ASSOCIATED PRESS: Former White House adviser Karl Rove defied a congressional subpoena to testify Thursday about allegations of political pressure at the Justice Department, including whether he tried to influence the prosecution of a former Democratic governor of Alabama. Rep. Linda Sanchez, chairman of the House subcommittee that called Rove, ruled with backing from fellow Democrats on the panel that Rove’s claim of immunity was invalid – perhaps the first step toward holding him in contempt for refusing to cooperate. Lawmakers subpoenaed Rove in May in an effort to force him to talk about whether he was involved in prosecutors’ […]

NEW YORK TIMES: WASHINGTON — More than two and a half years after the disclosure of President’s Bush’s domestic eavesdropping program set off a furious national debate, the Senate gave final approval on Wednesday afternoon to broadening the government’s spy powers and providing legal immunity for the phone companies that took part in the wiretapping program. The plan, approved by a vote of 69 to 28, marked one of Mr. Bush’s most hard-won legislative victories in a Democratic-led Congress where he has had little success of late. And it represented a stinging defeat for opponents on the left who had […]

[Artwork via 23/6] NEW YORK TIMES: Limbaugh informed me that I was the first journalist ever to enter his home. Mary Matalin, the Republican consultant, calls the place “aspirational,” which is one adjective that fits. The place, largely designed by Limbaugh himself, reflects the things and places he has seen and admired. The massive chandelier in the dining room, for example, is a replica of the one that hung in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel in New York. The gleaming cherry-wood floors are dotted with hand-woven oriental carpets. A life-size oil portrait of El Rushbo, as he often calls […]

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Former Sen. Jesse Helms, who served 30 years in Congress, died on the Fourth of July, the Jesse Helms research center says. He was 86. The center, based at Wingate University in North Carolina, said Friday that he died at 1:15 a.m. Jimmy Broughton, Helms’ former chief of staff, says the former senator died of natural causes in Raleigh. Helms built a career along the fault lines of racial politics and battled liberals, Communists and the occasional fellow Republican during his decades in Congress. MORE WIKIPEDIA: Helms was particularly vitriolic when speaking of gays and lesbians, blaming them […]

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