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The Earlybird: Today's headlines
- On Monday President Bush signed an executive order creating the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives that would "allow religious groups to compete with secular organizations for federal dollars to pay for after-school programs, drug treatment counseling, meal assistance and other programs," CNN.com reports.
- Bush will submit the legislative portion of the plan to Congress today, ABCNews.com reports. It will call "for $24 billion in tax deductions and federal grants for charitable institutions over a 10-year period."
- Independent Sector, a research group, said Monday that nine in 10 "religious congregations provide 'human services' and rely mostly on volunteers," the Washington Times reports. But one member said that she didn't "know whether the religious congregations have the capacity to provide a whole list of human services" under Bush's plan.
- Bush also "sent Congress a four-year, $48 billion plan to help poor seniors pay for medication," Reuters reports. Democrats are opposed to the plan because it does not cover all senior citizens, and one said it was "dead on arrival."
- Bush met with "Republican leaders of the tax-writing committees" in Congress on Monday and "began laying the groundwork... for action on a broad federal tax cut that they hope can be enacted this spring," the Baltimore Sun reports.
- Congo's new president, Joseph Kabila, "will attend a prayer breakfast Thursday with President Bush," AP reports.
- Yesterday Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that he will vote against John Ashcroft for attorney general, the Washington Post reports. The committee is expected to vote today.
- Leahy also said he would not support a filibuster against Ashcroft, the Washington Times reports.
- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., announced that she would vote against Ashcroft, the New York Times reports. Clinton also said that she will vote against Interior Secretary nominee Gale Norton.
- The only two senators on the Judiciary Committee who have not said how they would vote are Wisconsin Democrats Herb Kohl and Russ Feingold, Reuters reports. If both oppose the nomination, the vote would likely be tied. Senate rules would still allow Ashcroft's nomination to advance to the full body.
- Norton is expected to be confirmed today "despite fierce opposition from environmental groups," Reuters reports.
- Elaine Chao was confirmed yesterday as labor secretary, the Washington Post reports.
- NEA Chairman Bill Ivey said yesterday that he would be happy to remain in his position in the new administration, the Nashville Tennessean reports. He has yet to discuss the option with Bush.
- Bush appointed Vice President Dick Cheney as the head of a new energy task force that will "promote oil exploration" and will seek to create a national energy policy, the New York Times reports. Bush said the energy crisis in California could spread beyond the state, but he did not offer federal help.
- Next week "Senate Republicans unveil their 'National Energy Security Act,' a package of proposals that the Senate Energy Committee has been assembling for several months," the Wall Street Journal reports. The plan will include a controversial call for "oil and gas exploration in part of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
- California Gov. Gray Davis (D) said that despite a state-ordered report that shows Southern California Edison "lost roughly $4.5 billion through the end of last year because of the soaring wholesale price of electricity," there is no justification for a rate increase for the utility, the New York Times reports.
- California's state Senate will "vote today on legislation that would clear the way for an increase in electricity prices for the majority of consumers who use more than the state considers the minimum 'baseline' amount," the Los Angeles Times reports.
- Feingold and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., held a series of town meetings in Arkansas Monday to discuss campaign finance reform, the Washington Post reports. McCain said his loss to Bush in last year's Republican primary was not "a mandate to fade away."
- McCain said he is confident the legislation will get support from the 60 senators it needs to bring it to a vote and prevent a filibuster, the Donrey News reports.
- President Bush said Monday that he would not reverse any of the controversial pardons former President Clinton made before he left office two weeks ago, Reuters reports.
- McCain said that Clinton's recent pardon of financier Marc Rich -- whose wife was a donor to the Democratic party -- gives "momentum to the drive to curb the influence of money in politics," the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.
- Leonard Peltier, an activist "whose 24-year imprisonment for killing two FBI agents has galvanized human rights activists around the globe," on Monday criticized Clinton "for granting pardons to political supporters but not to him," Reuters reports.
- The Washington Post reports that with the transition of power completed, "the very people who fought the Clinton lawyers all those years now find themselves occupying their opponents' offices in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building."
- In India, the search for survivors of last week's earthquake "has largely given way to the grim task of excavating the dead from the rubble," the New York Times reports.
- Judges in Scotland will "hand down the long-awaited verdict in the Lockerbie bombing trial on Wednesday," AP reports. The two Libyan defendants are charged with the 1988 attack of Pan Am Flight 103, which killed 270 people.
- An judge in Chile "reinstated his case against Gen. Augusto Pinochet" on Monday and ordered him put under house arrest, the New York Times reports. Pinochet is charged with "being a co-conspirator in the murders and kidnappings of 75 leftists."
- "In the Gaza Strip, Israeli soldiers on Monday repeatedly traded gunfire with Palestinians," AP reports.
- The Council on Foreign Relations released a report Monday concluding that the "State Department is underfunded, understaffed and poorly equipped," and the council recommended "a series of bureaucratic changes" within the department, Reuters reports.
- Today Secretary of State Colin Powell will meet with Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castaneda "to prepare for President Bush's visit to Mexico next month," AP reports.
- Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore (R) said that he "has tried to broker a deal to prevent both" Lt. Gov. John Hager and Attorney General Mark Earley "from running to be the Republican nominee for governor," the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. But both "said they remained committed to competing against each other for their party's gubernatorial nomination."
- The Washington Post reports that Gilmore's chief of staff, M. Boyd Marcus Jr., met with state Sen. J. Randy Forbes (R) "to persuade the former state GOP chairman to drop out of the lieutenant governor nomination fight... 'for the good of the party.'"
- James McGreevey (D), mayor of Woodbridge, N.J., will "hold 21 town meetings over the next four months to portray himself as 'the people's candidate'" in his gubernatorial bid, the New York Times reports.
- Former Rep. Bob Franks, R-N.J., officially announced his support of Republican Donald DiFrancesco for governor of New Jersey, the Newark Star-Ledger reports.
- Former HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo (D) officially announced last night that he will run for governor of New York, the New York Times reports. "He said he would file papers today to formally create a campaign committee for 2002."
- "Last night's statement was widely seen as a bid to overshadow state Comptroller Carl McCall's planned Thursday-night announcement of his campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor," the New York Post reports.
- Republican Illinois Gov. George Ryan "kept the door open for a re-election bid while chiding the media" for the way it handled the the licenses-for-bribes scandal, the Chicago Tribune reports.
- Republican John Cox will launch his bid to unseat Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., today, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. The "conservative" Cox "said he plans to focus largely on education and economic issues."
- Former Oklahoma Gov. David Walters (D) "said Monday that a poll likely will be taken in the next few weeks to find out how he would fare against" Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., the Daily Oklahoman reports.
- The Georgia state legislature will vote today on whether to change the state flag, which incorporates a Confederate battle emblem, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.