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The Secret Service is in court responding to a lawsuit from Steven Howards, a man accused of assaulting Dick Cheney in June 2006. Howards’ suit against five agents alleges that they violated his freedom of speech and civil rights after he touched Cheney on the shoulder and denounced the Iraq war. Meanwhile, the agents have accused one another of unethical and illegal conduct in their handling of Howards’ arrest. (New York Times)

Immediately before and after Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) bought 145,000 trailers through no-bid contracts. Later, when the trailers became problematic, FEMA sold the trailers for 40 cents on the dollar. Now, FEMA has offered to buy them back at the original purchase price because the trailers may be a health risk as a result of high levels of formaldehyde. Meanwhile, a UN official who recently toured the Gulf coast says that many of the poor displaced by Katrina resemble poor people every where else in the world who have been displaced by natural disasters. (Washington Post, AP)

Just yesterday, Bhutto’s Pakistan’s People Party called for the United Nations to conduct an inquiry into Bhutto’s assassination. Today, the CIA, in its most “definitive public assessment” to date, asserts that Bhutto was murdered by al Qaeda and allies of the tribal leader Baitullah Mehsud. (Financial Times)

Both the ACLU and the Bush administration are opposing a potential compromise amendment to the FISA bill scheduled to be discussed next week in the Senate. The amendment, supported by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), would substitute the government for the telecommunication companies as a defendant in litigation against the companies instead of granting the companies retroactive immunity. (The Hill)

Mitt Romney, who often boasts that he’s not a politician, proudly declared that he is most fit to govern because “I don’t have lobbyists running my campaign” and “I don’t have lobbyists at my elbows.” However, as the AP documents (after Romney sparred with an AP reporter over the issue), the registered lobbyist Ron Kaufman (chairman of Washington-based Dutko Worldwide) often sits across the aisle from Romney on his campaign plane, and the campaign is chock full of Washington insiders and registered lobbyists. (Huffington Post, AP)

A military inquiry into a shooting incident on a highway in Afghanistan last March that left 19 people dead has so far revealed only uncertainty about the event. Testimony from marines involved has been inconsistent on where on the highway and from what direction they believed enemy fire to have originated. (Los Angeles Times)

An 1887 Kansas law that empowers citizens to initiate grand jury investigations has become a weapon that anti-abortion activists are wielding against a local doctor and Wichita abortion clinic operator. The religious activists, by collecting enough signatures, have forced an investigation of the doctor that abortion rights advocates describe as a modern witch hunt. (AP)

Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, who was under investigation for allegedly accepting bribes from a defense contractor, raised over $250,000 last year for his legal defense fund. The amounts were revealed in reports Gibbons filed with the Nevada Secretary of State’s office. (KNRV.com)

The Department of Homeland Security is planning to replace the network it uses to share counterterrorism information among various government agencies. According to a DHS memo from last fall, many of the over 100 web “portals” on the network – which cost more than $90 million to develop – are “duplicative in their capabilities.” (Washington Post)

Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) finally caught up with Roger Chapin of the Help Hospitalized Veterans charity. Last year, Chapin had fled his home to avoid a subpoena from Waxman’s oversight committee. The Congressional inquiry uncovered new allegations of suspect payments from Chapin’s charity, including a $100,000 payment to retired General Tommy Franks who helped Chapin raise money for his organization (it received an F from the American Institute of Philanthropy). Waxman’s conclusion was that “most of the millions” “never reach veterans or their families” and are instead wasted “on bloated overhead costs and self-enrichment.” (Washington Post, ABC’s “The Blotter”)

A Government Accountability Office report documents how legal aid programs of The Legal Services Corp., a non-profit that is federally funded and designed to help the poor, also funded booze, interest-free loans for staff, and lobby registration fees. A Congressional investigation has questioned up to $1 million in expenditures. (AP)

Massey Energy Co., the country’s fourth largest coal producer, has been ordered to pay a $20 million fine for repeated violations of the Clean Water Act in dumping waste in Kentucky and West Virginia. The fine comes at a time when a group backed by the coal industry is lobbying for public support for coal-generated electricity and opposing environmental legislation that would affect coal companies. (New York Times, Washington Post)

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