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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Faced with growing pressure from Southern states, the Bush administration wants the military to come up with ideas to help solve security problems along the U.S. border with Mexico. In back-to-back moves this week, the Pentagon began exploring ways to lend support at the Southern border, while the House on Thursday voted to allow the Homeland Security Department in limited cases to use soldiers in that region. At the Pentagon, Paul McHale, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense, asked officials to offer options for the use of military resources and troops -- particularly the National...

The tabloids have Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie -- or "Brangelina," as the couple is called -- to fret about. But Washington has the relationship between Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld -- "Donoleezza" -- to worry about. The two seemed to be on the outs of late, particularly when it came to Iraq policy.

MOSCOW - Russia's foreign minister and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice talked about Iran's nuclear program on Saturday after Russia and China opposed the latest draft of a U.N. Security Council resolution that could eventually lead to sanctions of the Islamic republic The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a terse statement that Sergey Lavrov's phone conversation with Rice "focused, among other issues, on the search for a diplomatic solution of the Iranian nuclear problem."

US Vice President Dick Cheney said he knows he has a poor public image but did not see the need to spend time improving it. In an interview with Vanity Fair Magazine, he also said he has no doubts the United States did "what needed to be done" in Iraq and he rejected the caricature of him as the power behind the throne. "I think we have created a system that works for this president and for me, in terms of my ability to be able to contribute and participate in the process," he said. Polls have shown Cheney's popularity...

Fired CIA officer Mary O. McCarthy went on offense Monday, denying through her lawyer that she has done anything wrong. But the agency is standing by its claim that she was dismissed last week because she "knowingly and willfully shared classified intelligence." It has been reported that one of her media contacts was Washington Post reporter Dana Priest... We're as curious as anyone to see how Ms. McCarthy's case unfolds. But this would appear to be only the latest example of the unseemly symbiosis between elements of the press corps and a cabal of partisan bureaucrats at the CIA and...

Do you think Tony Snow will do a better job as press secretary than Scott McClellan?

Sources close to the White House said Monday that Fox anchor Tony Snow is likely to accept the job as White House press secretary, succeeding Scott McClellan. The sources said they expect him to announce his decision within the next few days. A source familiar with the discussions said Monday that newly appointed Chief of Staff Josh Bolten asked Snow to make a decision by early this week. Two sources familiar with the discussions said Bolten wanted to fill the post this week, as early as Tuesday. Sources familiar with Snow's deliberations said he has been focusing on family, finances...

Songwriter Burt Bacharach is releasing an explicit version of his controversial song Who Are These People? The song slams US President George W Bush and his administration and features Elvis Costello wailing an expletive at the end...

WASHINGTON - The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll might sound like a broken record, but the tune grows louder as congressional midterm elections get closer and closer: President Bush is once again facing the lowest job approval rating of his presidency, the lowest percentage of Americans who believe the country is headed in the right direction, and an electorate that greatly prefers a Democratic-controlled Congress over a Republican-controlled one. Yet the poll also shows something else that goes beyond the November midterm elections: A strong majority believes Bush is experiencing a long-term setback from which he’s unlikely to recover....

A US Congressional committee approved Wednesday a new bill which is intended to toughen the sanctions against Iran and target international firms that invest in the Iran energy industry. The Iran Freedom Support Act was approved in the House International Relations Committee by a 37 to 3 majority, but despite the overwhelming support it gained, it is not yet clear when it will be brought to the House floor for a vote, mainly due to the administration's opposition to the new legislation. The proposed legislation, sponsored by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Howard Berman (D-CA) has 347 co-sponsors. It calls for...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republican governors are openly worrying that the Bush administration's latest stumbles -- from the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina to those of its own making on prescription drugs and ports security -- are taking an election-year toll on the party back home. The GOP governors reluctantly acknowledge that the series of gaffes threatens to undermine public confidence in President Bush's ability to provide security, which has long been his greatest strength among voters. "You've got solid conservatives coming up speaking like they haven't before, it's likely that something's going on at the grass roots," said Republican Mark...

