From Ron Kampeas at JTA News, excerpts below:
Top Democrats are mounting a furious counterattack against claims by Jewish Republicans that the GOP is likelier to favor Israel.
“Say ‘no’ to this effort to somehow target Democrats as being opposed to Israel,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who is Jewish, said Thursday in a conference call with […]

From The Scotsman, U.K., excerpts below:
Refusing to bow to pressure from the Democrats, the White House yesterday said it would not release the rest of a secret intelligence assessment that depicts a growing terrorist threat caused by the war in Iraq.
The move is seen as an attempt by as the Bush administration to quell […]

From Linda Coan O’Kresik at The New York Times, excerpts below:
The Maine National Guard is giving life-size from-the-waist-up pictures of soldiers to the families of deployed Guard members. Guard officials and families say the cutouts, known as “Flat Daddies” or “Flat Soldiers,” connect families with a relative who is thousands of miles away. The Flat […]

From the Washington Post, excerpts below:
Henry Kissinger has been advising President Bush and Vice President Cheney about Iraq, telling them that “victory is the only meaningful exit strategy,” author and journalist Bob Woodward said.
In an interview airing this Sunday night on CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes,” Woodward said that U.S. troops and their allies are being attacked, […]

From The News Virginian, excerpts below:
The IRS is increasingly being asked to referee disputes over whether churches are improperly engaging in partisan politicking from the pulpit.
Months before November’s midterm elections, the Internal Revenue Service warned that it would be scrutinizing churches to make sure they do not violate their tax-exempt status. Groups both liberal […]

(Recent public demonstrations in Taiwan called for the resignation of the President, Chen Shui-bain. The Taiwanese people are currently debating whether they should actually re-write their country’s constitution.)
Editorial in E-Taiwan News, excerpts below:

Amidst the continuing furor over whether President Chen Shui-bian should remain in office, the governing Democratic Progressive Party has raised the issue […]

From The Washington Post:
On Thursday, the Senate voted 65 to 34 to approve President Bush’s plan for interrogating and prosecuting terrorism suspects.
The Supreme Court triggered the congressional action by striking down in late June Pres. Bush’s earlier system for trying suspects in military commissions.
The new bill is designed to legalize military commissions and to clarify […]

From USA Today, excerpts below:
The White House today rejected a call by some Democratic lawmakers to release the full text of a previously secret intelligence assessment on terrorism, saying that revealing more information would discourage the work of analysts in the future and jeopardize the lives of intelligence agents.

President Bush charged that the document was […]

From Rachel Swarns at The New York Times, excerpts below:
Anti-terror laws, the USA Patriot Act and the Real ID Act, deny entry to anyone who belongs to, or has provided material support to, armed rebel groups, even if that support was coerced, and even if the armed groups fought alongside American troops or opposed authoritarian […]

From The New York Times, excerpts below:
Following are portions of the National Intelligence Estimate dealing with the key judgments, dated April 2006, that were released Tuesday by the Bush administration.
* United States-led counterterrorism efforts have seriously damaged the leadership of Al Qaeda and disrupted its operations; however, we judge that Al Qaeda will continue […]