* Video shows Bush was warned about the potential for a levee breach, despite denials after the fact: “Was the president misinformed, misspoken or misleading?” [WP, USAT]
* Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco hesitantly told Bush that the levees were safe on the morning of Aug. 29th. [AP]
* U.S. and India announce deal for nuclear cooperation, for energy and weapons; “new plan would allow India enough fissile material for as many as 50 weapons a year.” [WP, NYT, W$J]
* Senate passes renewal of the Patriot Act by vote of 89 to 10. [NYT]
* 54% disapprove of Bush’s handling of the war on terrorism and 64% say the country is on the wrong track, according to LAT-Bloomberg poll; findings echo new Gallup poll. [LAT, Bloomberg, USAT]
* Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee,vows to stop Dubai port deal. [WP, W$J]

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* House Republicans will issue 600-plus-page report on Wednesday that harshly criticizes all aspects of the government’s response to Katrina: “It was a failure of leadership. In this instance, blinding lack of situational awareness and disjointed decision making needlessly compounded and prolonged Katrina’s horror.” [WP, NYT]
* Cheney accidentally shoots companion during hunting trip in Texas. Mary Matalin: “He felt badly, obviously. On the other hand, he was not careless or incautious or violate any of the [rules]. He didn’t do anything he wasn’t supposed to do.” [WP, NYT, USAT, WT]
* Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Tom Daschle believe eavesdropping is necessary but doubt Bush has the legal authority. [WP, LAT]
* Dean says Cheney should resign if he was involved in the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity. [NYT, WT]

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• House votes 308 to 122 on symbolic measure to ban torture and limit interrogation measures. [WP, NYT, LAT]
• Bush’s recent speeches on Iraq show “a determined effort to reshape the angry debate at home over the war” by “presenting a more sober picture of the situation while highlighting the progress”; the wording is “carefully calibrated” to provide “maximum flexibility in determining ultimately just what will constitute victory.” Senior official: “It’s not as if we have a secret ersatz timetable and we just won’t say what it is.”
[WP, NYT, NYT, WSJ, USAT]
• House approves renewal of the Patriot Act by vote of 251 to 174; Democrats may filibuster in the Senate. [WP, NYT, LAT, WT, USAT]
• Republicans losing ground among key senior citizen voting bloc. NBC/WSJ poll: “By a 65%-19% margin, Americans age 65 and above disapprove of the performance of Congress” and “say by 47%-37% that they want Democrats rather than Republicans to win control of Capitol Hill.” [WSJ]
• Senate expected to require the administration to reveal specifics about secret overseas prisons. [NYT]
• Robert Novak: “I’m confident the president knows who the source is. I’d be amazed if he doesn’t.” [WP]

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• Time reporter Viveca Novak says Karl Rove was the likely source of a July 2003 article about Valerie Plame. Novak: “I remember [Rove's lawyer] looking at me and saying something to the effect of ‘Karl doesn’t have a [Matt Cooper] problem. He was not a source for Matt.’ I responded instinctively, thinking he was trying to spin me, and said something like, ‘Are you sure about that? That’s not what I hear around Time.’ He looked surprised and very serious.” [Time, NYT, WSJ]
• Sen. Frist threatens to use the “nuclear option” to save Samuel Alito from a filibuster. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): “We’re not close to a deal.” [WP, NYT, LAT]
• White House flack Trent Duffy: “What you will see more of next year is the president going back to the basics — winning the war and growing the economy and creating jobs.” [WT]
• Sen. Clinton’s quiet, centrist approach to Iraq “is drawing increasing scorn from liberal activists.” [WP]
• Ronald Brownstein on Alito’s abortion memos: “It’s still not clear these disclosures will seriously threaten Alito’s confirmation. And if they do not, both sides might need to rethink basic assumptions about the politics of the Supreme Court.” [LAT]
• Gov. Mark Warner (D-Va.) tours battleground states for a head-start on ‘08. Warner: “As Democrats, what we have to do is put forward ideas and candidates that can win in places like Florida, that can win in places like Virginia.” [NYT]