Texas economic growth continued apace at the end of 2005, according to a Wednesday report from the Federal Reserve Bank. The bank's latest installment of the beige book, a regional analysis of economic activity, presented a picture of robust economic growth, especially in the Dallas district. "The Texas economy is doing brilliantly," Dallas Fed President Richard W. Fisher said during a Wednesday speech. "We haven't performed this well since 1998." The most recent Texas Workforce Commission data showed that Texas companies made 136,400 new hires for an annual growth rate of 1.4 percent, in the year ending in November 2005

New federal regulations continue to add billions of dollars in costs to businesses, consumers, and state and local governments, but the Bush administration has slowed the annual increase in the regulatory burden. Between 1981 and 2000, new regulations imposed an average of $5.5 billion in additional costs a year. Since 2001, however, annual regulatory costs have increased by an average of only $1.7 billion, according to the Office of Management and Budget. In addition, the average annual net benefits of rules issued during the past five years is more than double the average during the Clinton administration, according to OMB....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former disaster agency chief Michael Brown is indicating he is ready to reveal his correspondence with President Bush and other officials during Hurricane Katrina unless the White House forbids it and offers legal support. Brown's stance, in a letter obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, follows senators' complaints that the White House is refusing to answer questions or release documents about advice given to Bush concerning the August 29 storm. "Unless there is specific direction otherwise from the president, including an assurance the president will provide a legal defense to Mr. Brown if he refuses to testify...

President Bush's new budget again fails to fund the entire number of Border Patrol agents mandated by Congress but for the first time includes funds for his proposed guest-worker program. The budget calls for 1,500 new U.S. Border Patrol agents and 6,700 new detention beds for illegal aliens awaiting deportation -- far more than last year's budget, but still short of the 2,000 new agents and 8,000 new beds per year that he and Congress agreed to in the December 2004 intelligence-overhaul bill. . . . . "He couldn't have just gone an extra 1,300?" asked Rosemary Jenks, government relations...

You may recall from your high school civics class that our laws are made by Congress 535 representative and senators elected by the American people and signed by the president (also elected by us). Occasionally, the third branch of government, the judiciary, gets involved if there is a question about the constitutionality of a law. But, the common theme here is that American laws are supposed to be made by Americans. The foreign ministers of Mexico and six Central American countries don’t think that’s quite fair especially when it comes to making U.S. immigration laws. Meeting in Mexico City in...

Yahoo has admitted that it granted the US Government access to its search engine's databases this summer, as a battle develops over the right to privacy in cyberspace. Google, by contrast, promised last night to fight vigorously the Bush Administration’s demand to know what millions of people have been looking up on the internet. It emerged this week that the White House issued subpoenas to a number of US-based search engines this summer, asking to see what information the public had accessed in a two-month period. It said that it needed the information in order to help create online child...

Why is it that Hillary Clinton and most other Democrats, STILL, to this day are lying to blacks and others whose support they are seeking by making such racially charged statesment such as this one: "When you look at the way the House of Representatives has been run, it has been run like a plantation and you know what I'm talking about..." - Hillary Clinton, 1/16/06. That is a clear example of a worthless statement which does much worse than good. I wish these damn Democratic politicians would stop lying to minorities and using ancient, irrelevant arguments that actually hold...

HOW THE NYTIMES IS RINGING IN 2006 By Michelle Malkin   ·   December 31, 2005 10:45 PM Yes, it's New Year's Eve. And since there's no rest for the NYTimes, I'm not taking it easy tonight either. You see, NYTimes' reporter James Risen has been a busy bee over the holidays. The co-author of the infamous Chicken Little opus exposing the NSA special collection program to monitor international communications between suspected al Qaeda operatives and their contacts will be launching his new book, State of War, on January 3. Turns out the publisher of Risen's new book, which includes a discussion...

One-third of Americans say they believe President Bush should be impeached, according to a new survey – a figure that mirrors the number of people who say the United States cannot win a military victory in Iraq. Scott Rasmussen of the polling firm Rasmussen Reports said his survey found an even higher percentage of respondents believe Vice President Dick Cheney also should be removed from office.