The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Bush details tax plan and fills more slots, Israel votes today, environmental orders lapse, patients' rights bill hits Congress, media group reviews ballots, Pataki sports small lead, Reagan turns 90:

• President Bush brought four families he said will benefit from his tax plan to the White House Monday as part of his effort to lobby for income tax cuts this week, CNN.com reports.
• Bush warned Congress "not to tamper with" his tax-cut plan and said he will "defend it mightily," the Washington Times reports. He also said he wants to make the cut retroactive to Jan. 1.
• "The White House has set up a war room operation with congressional Republicans to promote" Bush's tax plan, the Washington Times reports.
• Bush did not address the Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes that eat "up much more of a worker's paycheck," the Washington Post reports.
• The Bush administration is considering "imposing capital-gains taxes on estates" in order "to win congressional support for eliminating the estate tax," the Wall Street Journal reports.

• Elections for prime minister of Israel take place today, and Ariel Sharon -- "a hard-boiled product of the Cold War" -- is likely to win, the Wall Street Journal reports.
• During the first day of the New York trial stemming from the "bombings of the American Embassies in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya, on Aug. 7, 1998," a lawyer for one of the defendants "acknowledged yesterday for the first time that his client was involved in making the bomb," the New York Times reports.
• "Two days after American officials told their European counterparts that the United States intended to go ahead and develop a national missile shield... Russia responded... with a sober warning that it is ready to resort to a new arms race to ensure that its strategic rocket forces will not be undermined," the New York Times reports.

• Bush has nominated Paul Wolfowitz to be "deputy secretary of defense, responsible for managing the Pentagon's sprawling bureaucracy and, perhaps more than his predecessors, involving himself in foreign policy," the New York Times reports.
• Mindy Tucker, who served as a spokeswoman during Bush's campaign, has been named director of public affairs at the Justice Department, the Dallas Morning News' "Washington Watch" reports.
• Former GOP Rep. Tillie Fowler announced yesterday she "will join the federal public law group at Holland and Knight, the largest law firm in Florida and sixth-largest nationwide," ending "speculation that President Bush would tap her as secretary of the Navy," the Florida Times Union reports.
• Bush may have a "tough time" making his sub-Cabinet as diverse as his Cabinet, "given the slim roster of minority Republicans from which to choose," the Wall Street Journal reports.

• Bush "will allow a federal order to expire Tuesday that required wholesale electricity companies to sell to California's cash-strapped utilities," AP reports.
• California Gov. Gray Davis (D) "used his emergency authority Monday to seize long-term power contracts held by one of the state's financially strapped utilities just before the assets could have been seized by creditors," AP reports.
• Bush also "delayed a rule banning road-building and most logging in the nation's forests," the Washington Times reports.
• And "as Congress prepares to square off over oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a small company has quietly applied to drill" on the 700,000-acre Copper River Delta, the Los Angeles Times reports. The delta is "the most important shorebird stopover on the Pacific Coast -- and home of the best-tasting salmon in the world."

• During his meeting with Bush Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien did not say "whether he supports the missile defense system Bush intends to build," CNN.com reports.
• At a church in Florida, the Rev. Jerry Falwell "commended " Bush for several of his initiatives and rallied "the religious right to push for a re-election effort for the President," AP reports.
• AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said Monday "that unions hoped to work with President Bush on issues like a patients' bill of rights" and that "unions would hold Mr. Bush and Republican lawmakers accountable if they took stands that in labor's eyes did not help working families," the New York Times reports.

• "Lawmakers will introduce legislation on Tuesday to give Americans an unprecedented right to sue their health plans -- but they will do so without the help of its chief Republican sponsor," Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., Reuters reports. The Wall Street Journal reports that Bush will offer his own plan.
• Sens. Richard C. Shelby, R-Ala., and Bob Graham, D-Fla., are "struggling over how to organize the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence," which has eight members from each party, the Washington Post reports.
• Sens. Jim Jeffords, R-Vt., and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said Monday that they are "pleased with Bush's emphasis on education reform" but that they also plan to push for increased education spending, AP reports.