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• House passes $94.5b in tax cuts; “some budget analysts say the flourish of tax cutting badly undermines the recent shows of fiscal discipline.” [WP, NYT]
• Approval of Bush climbs back to 40% in NYT/CBS poll; 52% believe that the administration “intentionally misled the public when its officials made the case for war” and only 33% approve of Congress. Charles Cook: “It looks like they’re finally getting a little bit of credit for the economy performing as strongly as it has. We’ve had good economic news for a while, but Iraq so dominated things it couldn’t break through.” [NYT]
• Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald solicits new grand jury; sources say “Fitzgerald was probably providing the new grand jury with a primer on what has been learned in the investigation and what remains unresolved” and “could spell trouble for [Karl Rove], or for other people enmeshed in more recent developments in the case.” [WP, NYT]
• Bush shifts strategy in Iraq to focus on “smaller, more visible projects.” Bush: “Reconstruction has not always gone as well as we had hoped, primarily because of the security challenges on the ground. Rebuilding a nation devastated by a dictator is a large undertaking.” [WP, NYT, USAT]
• Rep. Robert Menendez (D) is expected to be named as Corzine’s successor. [WP, NYT]

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• Lawyers at the Justice Department warned that Rep. Tom Delay’s (R-Texas) redistricting plan was illegal under the Voting Rights Act but senior officials vetoed their findings. [WP]
• Senate Armed Services Committee seeks answers about Pentagon’s propaganda campaign in Iraqi media. Scott McClellan: “We’re very concerned about the reports. We have asked the Department of Defense for more information.” [NYT]
• Revelations about Samuel Alito’s views on abortion “are stiffening Democratic resistance and complicating the nomination for moderates in both parties.” Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.): “Certainly the chance of a filibuster is greater today than it was the day Alito was nominated.” [WP, NYT]
• Conversation in 2004 with Time’s Viveca Novak is said to have motivated Rove to change his testimony in the leak investigation. [NYT]
• Prosecutors are investigating whether Jack Abramoff “brokered lucrative jobs for Congressional aides at powerful lobbying firms in exchange for legislative favors.” [NYT]
• Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) breaks from most in her party with support of Rep. John Murtha’s (D-Pa.) plan for withdrawal. Strategist: “If Karl Rove was writing the timing of this, he wouldn’t have written it any differently, with the president of the United States expressing resolve and the Democratic leader offering surrender. For Republicans, this is manna from heaven.” [WP, WT]
• Bush marks World AIDS Day: “I believe America has a unique ability, and a special calling, to fight this disease.” Dean says the administration has “stood in the way of important global efforts to curb this disease.” [WP]

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• Viveca Novak’s testimony is said to be central to Karl Rove’s defense. Source: “This is what caused [Patrick Fitzgerald] to hold off on charging.” [WP]
• Interest groups and individuals are increasingly “concluding that the commingling of money and politics has gone too far”; lobbyists and lawmakers are “now facing what could be a wave of prosecutions in the courts and an uprising at the ballot box.” For the first time, the “public’s negative feelings exceeded its positive feelings about both political parties at the same time.” [WP]
• Rep. Randy Cunningham (R-Calif.) resigns after pleading guilty for accepting $2.4m in bribes: “In my life, I have known great joy and great sorrow. And now I know great shame.” [WP, NYT, WSJ, LAT, USAT]
• Bush promotes his guest-worker program and advocates border security measures: “The American people should not have to choose between being a welcoming society and a lawful society. We can have both at the same time.” Proposals face uphill battle in Congress. [WP, NYT, WSJ, WT, NYT, USAT]
• Cheney’s office has not been forthcoming with disclosure of travel expenses. Center for Public Integrity: “[T]he public is kept largely unaware of where he and his staff are traveling, with whom they are meeting and how much it costs, even though tax dollars are covering the bill.” [WP]
• Administration moves to hype the advances of the Iraqi Army, “a move designed to shore up domestic support for the Iraq war while setting the stage for a reduction in U.S. military troops next year.” [WSJ]

