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In addition to explicit sexual language, former Congressman Mark Foley's Internet messages also include repeated efforts to get the underage recipient to rendezvous with him at night. "I would drive a few miles for a hot stud like you," Foley said in one message obtained by ABC News. The FBI says it has opened a "preliminary investigation" of Foley's e-mails. Federal law enforcement officials say attempts by Foley to meet in person could constitute the necessary evidence for a federal charge of "soliciting for sex" with a minor on the Internet. In another message, Foley, using the screen name Maf54,...

CHICAGO, Oct. 23 -- Patrick J. Fitzgerald's final witness was behind bars, refusing to testify, and no one was budging. Hunting for room to maneuver, the special counsel talked with one side, then the other. He drafted a letter that nudged the witness and needled I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff. Three days later, Libby put fingers to keyboard and told New York Times reporter Judith Miller that she was freed from her promise to protect his identity. He praised her mightily and urged her to "come back to work -- and life." Satisfied, she quit...

Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol predicted on Sunday that there will be at least one and perhaps several indictments of "senior [Bush] administration officials" by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating the outing of CIA employee Valerie Plame. "Criminal defense lawyers I've spoken to who are friendly to the administration are very worried that there will be one or more indictments in the next three weeks of senior administration officials," the influential editor told "Fox News Sunday." "Just looking at what Fitzgerald is doing and taking him at his word as a serious prosecutor here," Kristol said, "and I...

May 31 issue - For the hard-liners at the Defense Department, the raid came as a surprise. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his senior deputies, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, got the news from the media. When Iraqi police, guarded by American GIs, burst into the home and offices of Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, looking for evidence of kidnapping, embezzlement, torture and theft, the men who run the Pentagon were left asking some uncomfortable questions. "Who signed off on this raid?" wondered one very high-ranking official. "What were U.S. soldiers doing there?" asked another, according to...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 26 — The American plan to turn over power in Iraq more quickly was thrown into disarray on Wednesday when the country's most powerful cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, made public his opposition to a proposal for indirect elections. "All of us are groping around right now," an administration official said in Washington, acknowledging that the plan worked out earlier this month by the Iraqi Governing Council and L. Paul Bremer III, the American administrator of Iraq, would have to be revised. Spokesmen for Ayatollah Sistani, who exercises strong influence over Iraq's majority Shiites, said he insisted...

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 4 — Former Iraqi soldiers angry over rumors their pay would be cut off clashed Saturday with coalition troops in Baghdad and in the southern city of Basra in riots that left two Iraqis dead and dozens injured. Coalition officials said Saddam Hussein supporters fomented the violence. Elsewhere, a U.S. soldier from the 4th Infantry Division was killed and another was wounded in an ambush early Saturday in Sadiyah, 60 miles north of Baghdad. THE DEATH brought to 88 the number of American soldiers killed by hostile fire since President Bush declared major combat over on May...

Click link to access news release (PDF file): http://www.thewheelerreport.com/releases/Oct03/Oct3/1003deandanegop.PDF ____________________________________ Wisconsin for Dean Responds to Republican Plans To Protest Dean Visit Tomorrow MADISON--Wisconsin for Dean State Coordinator Michael J. Tate issued the following statement today regarding plans by the state Republican party to protest Governor Dean's visit to Wisconsin tomorrow: "We thank our Republican friends for joining our canned food drive and acknowledging the plight that the Bush economy has visited upon Wisconsin's working families. "Since our working families couldn't afford to feed themselves at President Bush's $2,000-a-plate lunch in Milwaukee, it's worth noting that Republicans had to come to...

The “Raise the Roots” Tour will make a stop 12:30 p.m. Saturday at the Catlett Music Center in Norman, promising to bring a high-energy rap session to loyal fans known as Generation Dean. Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean will be at the mic, and not a hip-hop artist. The former Vermont governor’s popularity has gone off the charts among some voters, though, by doing old-fashioned rap — as in talk and discussion — in a high-tech manner. “Dean will conjure up so many outsider images,” said Keith Gaddie, a University of Oklahoma associate professor in political science. “You’ve get some...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 — Somehow it’s appropriate that the Democratic presidential campaign begins in earnest this week in a place called Popejoy Hall. The first of a nearly endless series of cable-TV debates among the nine contenders will be held there, on the campus of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, Thursday night. I predict that no pope will be anointed and that there will be no joy in the hall. The event is all about Dr. Howard Dean, and the question of who takes him on, and how — and how Dean responds. It could be pretty grim,...

