Calio's shop found that Lieberman's proposal had enough support to pass both the House and Senate--in no small part because of the White House's refusal to allow Ridge to appear before important congressional committees and argue convincingly against consolidation. Immediately, Bush's staff saw 'two disasters' looming--'first, an unmanageable new department created just at the time its agencies and staff needed to be working on increasing domestic security, and second, the major new piece of legislation in response to September 11 would be named after the man whom the majority of voters had wanted to be vice president just twenty months earlier.' The call was made by 'the political analysts' in the White House that 'it was better to have one of those two outcomes than both.'

McClellan's ineptitude is made all the more noticeable by the contrast it poses with Ari Fleischer, his syrup-tongued predecessor. [Fleischer's] ability to prevaricate and dodge, without betraying himself through physical or verbal tics, represented a kind of genius. Alas, what came so easily to Fleischer utterly eludes McClellan. If the two of them ever sat down at a poker table, Fleischer would probably walk away with all of McClellan's money and the shirt off his back.

Thanks to the FBI's follow-up sting, Susan Lindauer's legacy is bound to be less illustrious. In light of her latter conduct, her "peace overtures" begin to look more like bait for an Iraqi intelligence trap. According to her indictment, she flew to Iraq, met Iraqi Intelligence agents in the Al-Rashid hotel, and accepted $5,000 cash from them. But just to nail her coffin shut an undercover FBI agent approached her (claiming to be a Libyan intelligence agent) and discussed the necessity of supporting the Iraqi "resistance." In accordance with the agent's instructions, the indictment charges, Lindauer twice left dead drops around Takoma Park, Maryland, where she lived.

It has not yet emerged what was in the dead drops, but the indictment alleges that she executed one of them "on or about August 6, 2003." That was one day after a "resistance group" which Lindauer supported killed an American civilian mailman in Tikrit. Her second alleged dead drop occurred "on or about August 21, 2003," two days after these "resistance groups" killed U.N. envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 others with a horrific truck bomb at U.N. headquarters in Baghdad. How could Lindauer not have known the malignant character of the terrorists that continue to murder Coalition forces and pro-democracy Iraqis every day? The rubble, after all, was still smoking when Lindauer made her drop.

Key backers of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage said yesterday that they are rewording the two-sentence text to clarify that it would allow states to establish civil unions or other partnership arrangements for same-sex couples.

A White House spokesman said President Bush, who endorsed the amendment in principle last month, concurs with the new wording. Leading opponents of the proposal, including gay rights organizations and the American Civil Liberties Union, said they remain adamantly against it.

UNITED NATIONS, March 15 -- A bloc of more than 50 Islamic states, backed by the Vatican, sought today to halt U.N. efforts to extend spousal benefits to partners of some gay employees.

Kerry praised the Clinton White House for thumbing its nose at our European allies.

"Clearly the allies may not like it," said the top Democrat, before suggesting that France and Russia were spineless.

"Where's the backbone of Russia, where's the backbone of France, where are they in expressing their condemnation of such clearly illegal activity?" he railed.

Kerry also praised the White House for giving the United Nations the brush-off.

"The [Clinton] administration is leading. The administration is making it clear that they don't believe that they even need the U.N. Security Council to sign off on a material breach because the finding of material breach was made by [U.S. weapons inspector Richard] Butler."

Kerry defended President Clinton's go-it-alone war plan as the best way to protect U.S. national security, telling "Crossfire," "I think the United States has always reserved the right and will reserve the right to act in its best interests."

In court papers unsealed Friday, law enforcement officials detail Bradley's alleged efforts to threaten Mountain View's Google with a software program he devised that creates phony clicks on advertisements. Google pays Web-site publishers a certain amount for legitimate hits on those ads, but Bradley created a method that generates false clicks that appeared to be real Internet traffic, which would have repeatedly defrauded Google.

Bradley contacted Google in early March, informing company officials that he had created the program and wanted $100,000 to keep him from selling it to spammers, according to an affidavit by a U.S. Secret Service agent. After Bradley contacted Google, company officials turned the matter over to federal officials to investigate. The result was a videotaped meeting at Google's corporate offices March 10.

During that session, Bradley told Google engineers he would sell the program to the ``top 100 spammers'' if they didn't meet his demands, joking at one point that ``this feels like a blackmail session,'' court papers show. Bradley offered his consulting services for a year to help Google solve problems with falsified advertising hits and asked the Google engineers, ``Where's my check?''

When Google later did not respond to Bradley after the meeting, Bradley fired off an angry e-mail March 12 indicating that he would sell the program the following week if he wasn't paid. In the message, he complained that Google had wasted his time. ``I do expect to hear from someone at Google by Monday, or this software is going full force into the public,'' said the e-mail, which was included in the affidavit.

In follow-up conversations, an undercover agent representing himself as a Google engineer arranged for another meeting with Bradley on Thursday, but federal agents filed their arrest warrant that day. The court papers allege that Bradley already used his software in an attempt to illegally divert thousands of dollars to his own accounts through advertising arrangements he set up with Google.