WASHINGTON - The Bush administration will ask for another $100 billion for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and seek $145 billion for 2008, a senior administration official said Friday.

Gov. Janet Napolitano lashed out Wednesday at the Bush administration for firing Arizona U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton — especially if it was because he didn’t prosecute some marijuana cases.

The Bush administration’s case against alleged dirty bomber Jose Padilla has sputtered to an inglorious close.

President Bush undoubtedly felt he had no choice but to dig in and fight a gathering move in the House and Senate to subpoena several of his top White House aides in connection with the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

BURBANK, Wash. - The Bush administration on Friday froze the assets of five European-based organizations it says raise money for the radical Palestinian group Hamas.

WASHINGTON - President Bush named L. Paul Bremer, a former ambassador and head of the State Department's counterterrorism office, to become civilian administrator in Iraq and oversee the country's transition to democratic rule.

WASHINGTON - Bracing for a showdown, the United States and Britain plan to present a new resolution to the U.N. Security Council on Monday in a bid to gain support for using force to disarm Iraq.

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration Friday raised the national terror alert from yellow to orange, the second-highest level in the color-coded system. Attorney General John Ashcroft cited an “increased likelihood’’ that the al-Qaida terror network would attack against Americans, either at home or abroad.

The Supreme Court has taken another welcome step in thwarting President Bush’s authoritarian plans for handling suspects swept up in the war on terror. Earlier it had ruled that the president did not have the power he claimed to imprison suspects indefinitely without charge or access to lawyers and the courts.

WASHINGTON - Bracing for a showdown, the United States and Britain plan to present a new resolution to the U.N. Security Council on Monday in a bid to gain support for using force to disarm Iraq.

General agreement among political observers after the U.S. Senate failed to advance immigration reform Thursday is the issue might not come back until 2009, after another round of congressional elections and a new president is in the White House.

Put this in the category of "What else aren't they telling us?"

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Republican Sen. John McCain, a staunch defender of the Iraq war, on Tuesday faulted the Bush administration for misleading Americans into believing the conflict would be "some kind of day at the beach." The potential 2008 presidential candidate, who a day earlier had rejected calls for withdrawing U.S. forces, said the administration had failed to make clear the challenges facing the military.

The Obama administration is deporting more illegal immigrants than even before, undermining blasts by Republicans, including Gov. Jan Brewer, that it is failing in its duty to deal with the problem.

Susan Stamper Brown

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration aimed squarely at the crisis clogging the nation's credit system Monday with a plan to take over up to $1 trillion in sour mortgage securities with the help of private investors. For once, Wall Street cheered.

When they torpedoed his immigration-reform bill, congressional Republicans challenged President Bush to enforce the existing laws more vigorously. Now his administration has taken them up on it.

Sen. Charles Schumer, the liberal Democrat from New York, raised the hackles and suspicions of Republican conservatives when he spoke warmly of Michael Mukasey, President Bush’s choice to be U.S. attorney general, and said the former judge had the potential to be “a consensus nominee.”

President Bush’s $2.9 trillion budget rests on several optimistic — many would say unrealistic — assumptions.

The White House had hoped to hold off asking for more money to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan until after the election, but with costs rising faster than expected, it sent a request for an early $25 billion to Congress this week.

You'd have to be a fool, blindly partisan or inattentive not to think several Democratic members of the 9/11 commission see it as their mission to blacken the Bush administration.

Friday afternoon, the White House’s preferred time for actions to which it wishes to draw minimal attention, President Bush issued a longawaited executive order on torture.

INDEPENDENCE, Mo. - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan took his criticism of the Bush administration to the nation's heartland Monday, saying America must not sacrifice its democratic ideals while waging war against terrorism.

WASHINGTON - As Yasser Arafat was buried, President Bush raised hopes Friday for a Middle East peace and the creation of an independent Palestinian state within four years, suggesting decades of distrust and frustration could be altered by the change of Palestinian leadership.