• New bipartisan congressional report shows that the Homeland Security Department abuses no-bid deals, poorly trains managers. “32 Homeland Security Department contracts worth a total of $34 billion have ‘experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement.’” [WP]

• Bush’s draft bill for putting terror-detainees on trial excludes defendants from their own legal proceedings, unlike Rwanda and Yugoslav tribunals. [NYT]
• Bush presses Senate Foreign Relations committee to make U.N. Ambassador John R. Bolton permanent. [WP]
• In NSA Senate testimony yesterday, civil liberties advocate James X. Dempsey said “he would prefer to see no legislation at all, allowing the National Security Agency to continue wiretapping Americans without warrants, than Congressional approval of procedures outside the scope of the 1978 law that created the secret court.” [NYT]
• Rice: “I am a student of history, so perhaps I have a little bit more patience with the enormous change in the international system and the complete shifting of tectonic plates, and I don’t expect it to happen in a few days or even a year,” [USAT]

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