CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Al Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri will soon release a new message about the pope, President Bush and Sudan's troubled Darfur region, an Islamic Web site said Wednesday.

A banner warning of the upcoming message was posted on an Islamic Web site that frequently airs al Qaeda videos. Wednesday's notice did not specify whether the new message was a video, audiotape or text, but al-Zawahiri usually releases videos.

Their announcement? They acknowledge the existence of a second report, but have a little problem sharing it with the nation juuuust yet:

WYOMING - Vice President Dick Cheney made a stop in West Michigan on Monday. Cheney spoke to troops and their families at the Grand Valley Armory in Wyoming. He will also attend a private fundraising event for U.S. Senate candidate Mike Bouchard.

The Pentagon's top brass has moved into second-stage contingency planning for a potential military strike on Iran, one senior intelligence official familiar with the plans tells RAW STORY.

The official, who is close to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest ranking officials of each branch of the US military, says the Chiefs have started what is called "branches and sequels" contingency planning.

"The JCS has accepted the inevitable," the intelligence official said, "and is engaged in serious contingency planning to deal with the worst case scenarios that the intelligence community has been painting."

Earlier this afternoon, TPM Muckraker reported that the panel had voted down the bill, 18-17:

House Panel Defeats WH Detainee Bill; GOP in Conflict
By Justin Rood - September 20, 2006, 3:20 PM

House Judiciary Committee votes down White House-backed detainee bill, CQ reports (sub. req.):

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday rejected the Bush administration's proposed ground rules for interrogation and trial of enemy combatants captured in the war on terrorism, defeating a bill that was approved last week by the Armed Services Committee.

   

That brilliant marketing idea catapulted said operative Morgan Wilkins into her fifteen minutes of shame: in just two blog-hyped days, she shot from the relative obscurity of race-baiting NCRC hired gun to being named Keith Olbermann's Worst Person in the World, earning the wrath of Howard Dean in the process. No small feat, that. But now, apparently unwilling to let such a repugnant stunt die its deserved death, yet another wingnut from the same campus has re-launched the CAIID brand in the wake of its de facto recall last week:

In a speech to the European Parliament's foreign affairs committee on Tuesday, Pakistan's President General Pervez Musharraf blamed the United States and the West for "breeding terrorism in his country by bringing in thousands of mujahideen to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan and then leaving Pakistan alone a decade later to face the armed warriors," according to an article at Pakistan's Daily Times published on Wednesday.

That line might be funny if it weren't so sadly close to the truth, as reported by student Andrew Grossman in U of Michigan's Michigan Daily:

It's still early in the election season, but the College Republicans and College Democrats have already launched campaigns to seduce your vote in November.

...Morgan Wilkins, the intern hired by the Republican National Committee to win the hearts and minds of Michigan 20-somethings, is planning events that some may find odd. To others, they may be offensive.

One such idea is "Catch an Illegal Immigrant Day," in which a volunteer would play the part of an illegal immigrant and hide somewhere on campus while others try to find him. The winner would receive a prize.

Saying he lacked jurisdiction, a judge Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit seeking a recount in the special election that Republican Brian Bilbray won in June to replace disgraced ex-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

Superior Court Judge Yuri Hoffman said that once the House of Representatives asserted its exclusive right to swear Bilbray into office, it left the court without jurisdiction in the election contest.

Like most Democratic insiders, I have a love-hate relationship with bloggers and the "net-roots" community. At times, I am irritated by many of their strident, arrogant, self-righteous comments and their disapproving attitudes about us old dinosaurs. But after they helped score an impressive primary victory this summer in the Connecticut Senate Democratic primary between incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman and unknown businessman Ned Lamont, they clearly have earned a seat at the table -- even if it's just a folding chair.

THREATENED by a potentially nuclear-armed Tehran, Israel is preparing for a possible war with both Iran and Syria, according to Israeli political and military sources.

The conflict with Hezbollah has led to a strategic rethink in Israel. A key conclusion is that too much attention has been paid to Palestinian militants in Gaza and the West Bank instead of the two biggest state sponsors of terrorism in the region, who pose a far greater danger to Israel's existence, defence insiders say.

FRIENDS of Hillary Clinton have been whispering the unthinkable. Despite her status as the runaway frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president, some of her closest advisers say she might opt out of the White House race and seek to lead her party in the Senate...

"I would not be surprised if she were to decide that the best contribution she can make to her country is to forget about being president and become a consensus-maker in the Senate," said a leading Democratic party insider. "She believes there is no trust between the two political sides and that we can't function as a democracy without it."

(WSJ)--In both national elections since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, President Bush and congressional Republicans successfully played the national-security card to win big victories against the odds. Now, with their party's control of Congress at stake, Republicans are betting on the issue again. But it may not be the trump card it used to be.

The public's patience has frayed as the Iraq war grows bloodier in its fourth year, eroding confidence in Mr. Bush's stewardship of national security. Mismanagement of the response to Hurricane Katrina contributed. Democrats, having ceded the security issue to Republicans in the past, now are on the offensive. They're attacking the administration's competence at home and abroad and fielding candidates with military experience.

Lawmakers sent Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill Wednesday that would make California the first state to jump aboard a national movement to elect the president by popular vote.

Under the legislation, California would grant its electoral votes to the nominee who gets the most votes nationwide -- not the most votes in California. Get enough other states to do the same, backers of the bill say, and soon presidential candidates will have to campaign across the nation, not just in a few key "battleground" states such as Ohio and Michigan that can sway the Electoral College vote.

Vice President Dick Cheney predicted Monday that a recent federal court ruling finding a warrantless surveillance program unconstitutional will be overturned on appeal..."It's hard to think of any category of information that would be more important to the safety and security of the United States...The recent ruling by a federal judge ordering an end to this program is just dead wrong. We are confident it will be reversed on appeal.

"We are at another turning point in the history of the law," Kennedy remarked. Discussing the importance of an independent judiciary, Kennedy added, "I sense a slight foreboding, I sense that we are not making the case as well as we ought."