The ACLU filed today's lawsuit after obtaining a heavily redacted version of the Presidential Advance Manual from the Justice Department. This manual is the Bush administration's guide for planning presidential events around the country, and it repeatedly instructs organizers about "the best method for preventing demonstrators," "deterring potential protestors from attending events," "designat[ing] a protest area . . . preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route," and the like.

"The White House has gone too far in its attempt to make dissent invisible," said Chris Hansen, a senior ACLU attorney who is lead counsel in this case. "When taxpayers foot the bill for a public event, the president does not have the right to use a partisan litmus test to stack the audience with his political supporters."

"When the president attends a public event, the First Amendment does not allow him to speak or listen only to those who agree with him," said Arthur Spitzer, Legal Director of the ACLU of the National Capital Area and co-counsel in the lawsuit. "Public places cannot be 'cleansed' of all dissent just to make the president look popular on television."

First, as always, work with the Secret Service and have them ask the local police department to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route.

The Rally Squad's task is to use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and main press platform. If the demonstrators are yelling, the rally squads can begin and lead supportive chants to drown out the protesters (USA! USA! USA!)

O'REILLY: Right. They called in advance. We're going to do this because we're getting a little - look, it's just like me and Stuart Smalley, Franken, that idiot. I played right into his hands when he had his book out. You know, they want to get in a fight with you.

COULTER: If I could just say, I sort of object to your description of this as if I lost a fight. I don't think they would have done it to anyone else. I don't think they would have called in on…

O'REILLY: Were you surprised that she called in?

COULTER: ...your pal Al. If Al Franken were on, they wouldn't have had the wife of someone he had made a nasty joke about call in. But still I am more of a man than any liberal is. So you know, I don't care.

President Bush held up Israel as a model for defining success in Iraq, saying Thursday that the goal of the U.S. mission there is not eliminating attacks but enabling a democracy that can function despite continuing violence.

"Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy's ability to get a car bombing in the evening news," he said. "No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street."

There (in Israel), Bush said, "Terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it's not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that's a good indicator of success that we're looking for in Iraq."

If there is an all-out war between the United States and various radical Muslim groups worldwide, who would you rather have in charge - Democrats or Republicans?

Democrats 41%
Republicans 38%
Both the same
(not listed) 9%
Don't know
(not listed) 12%

President Bush, moving toward a constitutional showdown with Congress, asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers' demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors.

Bush's attorney told Congress the White House would not turn over subpoenaed documents for former presidential counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor.

In reaction, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy accused the administration of shifting "into Nixonian stonewalling" and revealing "disdain for our system of checks and balances."

"Increasingly, the president and vice president feel they are above the law," said Leahy, D-Vt., after getting the news from Fielding in an early-morning phone call. "In America no one is above law."

A statement just out from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI):

"The President's response to our subpoena shows an appalling disregard for the right of the people to know what is going on in their government. The executive privilege assertion is unprecedented in its breadth and scope, and even includes documents that the Adminstration previously offered to provide as part of their 'take it or leave it' proposal. This response indicates the reckless disrepect this Administration has for the rule of law. The charges alleged in this investigation are serious - including obstruction of justice and misleading Congress - and the White House should be as committed to this investigation as the Congress. At this point, I see only one choice in moving forward, and that is to enforce the rule of law set forth in these subpoenas."

Update: And this just in from Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-CA), the chairwoman of the subcommittee that's led the House's investigation:

"It's tough to get lectured on the Constitution from the same Administration that said the Vice President is his own branch of government. The fact is that the Bush Administration, which has publicly declared its commitment to getting the truth on this issue, has stonewalled from the beginning. Mr. Fielding should understand two things: that nobody in their right mind would accept a White House offer that would condone perjury, and that saying 'take-it-or-leave-it' for months is not actually negotiation."

"The rescue of the bald eagle from the brink of extinction ranks among the greatest victories of American conservation," said John Flicker, president of the National Audubon Society.

"Like no other species, the bald eagle showed us all that environmental stewardship has priceless rewards," Flicker said. "In every state, parents and grandparents can still point to the sky and share a moment of wonder as a bald eagle soars overhead."

Warren E. Buffett was his usual folksy self Tuesday night at a fundraiser for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as he slammed a system that allows the very rich to pay taxes at a lower rate than the middle class.

Buffett cited himself, the third-richest person in the world, as an example. Last year, Buffett said, he was taxed at 17.7 percent on his taxable income of more than $46 million. His receptionist was taxed at about 30 percent.

Buffett said that was despite the fact that he was not trying to avoid paying higher taxes. "I don't have a tax shelter," he said. And he challenged Congress and his audience to see what the people who "clean our offices" are taxed, to loud applause.

CNN's Nancy Grace Pregnant With Twins

TV's legal eagle, Nancy Grace, has revealed that she is four months pregnant with twins. But that's not her only headliner: she also snuck off and got married!