Returning members of Congress yesterday reported growing concern among their constituents about the turmoil and casualties in Iraq, signaling more pressure from Capitol Hill for President Bush to spell out his strategy for gaining control of the postwar situation. Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the House International Relations Committee, reflecting a sense of anxiety heard by members of both parties, said he wants to "combat a sense of drift" about U.S. policy in Iraq and bring in more international assistance. Most of the half-dozen senators interviewed yesterday said they sensed mounting unease over the series of bombings in...

Crisscrossing the country this week with Howard Dean, the underdog turned top dog who has surged toward the front of the Democratic presidential primary field, you would almost think there was an election coming up. Five months before the first ballot is cast and 15 months before the last will be counted, Dr. Dean, the former governor of Vermont, spent the past four days being ferried from rally to rally in a chartered jet as though in the heat of a head-to-head national campaign rather than in the nascent chapter of a long-shot bid in a crowded field. He hit...

BAGHDAD, Aug. 16 — A Baghdad slum that gave a joyous welcome to U.S. troops after Saddam Hussein's fall is now seething in anger at the occupiers' shortcomings. The sight of cheering Iraqis from the long-oppressed Shi'ite Muslim community was a big psychological boost for the Americans when they rolled into the Iraqi capital's previously named ''Saddam City'' in April. Now they face daily protests from among the two million residents as growing resentment at the occupation turned into open fury when a helicopter appeared to try to knock off a religious flag on Wednesday. ''We were happy at first...

RED OAK, IA--Democratic presidential candidate Governor Howard Dean, M.D., issued the following statement regarding the speech today by former Vice President Al Gore: "I thank Vice President Al Gore for standing up to this Administration and using his position as a respected leader in our party to speak about truth, integrity, and real compassion--three values that are sorely lacking in this White House and Administration. "Al Gore has always been a voice of reason in our party and our nation. Today, he demonstrated that by addressing the very real concerns of mainstream America. "Today, Al Gore clearly stood up to...

Howard Dean is not a liberal – or so say the liberals who know him best in his home state of Vermont. "He governed from the middle," says former state Sen. Jan Backus. Ironically, some of Vermont's Democratic Party stalwarts say Dean's centrism sent liberals running from their party to the ultra-liberal Progressive Party -- handing some elected offices to Republicans. But such things as liberalism and conservatism are, just like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. The centrist Democratic Leadership Council has made Dean a target - as a liberal who could hand the presidential election to Republicans...

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon is firming up a plan to draft thousands of doctors, nurses and other health-care specialists in the event of a worst-case crisis. The Selective Service System is dusting off its plan for a "health care personnel delivery system," which has been on the shelf since Congress authorized it in 1987 to cope with military casualties from a large-scale biological or chemical attack. At the Pentagon's direction, the agency also is examining whether that plan for a "special skills" draft could be adapted to address critical shortages that might arise for military linguists, computer experts or engineers....

VIENNA, July 14 (Reuters) - The United Nations nuclear watchdog believes Britain's evidence on Iraq trying to import uranium from Africa is all based on forged documents, a diplomat close to the agency said on Monday. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said last year intelligence showed Iraq had banned weapons of mass destruction and was trying to import uranium from Niger to support its nuclear arms programme. U.S. President George W. Bush included the allegation in his State of the Union address in January, citing the British findings. But the White House said last week the claim was based on...

President George W. Bush prepares his State of the Union Address with White House speechwriters Matthew Scully, left, Mike Gerson, center, and John McConnell in the Oval Office Jan. 23, 2003.

The CIA tried unsuccessfully in early September 2002 to persuade the British government to drop from an official intelligence paper a reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa that President Bush included in his State of the Union address four months later, senior Bush administration officials said yesterday. "We consulted about the paper and recommended against using that material," a senior administration official familiar with the intelligence program said. The British government rejected the U.S. suggestion, saying it had separate intelligence unavailable to the United States.

Howard Dean was angry. Ropy veins popped out of his neck, blood rushed to his cheeks, and his eyes, normally blue-gray, flashed black, all dilated pupils. "The only hope Democrats have to beat this president," he said, his left fist punching the air, "is to behave like Democrats and stand up for what we believe!" "YEAH!" the crowd cheered, standing and applauding. "Can we afford tax cuts," Dean continued, reddening to his gray temples, "when we have the largest deficit in the history of the country?"