[Washington Post]
Bush administration bullies Congress into abandoning wiretap probe...for now.

[Reuters]
Bush asks Congress for $72.4 billion in emergency funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as the pace of spending on the conflicts increased. With this package and the $50 billion the White House said it will seek for early next fiscal year starting on October 1, the wars' costs will pass $440 billion, and likely will approach $500 billion by the end of next year.

[International Herald Tribune]
A United Nations report today called on the United States to immediately close the detention center for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and to either release its inmates or bring them before an impartial tribunal.

[Yahoo! News]
Lobbyist attends private GOP meeting while lobbying a bill pending on the floor.

[myway]
In a variation on Bush's "the President can do anything he wants" defense, Cheney now claims that he has the power to unilaterally declassify information, hinting that this exonerates Libby's leaks.

[Times Online]
Britain bans all smoking in public places.

[CNN]
Dick Cheney shot and wounded a companion during a weekend quail hunting trip in Texas.

[National Journal]
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq.

[New York Times]
UPDATE: NASA censor George C. Deutsch 1) lied about his college degree on his resume, and 2) resigns in disgrace.

[New York Times]
NASA resists pressure from Bush's religious and scientifically-illiterate administration.

[Guardian Unlimited]
A memo of a two-hour meeting between the Bush and Tony Blair at the White House on January 31 2003—nearly two months before the invasion—reveals that Bush made it clear the U.S. intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons program. The diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning, said Bush.

[Knight Ridder]
One day after Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.