdul Rahman is forcing the Afghan government to play a careful balancing act between its Western allies and religious conservatives at home. ... "The Prophet Muhammad has said several times that those who convert from Islam should be killed if they refuse to come back," says Ansarullah Mawlafizada, the trial judge. "Islam is a religion of peace, tolerance, kindness and integrity. That is why we have told him if he regrets what he did, then we will forgive him," he told the BBC News website.... The president has yet to comment...

Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi has given US academics a lecture on democracy, declaring his country's government freer than any in the West. "There is no state with a democracy except Libya on the whole planet," he told an audience at New York's Columbia University via live satellite link. ... Col Gaddafi was appearing as a panellist at a two-day conference on democracy at Columbia University. ... Challenged by a US moderator on the issue of freedom of speech, Col Gaddafi said every Libyan could express their opinions at the congresses. He described them as better forums than a newspaper,...