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(Requiescat in pace, Theresa.)

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (AP) - Terri Schiavo, the severely brain-damaged woman who spent 15 years connected to a feeding tube in an epic legal and medical battle that went all the way to the White House and Congress, died Thursday, 13 days after the tube was removed. She was 41.

Schiavo died at 9:05 a.m. at the Pinellas Park hospice where she lay for years while her husband and her parents fought over her in what was easily the longest, most bitter — and most heavily litigated — right-to-die dispute in U.S. history.

The feud ...   more »

By Stephen Henderson, Knight Ridder

WASHINGTON - The latest rejection of the Terri Schiavo case by a federal court was accompanied by a stinging rebuke of Congress and President Bush from a seemingly unlikely source: Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr., one of the most conservative jurists on the federal bench.

Birch authored opinions upholding Alabama's right to ban the sale of sex toys and Florida's ability to prohibit adoptions by gay couples. Both rulings drew the ire of liberal activists and the elation of traditional and social conservatives.

Yet, in Wednesday's 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to ...   more »

WASHINGTON (AP) - America's spy agencies were "dead wrong" in most prewar assessments about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and know disturbingly little about current nuclear threats, a presidential commission said Thursday.

"Our collection agencies are often unable to gather intelligence on the very things we care the most about," the panel concluded in an unsparing report…

Bush read a prepared statement, flanked by retired Judge Laurence Silberman, a Republican, and former Democratic Sen. Charles Robb of Virginia, co-chairmen of the panel.

The president then strode from the room, leaving the two men behind to field questions on ...   more »

(Freedom is on the crawl.)

Iraqi Assembly Again Fails to Elect Speaker or Fill Other Key Positions

By Caryle Murphy, Washington Post

BAGHDAD, March 29 -- Iraq's new National Assembly had just convened for its second session Tuesday when a wide-girthed Shiite Muslim cleric, Hussein Sadr, appealed to his fellow deputies to quickly elect a speaker.

"Public opinion on the street is now waiting for some action by us. What can we answer?" he said. "What shall we say to history?"…

Full article

By Steve Weissman, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

A frightening tale from Iraq shows how Mr. Bush's call to "democratize" the Middle East has already bogged down in the graveyard of impossible choices. The story first appeared in the Arab language press, then in the Times of London in a powerful article by Catherine Philp.

As Ms. Philp tells it, some university students in the southern Iraqi city of Basra were having a picnic at a local park, when dozens of armed men came running at them. The men were members of the Mehdi Army, ...   more »