• Bill Clinton gave his first speech as a former president on Monday night at a convention sponsored by Morgan Stanley Dean Witter in Florida, the Miami Herald reports. Protesters greeted him outside the building, and the speech's content will not be made public.
• Clinton said Monday that he will "return any item mistakenly registered as a personal gift to the Clintons rather than the permanent White House collection," Reuters reports.
• The newly-formed Clinton Democracy Fellowship Program, a "Peace Corps-like program," will "bring young people to the United States to train them for community service," AP reports.
• Donations to the Clinton library in Little Rock, Ark., will be used to subsidize Clinton's New York City office, the Washington Times reports.
• Another one of Clinton's pardons is making headlines: Almon Glenn Braswell was "being investigated for new potential felonies" at the time of the pardon, and "some Justice Department officials are questioning whether the president's broadly worded order could hamper their inquiry," the New York Times reports.

• The National Opinion Research Center, a firm hired by news organizations including the Associated Press, CNN, the New York Times, the Palm Beach Post, the St. Petersburg Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, began reviewing ballots in Florida yesterday, AP reports. The group "plans to build a database that will describe in detail the estimated 180,000 ballots that did not register a vote for president during machine counts."
• Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., "said he will introduce a measure this week to distribute as much as $387 million next year for a national 'buyout' of punch-card voting machines," the Washington Post reports. Hoyer was speaking at a meeting of the National Association of Secretaries of State yesterday.

• A "landmark" study released Monday by Brigham Young University shows that "political parties spent $469 million in soft money" in 2000, CNN.com reports.
• The political Web site Voter.com "is closing its doors, effective immediately," CongressDailyAM reports.

• In New Jersey, "Democrat James McGreevey holds an early lead" in the 2001 race for governor "over both of his potential Republican opponents, acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco and Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler," the Newark Star-Ledger reports.
• New York Gov. George Pataki (R) "leads his potential Democratic opponents by about 10 percentage points -- even though his own tally is under 50 percent," the New York Post reports.
• Iowa state House Speaker Brent Siegrist (R) announced yesterday that he will not run for governor, while state Rep. Steve Sukup (R) said "that he had firmed his decision to run against" Gov. Tom Vilsack (D), the Des Moines Register reports.
• South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon (R) and Secretary of State Jim Miles (R) have both announced they will run for their party's nomination to challenge Gov. Jim Hodges (D), AP reports.

• Four people were killed and four wounded outside Chicago yesterday when William Baker opened fire at a Navistar International Corp. plant, where he used to work, the Chicago Tribune reports.
• "D.C. police are continuing to collect evidence and question students at Gallaudet University, where freshman Benjamin Varner was found fatally stabbed in his dorm room in Cogswell Hall early Saturday," the Washington Times reports. Varner's family spoke with reporters yesterday.
• Holy Land, "the controversial Christian" theme park in Orlando, Fla., opened yesterday "with fervent prayers, muted protest and a full house of paying customers," the Orlando Sentinel reports.
• Stanley Lingar is set to be executed in Missouri tomorrow for the 1985 murder of 16-year-old Thomas Scott Allen, AP reports. Gov. Bob Holden (D) is being lobbied "to stop the execution of an inmate who they said was convicted largely because of his homosexuality."
• AP reports that 61 people were injured yesterday when "when an Amtrak train crashed into the back of a freight train in" Syracuse, N.Y.

• Today is former President Ronald Reagan's (R) 90th birthday, the Washington Times reports. The New York Times reports that he will enjoy "a quiet dinner with his wife, some chocolate cake, maybe some physical therapy."
• Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger "said that he had thought many times about running for office" and left open the possibility that he would run for governor in California against Gov. Davis, Reuters reports.
• Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman announced yesterday they were separating, the Newark Star-Ledger reports.
• Stacey Stillman, "a castaway on last summer's hugely successful" Survivor series, has sued CBS, "charging that the network and show producer Mark Burnett conspired to get her voted off the show -- and out of the running for the $1 million jackpot," the New York Daily News reports.