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• Second Time magazine reporter is called to testify in leak investigation. [NYT, WSJ]
• Time table for withdrawal from Iraq seems dependent on next month’s Iraqi election and next year’s midterm election. Former administration aide: “We’ve moved from ‘if’ to ‘how fast.’” [NYT]
• Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) and Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) are injured when their vehicle overturns in Iraq. [NYT]
• Advocacy groups target swing senators in fight over Alito’s confirmation. [WP]
• Alito has convinced most senators to support him — “an unusual political feat.” [USAT]
• The Washington Post’s special relationship with Bob Woodward “has sparked some resentment among the staff,” writes Howard Kurtz; criticism of star journalist is spreading. [WP]
• Bush visits Arizona today for speech on illegal immigration that is designed to reassure his conservative base. [WT, WSJ]

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• Democrats threaten to filibuster against the extension of the Patriot Act. Feingold (D-Wis.): “This is worth the fight.” [NYT, WSJ, USAT]
• The CIA has secret Counterterrorist Intelligence Centers in more than two dozen countries; new emphasis on cooperation with intel agencies of other countries. [WP]
• 22 Republicans join Democrats to defeat GOP spending plan; “stunned” Republican leaders, left scrambling, pass “softened” bill hours later along party lines, 217 to 215. [WP, NYT, WSJ, LAT]
• Administration’s response to its critics stems from 2004 campaign tactics; Bush said to be “happy to be fighting back.” [WP, LAT]
• Who was Bob Woodward’s source? Executive editor of the Washington Post: “[I]f the information is found independent of our source relationship, sure we’ll print it.” [WSJ, NYT, NYT]
• Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn.), a Vietnam veteran, tearfully calls for the immediate withdrawal of forces from Iraq; 13 service members from his district have died in Iraq. Murtha: “Our military has done everything that has been asked of them. It is time to bring them home.” [WP, NYT, WSJ, LAT, USAT]
• Bush, in South Korea, says a North Korea with nuclear weapons “will not be tolerated”; trip is overshadowed by criticism of Iraq war. [NYT, WSJ, USAT]
• Bush’s meeting with Putin “was choreographed to minimize the potential for another display of the tensions that now color their relationship.” [USAT]
• Advocacy ads about Alito hit the airwaves. [WP, NYT]
• Americans are feeling more isolationist, less unilateralist, according to Pew study. [NYT]
• Senate Indian Affairs Committee digs into friend of Jack Abramoff. [WP, LAT]

• Administration likely to get its way on the renewal of the Patriot Act. [WP, NYT, LAT, USAT]
• Libby’s attorneys plan “to use Woodward’s testimony to try to show that Libby was not obsessed with unmasking Plame and to raise questions about the prosecutor’s full understanding of events.” [WP, WP, USAT]
• Revelation of Woodward’s knowledge of Plame extends life-span of the leak scandal. [NYT, USAT]
• Woodward’s “handling of the matter has now raised questions about his paper’s credibility and has roiled The Post’s newsroom.” [NYT]
• Alito’s 1985 memo fuels partisan fire. Schumer: “Anyone who thinks that this nomination is a foregone conclusion is sadly mistaken.” [NYT, WT]
• Cheney attacks critics of the Iraq war at a conservative gathering: “The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone, but we’re not going to sit back and let them rewrite history.” [WP, NYT, LAT]
• Administration strategy attacks Democrats critics and courts congressional Republicans. Nicolle Wallace: “Our strategy has to include hitting back. . . and calling them out for what are actually lies.” [USAT]

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• Senators, by vote of 79 to 19, pass a resolution marking next year as “a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty. . . thereby creating the conditions for the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq.” Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.): “Staying the course will not do.” Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.): “It’s a continuation of the oversight we’ve been conducting for years in the United States Senate.” WP, NYT, WSJ, USAT]
• Senators from both parties “are demanding that the administration show that it has a strategy to turn the conflict over to the Iraqis and eventually bring U.S. troops home.” [WP]
• Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) defends critics of the war: “[T]he Bush administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them. . . to not question your government is unpatriotic.” [WP]
• Oil executives did meet with Cheney’s energy task force in 2001. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.): “The White House went to great lengths to keep these meetings secret, and now oil executives may be lying to Congress about their role in the Cheney task force.” [WP]
• Alito tries to downplay conservative remarks from 1985. [WP, NYT, LAT]
• Rice reaches deal on access to the Gaza Strip. [WP, NYT, NYT, USAT]
• Lewis Libby plans to “seek testimony from journalists beyond those cited in the indictment and will probably challenge government agreements limiting their grand jury testimony.” [NYT]

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