The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Energy's critics, Rumsfeld's changes, CBO's forecast, Riordan's challenge, Kennedy's blunders, Clinton's Polish breakfast:

• During a speech in St. Paul, Minn., on Thursday, President Bush unveiled his plan for a national energy policy, the St. Paul Pioneer Press reports. "While Bush lauded conservation and energy efficiency, he devoted more time to a vision of more pipelines, power lines, nuclear reactors, oil refineries and up to 1,900 more power plants."
• Bush also outlined his plan in Nevada, Iowa, on Thursday, the Des Moines Register reports. During the "brief stop," Bush signaled that "he would make an announcement soon that will mean broader use of ethanol."
  
• NationalJournal.com has a copy of Bush's plan.
• "The report is aimed at increasing energy supply over the next 20 years, but does little to address shortages or price spikes near term. The hitch is that the White House doesn't have much control over key aspects of its own blueprint," the Wall Street Journal reports.
• Today Bush will visit Lancaster County, Pa., "for a photo-op at the Safe Harbor Dam hydroelectric plant," the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports.

• "Lawmakers in Congress were predictably split along party lines in their reactions to the Bush administration's energy strategy," CNN.com reports.
• Environmentalists said an error in the Bush administration's report -- which falsely said "that New Hampshire 'must conserve power on hot days to avoid summer blackouts'" -- "should cast doubt on the validity of the whole report and on its assertion that new oil drilling is necessary to guarantee sufficient supplies," the Boston Globe reports.
• California Gov. Gray Davis (D) criticized the plan, saying "Bush's pledge to speed up power plant permits and conserve at federal facilities offers no short-term relief for California's rolling blackouts and record power bills," AP reports.
• About 300 "vocal but peaceful Minnesotans" protested Bush's speech, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports.

• "Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday he is considering some of the biggest changes in military personnel policy in half a century, including doing away with the 'up or out' system that requires officers either to be promoted or to retire," the Washington Post reports. Rumsfeld also said he is considering withdrawing the U.S. peacekeepers from Bosnia.
• Rumsfeld is also working to persuade "Congress to add billions to the current defense budget," the New York Times reports.

• On Thursday the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 9-9 along party lines on "the nomination of Theodore Olson as solicitor general," the Dallas Morning News reports. "While a tie vote normally would spell the end of the road for a nominee, an unusual power-sharing agreement in the 50-50 Senate allows Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., to salvage the nomination and bring it to the Senate floor."
• "Longtime Justice Department official" Robert S. Mueller III "is a leading candidate to become the next FBI director," the Boston Globe reports.

• On Thursday the Senate "defeated an effort by Democrats to amend an 11-year, $1.35 trillion tax-cut bill so that the wealthiest Americans would benefit less," AP reports.
• Conservative Republicans in the House challenged "a fragile bipartisan accord on President Bush's education plan" on Thursday by offering "a package of amendments opposed by Democrats and moderate Republicans," Reuters reports. "Most of the conservatives' amendments stood little chance of passage, Republican and Democratic lawmakers said."

• Today the Congressional Budget Office will release "an update of its budget-surplus forecast that will show no significant slippage despite the slower economy," the Wall Street Journal's "Washington Wire" reports.
• "Early indications pointed to a positive start" for the stock market today, CNNfn.com reports.

• "Right-wing gunmen have released some 200 farm laborers, including many children, whom they had kidnapped at a plantation in eastern Colombia in an attempt to recruit new fighters," Reuters reports.
• "At least four people have been killed and 57 injured in a suicide bomb attack in the Israeli coastal resort of Netanya," CNN.com reports.
• Secretary of State Colin Powell announced Thursday "a $43 million package in humanitarian assistance" for Afghanistan, CNN.com reports.

• "The Dallas FBI special agent at the center of the controversy over belatedly produced Oklahoma City bombing investigation documents acknowledged Thursday that he first learned in January of the possibility that evidence had been withheld from Timothy McVeigh's legal team," the Dallas Morning News reports.
• "Outgoing FBI director Louis Freeh, under attack for a third day in Congress, conceded yesterday that 'cultural problems' at the bureau contributed to the mishandling of documents in the Timothy McVeigh case," Reuters reports.

• Los Angeles Mayor Richard J. Riordan (R), "prompted in part by a prodding phone call from" Bush, now says he is giving "serious thought" to challenging California Gov. Gray Davis (D) in 2002, National Journal reports.
• Former President Bill Clinton "plans to campaign this fall for Democratic governor candidate Jim McGreevey in New Jersey," the Wall Street Journal's "Washington Wire" reports.
• New Jersey Right to Life announced its endorsement of Bret Schundler in the New Jersey GOP gubernatorial primary, the Newark Star-Ledger reports.
• Virginia gubernatorial candidate Mark Warner (D) outlined "a four-point plan" for education yesterday at Capital One Financial Corp. in Richmond, Va., "that would offer need-based financial assistance to good students and earmark $250 million a year for new buildings at public colleges and universities," the Washington Times reports.

• South Carolina businessman Hayne Hipp (D) is "keeping any interest he might have" in running for Senate in 2002 "to himself," the Greenville News reports. The chairman of the state Democratic Party "said it's his understanding that Hipp is considering the race."
• Arkansas Attorney General Mark Pryor (D) "sounds some of the themes he will use during his 2002 Senate race" in a fund-raising letter sent out this week, citing "among other things his actions on behalf of utility ratepayers and nursing-home residents and against pharmaceutical companies and telemarketers," the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.
• Niki Tsongas, widow of former Sen. Paul Tsongas, D-Mass., said yesterday she "will not be following her husband... into elective politics, at least not in 2002," the Boston Globe reports.

• After Virginia state Sen. Louise Lucas (D), who is running in the 4th District special election next month, "called for a bipartisan congressional investigation of gas prices," her opponent, state Sen. Randy Forbes (R), accused her of "searching for headlines rather than trying to make public policy," the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
• Massachusetts 9th District candidate Max Kennedy (D) gave "his first political speech" yesterday, and he "appeared confused, and, at one point, erupted in nervous laughter for no apparent reason," the Boston Globe reports.
• And Massachusetts state Sen. Stephen F. Lynch (D) "said yesterday he isn't ruling out the possibility of running as an independent in the race" for the 9th District seat currently held by retiring Rep. Joe Moakley, D-Mass., the Boston Herald reports.
• Florida Comptroller Bob Milligan (R) is considering a 2002 congressional bid, the Tallahassee Democrat reports. "He hasn't decided whether he would stay in Tallahassee and take on Rep. Allen Boyd, a Democrat, or move back to his former home in Panama City and run" in the 1st District.

• The Governor's Columbine Review Commission released its final report on the 1999 Columbine High School shooting Thursday, finding that "authorities ignored warning signs exposing Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's murderous plans," the Denver Post reports.
• Former baseball star Darryl Strawberry "was given another chance Thursday to beat his drug habit when a judge sent" him "to a rehabilitation center instead of prison," AP reports.
• A report from the General Services Administration "found that the White House vandalism flap earlier this year was a flop" and that "departing members of the Clinton administration had not trashed Air Force One or White House phones and computers during the presidential transition, as unnamed aides to President Bush and other critics had insisted," the Newark Star-Ledger reports.
• "The yolk was on Bill Clinton yesterday" when the former president was pelted with a raw egg thrown by a protester in Warsaw, Poland, the New York Post reports.