President Bush will request from Congress a $439.3 billion defense budget, a 5 percent increase.-ABC News

“It’s no big deal,” he says.-SpaceWar

If America is angry over what interventionism and free trade have wrought, George Bush cannot credibly blame isolationists or protectionists. These fellows have an alibi. They were nowhere near the scene of the crime. It is George W. Bush who is running out of alibis.-Pat Buchanan

President George W. Bush on Thursday said Americans should not fear global competition from rising economic powers like China and India, and called on Congress to allow more foreign workers to fill high-tech jobs in the United States.-Reuters

The Bush administration said Thursday it will ask Congress for $120 billion more for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and $18 billion more for hurricane relief this year.-AP

Today's revelations that Tony Blair and George W. Bush debated staging an act of provocation to goad Saddam Hussein into war sends a very clear warning as to how a pretext for a conflict with Iran could be manufactured.-Prison Planet

Ilana Mercer blasts Bush for his dishonesty in his futile Mideast peace agenda.-WorldNetDaily

Last year's negative savings rate was the first since the Depression.-Christian Science Monitor

A former American occupation official in Iraq is expected to plead guilty to bribery, conspiracy, money laundering and other charges in federal court on Thursday for his actions in a scheme to use sexual favors, jewelry and millions of dollars in cash to steer reconstruction work to a corrupt contractor, according to papers filed with the court.-Truthout.org

George W. Bush might be a Republican. He might be a Texan. He might even be a nice guy. However, after listening to his State of the World speech last Tuesday, one thing is for certain: George W. Bush is a globalist!Not only is Bush a globalist, he is a utopian. Does he really believe that one country can end tyranny and oppression all over the world? If so, how will he do it? -Pastor Chuck Baldwin/NewsWithViews

Despite Justice's refusal to help him, Black convened a grand jury, which subpoenaed the Abramoff contract with the Superior Court on November 18, 2002. The next day the Bush Administration announced that Black would be replaced as US Attorney and demoted him to Assistant US Attorney, after twelve years on the job.Did the White House interfere to stop Black's investigation? Was Gonzales involved? Was Ashcroft? -Ari Berman/The Nation

A federal judge blasted former Environmental Protection Agency chief Christine Todd Whitman on Thursday for reassuring New Yorkers soon after the Sept. 11 attacks that it was safe to return to their homes and offices while toxic dust was polluting the neighborhood.U.S. District Judge Deborah A. Batts refused to grant Whitman immunity against a class-action lawsuit brought in 2004 by residents, students and workers in lower Manhattan and Brooklyn who said they were exposed to hazardous materials from the destruction of the World Trade Center

A U.S.-drafted Security Council statement calls for U.N. peacekeepers to be sent to Sudan's violent Darfur region and asks United Nations to draw up plans for an eventual takeover from an African Union force.The statement, circulated for discussion to Security Council members on Thursday by U.S. Ambassador John Bolton, would be the first step toward authorizing a larger force in Darfur where killings, rape and pillaging continue unabated

Just as the fall of the Soviet Union led to changes in how the U.S. military is organized and operates, the post-Sept. 11 world requires continuation of that process, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said here yesterday.At a Pentagon news conference, Rumsfeld and Navy Adm. Edmund Giambastiani, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave reporters some context in advance of next week's anticipated delivery of the Quadrennial Defense Review to Congress -DOD

The United States is engaged in what could be a generational conflict akin to the Cold War, the kind of struggle that might last decades as allies work to root out terrorists across the globe and battle extremists who want to rule the world, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday.Rumsfeld, who laid out broad strategies for what the military and the Bush administration are now calling the "long war," likened al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin while urging Americans not to give in on the battle of wills that could stretch for years -Washington Post

An American law enforcement officer and news crew in Texas have witnessed another armed incursion into the United States by men dressed in Mexican army attire, the second such incident in just two weeks.-WorldNetDaily