The Earlybird: Today's Headlines

Bush's speech tonight, Murkowski's oil drilling bill, Greenspan's new testimony, Israel's coalition government, Florida's latest results, Rendell's uphill fight, DiFrancesco's opponent investigation, Grams' job search, Fat Tuesday's weather:

• In his nationally televised speech before a joint session of Congress tonight, which will be similar to a State of the Union address, President Bush will try "to sell his agenda to Congress and a public still skeptical about his priorities," the Houston Chronicle reports. Bush will release his budget to Congress on Wednesday and then will begin "a two-day, four-state campaign-style swing" to sell his message.
• Republicans want Bush to use tonight's speech "as a bully pulpit," the Washington Times reports.
• Bush's controversial $1.6 trillion tax cut proposal would give "less of an economic boost" to "the rural South, which played a key role in" electing Bush, than it would give to Northeastern areas that voted for Al Gore, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.
• After he told governors at the National Governors' Association meeting about his tax cut plan on Monday, Democrats warned him "that his tax cut could wind up hurting his top priority -- education," the Washington Post reports.
• More than half of the people polled by ABC News and the Washington Post said they "would prefer a smaller tax cut targeted to middle-income and lower-income people to the across-the-board tax cut."
• Bush's budget also will include a plan "to pay off $2 trillion of the national debt over the next 10 years, leaving $1.2 trillion of debt at the end of that period," the New York Times reports.
• The speech will include a proposal to allow "workers to invest part of their Social Security taxes in personal accounts," Reuters reports.
• Speechwriters say Bush should use "shorter sentences" and "humor" in the speech, which is expected to be shorter than other State of the Union addresses, AP reports.
• Bush filled three more posts yesterday: Hector Barreto to head the Small Business Administration, "fund-raiser Mel Sembler to be president of the Export-Import Bank, and R. Glenn Hubbard, a prominent economist at Columbia University, to be a member of the Council of Economic Advisers," AP reports.
• Bush plans to appoint a high-level commission to look at an overhaul of Social Security, the Washington Post reports.

• Senate Republicans introduced an energy bill Tuesday that "calls for opening an Arctic wildlife refuge in Alaska to oil drilling and would provide tens of millions of dollars in tax incentives or regulatory relief to the oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear industries," AP reports. Democrats criticized the bill.
• Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, the bill's sponsor, "served as the honorary chairman of a political action committee that raised thousands of dollars from electric utility executives and lobbyists last year," CQ.com's "The Scoop" reports.
• The Senate may "extend the current committee funding resolution," which expires Wednesday, "for an additional 10 days," until leaders can iron "out the details of a committee power sharing arrangement agreed upon at the start of the session," CongressDailyAM reports.

• "In a break with tradition, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will modify his testimony on the economy to a House panel Wednesday from what he gave to its Senate counterpart two weeks earlier," the Wall Street Journal reports. It is not known what he will say.
• The National Association for Business Economists said Monday that "the risk of a recession has risen to 33 percent," the Dallas Morning News reports. However, other economists said the economy is doing fine.

• "Israel's moderate Labor Party voted Monday to join with hard-line Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon to form a unity government," CNN.com reports. That means Sharon could take office as early as next week.
• The State Department said the administration may ease some of the economic sanctions against Iraq, instead "refocusing the restrictions more tightly on President Saddam Hussein's military and his ability to produce weapons of mass destruction," the Washington Post reports.
• Secretary of State Colin Powell attended his first meeting at NATO headquarters Monday, AP reports. It was "a get-acquainted session."
• U.S. Navy Special Envoy Admiral William J. Fallon traveled to Japan today to ask that nation "to accept" America's "apology for the sinking of a Japanese trawler that has frayed ties, and said he will deliver a personal apology from President George W. Bush," Reuters reports.
• Investigators have found that "the Marine Corps' troubled Osprey aircraft, under intense scrutiny because of four fatal crashes, also experienced a series of previously undisclosed mechanical failures over the" past few years, the Los Angeles Times reports.
• China is upset with the United States for filing a report that says Chinese authorities have increased their abuses of "religious and political dissenters," UPI reports.

• During the first day of Microsoft's appeal hearing, "judges expressed skepticism... over a central charge that Microsoft broke antitrust law when it tied a Web browser to its Windows software, but they also grilled a Microsoft lawyer over a series of allegedly anti-competitive tactics," the Seattle Times reports. The hearing continues today.
• The Supreme Court on Monday heard the case of a Rhode Island man who wanted to turn a piece of salt marsh that he owned into a beach club, the Providence Journal reports.
• The court turned down a case brought by South Carolina doctors who said "that the additional medical and safety rules the state has imposed" on abortion clinics "really were an attempt to undermine abortion rights," AP reports.
• The court also refused to hear the case of Philip Workman, a Tennessee man on death row who claimed "that recently discovered evidence shows he did not kill a Memphis police officer in 1981," the Nashville Tennessean reports.
• AP has a list of all of the Supreme Court's actions Monday.

