Wonkette

• Sen. Specter (R-Pa.) proposes to give Bush the choice of getting a warrant from a special court for surveillance programs; proposal would specifically not limit presidential powers. Specter: “I think he [Cheney] is serious about trying to work something out. For the first time, he said they are willing to consider legislation.” [WP]
• Cheney says his communications with Sen. Specter “are not unusual.” Specter: “He does not face head on; he does not deal with his not having taken it up with the chairman. This isn’t me personally; this is institutional. This is not the way government works, to deal with a committee without going through the chairman.” [WP, NYT]
• Rep. DeLay (R-Tex.) gives “defiant retirement speech”: “I did a good job… Given the chance to do it all again, there’s only one thing I’d change. I’d fight even harder.” [WP, NYT, LAT]
• Death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi will provide little reprieve for Republians feeling political heat. Official: “We don’t want another ‘Mission Accomplished’ moment.” [WSJ]
• Troop levels in Iraq will not be down to 100,000 by the end of this year. [NYT]
• Senate is three votes shy of repealing the estate tax. Sen. Lott (R-Miss.): “The conservative base will appreciate the fact that we are trying.” [NYT, LAT, WSJ, USAT]

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• Reliable Source: In the past year, Bush received $17,316 in personal gifts and Cheney netted $39,722 worth. . . Woody Harrelson and Kristin Scott Thomas are filming in Foggy Bottom. . . Dresses worn by “political ladies” hit eBay for Gulf Coast charity. . . Nancy Pelosi seen lunching with Zbigniew Brzezinski. [WP]
• Heard on the Hill: Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) calls CNN’s Joe Johns a “smartass”. . . Gore’s film premieres tonight at the National Geographic Society’s Grosvenor Auditorium. [Roll Call]
• Page Six: Advisors to Katherine Harris may be plotting a tell-all book and documentary. [NYP]
• Cindy Adams: Condoleezza Rice to the NFL?. . . St. Martin’s is throwing a party at the Cosmos Club for Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, and Terry McAuliffe [NYP]

* House Appropriations Committee votes overwhelmingly to block Dubai ports deal; measure was attached to war spending bill. [WP]
* For Republican lawmakers, “political considerations” trump loyalty to Bush over port deal and, to a lesser extent, eavesdropping. Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO): “If there was ever a good time for Congress to figure out oversight, it would be in the sixth year of a presidency.” [NYT]
* Senate compromise would permit eavesdropping on Americans without court warrant; administration would have 45 days to prove individual cases. [NYT]
* Bush accuses Congress of underfunding Gulf Coast reconstruction: “Congress heard our message about improving the levees, but they shortchanged the process by about $1.5 billion.” [WP, NYT]
* Senators agree to reject meals and gifts from lobbyists. [WP, NYT]
* Jack Abramoff to Vanity Fair: “Any important Republican who comes out and says they didn’t know me is almost certainly lying.” [NYT]
* Senate Republicans try to trim Bush’s spending requests for defense and foreign aid. [W$J]
* South Dakota expected to start trend of states rethinking abortion rights; nine others are moving to limit the procedure. [W$J]
* Michael Chertoff looks for the high road as others point fingers of blame — and some directly at him. [NYT]

* Administration requests $72.4b for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan plus $19.8b for the Gulf Coast. [NYT, W$J, WT]
* Senate, under pressure from the administration, will not investigate NSA eavesdropping; House inquiry moves forward. [WP, NYT, LAT]
* Bush has no problem with handling of Cheney’s hunting accident: “This is a man who likes the outdoors, and he likes to hunt. . . I’m satisfied with the explanation he gave.” [NYT, USAT]
* Texas police close their investigation of hunting accident without making criminal charges. [WP]
* Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) denies wrongdoing in new lobbying scandal but asks for ethics investigation. [WP, NYT, USAT]
* Is Cheney more of a liability for Republicans than an asset? [W$J]

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* FEMA and the White House knew of levee failure earlier than previously disclosed; also, “officials knew long before the storm showed up on the radar that 100,000 people in New Orleans” had no exit strategy. [NYT, NYT]
* Former top CIA official accuses the administration of “cherry-picking” intelligence to justify war against Iraq and suppressing warnings about post-war conditions: “It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized.” [WP]
* Lewis Libby says “supervisors” authorized leaks of classified documents about Iraq’s weapons programs. [NYT, W$J]
* Bush defends eavesdropping by citing foiled terror plot against Los Angeles: “We cannot let the fact that America hasn’t been attacked in four and a half years since September 11, 2001, lull us into the illusion that the threats to our nation have disappeared. They have not.” [WP, NYT, USAT, WT]
* Jack Abramoff says he met with Bush in “almost a dozen settings” over the last five years. [WP, NYT]
* Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) received about $68,000 from Abramoff’s firm; ties found between lobbyist and Reid’s staff. [WP]