"I always said I wanted a family," Grace told Access Hollywood. "I grew up in happy, loving family [and] I wanted it too. But until now I just thought it wasn't meant to be for me. And as part of God's mysterious plan, I'm given this wonderful blessing late in life -- and I could not be happier."

47-years-old, and happier than ever! The CNN "Headline News" host married Atlanta-based banker David Linch in April. The couple reportedly met when they attended Mercer College together in the late 1970s.

Shoulda pulled out

Tony Blair was no poodle, President Bush said in a newspaper interview published Wednesday.

"I've heard he's been called Bush's poodle," The Sun quoted Mr. Bush as saying. "He's bigger than that."

"Somehow our relationship has been seen as Bush saying to Blair 'jump' and Blair saying 'how high?' but that's just not the way it works," Mr. Bush said. "It's a relationship where we say were both going to jump together."

The CIA released hundreds of pages of internal reports Tuesday on assassination plots, secret drug testing and spying on Americans that triggered a scandal in the mid-1970s.

The documents detail assassination plots against foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro, the testing of mind-altering drugs like LSD on unwitting citizens, wiretapping of U.S. journalists, spying on civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protesters, opening of mail between the United States and the Soviet Union and China and break-ins at the homes of ex-CIA employees and others.

The 693 pages, mostly drawn from the memories of active CIA officers in 1973, were turned over at that time to three different investigative panels _ President Ford's Rockefeller Commission, the Senate's Church committee and the House's Pike committee.

The panels spent years investigating and amplifying on these documents. And their public reports in the mid-1970s filled tens of thousands of pages. The scandal sullied the reputation of the intelligence community and led to new rules for the CIA, FBI and other spy agencies and new permanent committees in Congress to oversee them.

President Bush was presented with a letter Monday signed by 50 high school seniors in the Presidential Scholars program urging a halt to "violations of the human rights" of terror suspects held by the United States.

The students had been invited to the East Room to hear the president speak about his effort to win congressional reauthorization of his education law known as No Child Left Behind.

The handwritten letter said the students "believe we have a responsibility to voice our convictions."

"We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants," the letter said.

White House opposes move to declassify report on Iraq's WMDs

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The White House is resisting a move by both Republicans and Democrats to fully declassify a Senate report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Republicans say the public disclosure would help show that the CIA made honest mistakes in its 2002 assessment that Iraq owned stockpiles of WMDs, when in fact it no longer did.

But the White House believes the declassification would trigger another round of negative news media coverage and Democratic-led congressional hearings, said a Senate Republican, who asked to remain anonymous because of ongoing private discussions.

The dispute revolves around an obscure federal panel, the nine-member Public Interest Declassification Board.

Last November, incoming Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and the outgoing chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., signed a letter to the board asking for a review of two committee reports.

DubyaMD's

SEC. RUMSFELD: Not at all. If you think -- let me take that, both pieces -- the area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

The order aimed to create a uniform, governmentwide security system for classifying, declassifying and safeguarding national security information. It gave the archives' oversight unit responsibility for evaluating the effectiveness of each agency's security classification programs. It applied only to the executive branch of government, mostly agencies led by Bush administration appointees, as opposed to legislative and judicial offices.

In the executive order, Bush emphasized the importance of the public's right to know what its government was doing, particularly in the global campaign against terrorism. "Our democratic principles require that the American people be informed of the activities of their government," the executive order said.

The President's (poll numbers) have sunk so low we learn today he cannot even run the Vice President. A Bush Executive Order commands everyone in the Executive Branch to report on handling of classified material, but Dick Cheney has not done so since 2002. Today the House Oversight Committee revealed that in 2004 the Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO) tried to inspect Cheney's office but was denied entry. In fact Cheney responded by trying to destroy ISOO.

Why the lack of cooperation? His office says "the reporting requirement does not apply to Cheney's office which has both legislative and executive functions." In other words, his functions outside the Executive Branch exempt him from oversight "by" the Executive Branch.

But if he's outside the Executive Branch, he's not a legislator and not a judge, there remains only one possible alternative: Vice President Dick Cheney is a rogue nation.

Despite the recent capture of his top lieutenant, Mr. Cheney continues to defy the rule of law, attempting to destroy ISOO, an office of the US government after all, and barring inspections in true Saddam style, leaving only one possible remedy.
Invade him.

The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility and move the terror suspects there to military prisons elsewhere, The Associated Press has learned.

President Bush's national security and legal advisers are expected to discuss the move at the White House on Friday and, for the first time, it appears a consensus is developing, senior administration officials said Thursday.

The advisers will consider a proposal to shut the center and transfer detainees to one or more Defense Department facilities, including the maximum security military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where they could face trial, said the officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal deliberations.
Will They?

Decision on Guantanamo not imminent, U.S. says

"No decisions on the future of Guantanamo Bay are imminent," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. "The president has long expressed a desire to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and to do so in a responsible way."
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