• Former President Clinton called the chief executive of CBS while he was president to seek help for "his old friends, the TV producers Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, in a million-dollar billing dispute," the Wall Street Journal reports. Clinton also granted pardons to two tax evaders H. Thomason had requested.
• Democratic Party contributor Denise Rich "visited the White House with Democratic fundraiser Beth Dozoretz the night before former President Clinton granted her ex-husband a pardon," Reuters reports.
• A judicial panel said Monday that "Chief U.S. District Court Judge Norma Holloway Johnson did nothing improper when she bypassed usual procedures and assigned a handful of politically charged cases to federal judges appointed by President Bill Clinton," the Washington Post reports.

• Records show that Bush raised nearly $6 million to pay for the legal battle following the Nov. 7 election, while former Vice President Al Gore raised $3.7 million, the New York Times reports.
• Bush on Monday said "he hoped the debate over the legitimacy of his election was over following a review that found a hand recount in Florida's Miami-Dade County would probably not have changed the outcome," Reuters reports.
• Gore said yesterday "he had not read The Miami Herald story about the vote recount that showed Bush won in Miami-Dade County and wanted to reserve comment until other news agencies complete recounts," the Nashville Tennessean reports.
• A Florida task force recommended yesterday that "everyone's ballot should be cast, counted and -- if necessary -- recounted the same way no matter where they live," the Tallahassee Democrat reports.
• In New York, legislators reviewing election procedures focused "on the 60,000 elections inspectors who oversee polling places," saying "that improving how inspectors are recruited, trained and paid is probably the No. 1 change the Legislature can make to improve balloting in New York state," the Albany Times Union reports.
• In St. Louis, close to 1,000 city voters "appear to be registered from fake addresses -- vacant lots or abandoned buildings," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
• And in Chicago, "officials overseeing today's suburban and city elections plan to debut a system designed to catch voters' mistakes before they leave the polling place," the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
• A new study shows that voters in 38 states passed 72 percent of 553 growth-related measures in November, the Washington Post reports.

• The two men vying for the GOP gubernatorial nod in Virginia -- Attorney General Mark Earley and Lt. Gov. John Hager -- faced legislative setbacks in the session of the General Assembly that just ended, but both "men say they are pleased with the results," the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
• In New Jersey, acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco's (R) "campaign yesterday called for an IRS investigation into the use of tax-deductible money for ads last year that featured" his opponent, Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler (R), "promoting the New Jersey Scholarship Fund," the Newark Star-Ledger reports.
• AP reports on the uphill battle former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell (D) faces in "trying to do something no Philadelphian has done in more than 90 years: get elected governor of Pennsylvania."
• Andrew Cuomo (D) "started soliciting contributors and recruiting volunteers on his campaign Web site early this month" for his New York gubernatorial bid. "Cuomo is believed to be the first candidate for office in 2002 with a Web site," DMNews reports. The site is at www.andrewcuomo.com.
• AP reports that Michigan state Sen. John Schwarz (R), "who helped guide John McCain's upset GOP presidential primary win over George W. Bush in Michigan last year, is thinking of running for governor in 2002."
• Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell (R) "stunned political observers yesterday by announcing he plans to serve the remaining 22 months of his term -- then run for governor in 2006," the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.

• The California state Legislature is getting ready to pass a bill that would "pump more money into a program that helps the poor pay their utility bills," the Los Angeles Times reports.
• Blaming the state Senate's stalemate during a session that ended over the weekend, Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore (R) "ordered state agencies yesterday to temporarily freeze hiring and discretionary spending," the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
• Thomas Wayne Akers "is set for execution by injection" Thursday night in Virginia. Thursday is also International Death Penalty Abolition Day, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. Akers was charged with the 1998 murder of Wesley Smith.
• Officials with the New York chapter of the Boy Scouts "revealed they've asked the home office to lift the ban on gay scouts and troop leaders," the New York Post reports.

• Mike Leach, the man who "corrected more than 2,200 Republican Party absentee-ballot applications" in Seminole County, Fla., before the election is looking for a job. The "best he's done so far is a temporary job overseeing a post-election ballot count for the Florida GOP in Pensacola," the New York Post reports.
• Former Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn., hasn't gotten much help from Minnesota pols on either side of the aisle as he awaits "a job offer that hasn't come," the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports.
• Joseph Mesa Jr., the Gallaudet University student accused of murdering two freshmen, "was ordered held without bond yesterday pending trial" yesterday, AP reports.

• "The only question was whether rain would thin Fat Tuesday's crowds" in New Orleans today as parades "rolled as planned," AP reports. During the past week, "the pomp of the elaborate parades and imaginary royalty was the draw for some, the decadent, alcohol-fueled atmosphere of the French Quarter attracted others."