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* Gonzales testifies for seven hours about warrentless eavesdropping; defends legality of program but largely avoids providing specifics. Gonzales: “Think about the reaction, the public reaction that has arisen in some quarters about this program. If the president had authorized domestic surveillance as well, even though we’re talking about al Qaeda-to-al Qaeda, I think the reaction would have been twice as great. And so there was a judgment made that this was the appropriate line to draw in ensuring the security of our country and the protection of the privacy interests of Americans.” [WP, NYT, USAT, WT]
* Bush proposes $2.77t budget that would cut funds from most federal agencies while increasing military funding by 7%; deficit would be record $423b. The “patchwork of generosity and austerity reflects the priorities of Bush, who has defined his administration’s central goal as combating terrorist threats.” [WP, NYT, NYT, USAT, WT]
* Budget could be “risky election-year strategy” for Republican lawmakers. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.): “Politically, the right thing to do this year is also the popular thing to do, and that is to cut spending.” [LAT, NYT, USAT]
* Budget predictions depend on tax overhaul, an end to the war in Iraq, and no new funds for the Gulf Coast. [WP, NYT, USAT, USAT]
* Republicans lack unity over eavesdropping issue. Sen. Specter (R-Pa.): “I think they are seeing concerns in a lot of directions from all segments: Democrats and Republicans in all shades of the political spectrum.” [WP]

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* House Republicans elect Ohio Rep. John Boehner as majority leader, signaling break from status quo. Boehner: “The members wanted to make a big decision, and they did. . . We must act swiftly to restore the trust between Congress and the American people.” [WP, NYT, LAT, USAT, WT, W$J]
* Election of Boehner heralds his comeback and shows a “cry of concern by an entrenched Republican majority”; Boehner “tapped into members’ election-year anxieties about the GOP’s scandal-scuffed leadership.” [WP, WP, NYT]
* Administration seeks $120b for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. [WP, NYT, USAT]
* Democrats attack Republican rhetoric at hearing on security threats; insist on more oversight. Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.V.): “I am deeply troubled by what I see as the administration’s continued effort to selectively release intelligence information that supports its policy or political agenda while withholding equally pertinent information that does not do that.” [WP, WP, NYT, USAT, WT]

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• Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) claims to have over 100 of the 116 votes necessary to be majority leader. [WP]
• Bush visits the Gulf Coast for the first time in three months: “Four months is not all that long, and a lot’s happened in that four-month period. And a lot more is going to happen in the next four months, and then the next four months.” [WP, NYT, W$J]
• Leadership races “are a special kind of art form”; Reps. John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Blunt “barely waited for the ink to dry on DeLay’s farewell letter earlier this month before jumping into the race for the second-ranking job.” [WP]
• Administration may set standards for domestic intelligence. [WP]
• Deficit could top $400b, White House official says. [WP, NYT]
• Rumsfeld considered Bremer’s request for additional troops. [WP]
• 200 private school girls rally to encourage Bush to improve New Orleans levees. [NYT]

• Former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) says Congress rejected White House request for the authority to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens: “I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.” [WP, WP]
• Congress has turned on Bush. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): “What you have seen is a Congress, which has been AWOL through intimidation or lack of unity, get off the sidelines and jump in with both feet.” [WP, LAT]
• Republican lawmakers “largely have themselves to blame for the muddled and haphazard finale of the Congressional session.” [NYT]
• House and Senate extend the Patriot Act for five weeks, pushing fight into the new year. [WP, NYT, LAT]
• Bush approves reduction of U.S. combat forces in Iraq; troop level could fall to 130,000. [WP, USAT]
• John Yoo, “a mere deputy assistant attorney general in the legal counsel office,” was the main author of controversial legal policies; viewed as an aggressive force among conservative legal scholars. Yoo: “If you’re being criticized for what you did and you believe that what you did was right, you shouldn’t take it lying down. You should go out and defend yourself.” [NYT]
• Michael Brown warned Tom Ridge in 2003 that the bureaucracy of the DHS would strangle FEMA’s effectiveness: “People became distracted from the mission, because we spent so much time and energy fighting for resources and working on reorganization. It just disintegrated our capacity.” [WP, WT]

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• Butterstick: is he the Second Coming? Whatever, y’all, we’re too blinded by the supernova of cuteosity. MORE »