The Earlybird: Today's headlines

Faith-based office opens, Bush makes education rounds, HRC to introduce first bill, trouble brewing in Middle East, Supremes reassuring the public, Bill talks high-tech, Sanchez rumors fly in Texas, fires rage in Florida, NASCAR teams order safety device:

• President Bush's controversial new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives "officially opens for business" today, the New York Times reports.
• Bush is working on a plan "to sharply increase U.S. foreign aid" if it is "delivered overseas through 'faith-based' and other private relief organizations," USA Today reports.
• The Church of Scientology "is planning to ask Bush for money to fund its controversial drug rehabilitation and literacy programs," the Drudge Report reports.
• Bush on Monday dedicated the new Oklahoma City National Memorial Center, a "memorial about the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building," the Daily Oklahoman reports.
• Today Bush will visit Columbus, Ohio, and St. Louis to talk about his education reform package, AP reports.
• As Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card "is endeavoring to fix the mistakes of earlier administrations," the Washington Post reports in a profile of Card. He "is setting a clear and simple agenda, solidifying the party's ideological base, selecting a loyal staff, and keeping the White House 'on message,' not to mention on time."
• Bush has "discontinued" former President Clinton's "practice of conducting nightly polls to help steer policy decisions," U.S. News and World Report's "Washington Whispers" reports.
• German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer is in Washington this week to meet with Secretary of State Colin Powell and other Bush administration officials, Reuters reports. The United States' plans to build a National Missile Defense system and "European security and defense issues" will be among the things they will discuss.

• House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., and House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., have "teamed up to kill a proposal making Members eligible for tens of thousands of dollars tax free every year to help offset the financial burden of serving in Congress," Roll Call reports. The proposal, sponsored by Reps. John Doolittle, R-Calif., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif., would have allowed "a tax-free per diem of $165 for each lawmaker for every day that Congress is in session."
• Republican leaders are turning to lobbyists for help pushing Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut plan through the House, Roll Call reports.
• New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's (D) first legislative proposal will be "a package to reinvigorate the economy of upstate New York," CNN.com reports. Clinton said she "would introduce her bill in Washington next week."
• Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Lincoln Chafee, R-R.I., will travel to Ecuador "to discuss a $1.3 billion U.S.-backed program that aims to fight drug trafficking in Colombia and its impact on this nation's border region," Reuters reports.

• USS Greenville Cmdr. Scott Waddle "has refused to be interviewed by investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board," the Washington Post reports.
• "The Navy is scheduled to convene a court of inquiry this week to determine whether to court martial the skipper, executive officer and officer of the deck of the USS Greeneville," UPI reports.

• The Pentagon said Monday that "China is building a fiber-optic communications system for Iraq's new air-defense network that was targeted by U.S. and British bombing last week," the Washington Times reports.
• Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is planning to "poke and prod" the new Bush administration, Newsweek reports. Secretary of State Colin Powell begins a tour of the Middle East next week "in which one of his principal objectives is to 're-energize' U.S. policy on Iraq."
• "Patriot anti-missile missiles will be launched in the course of a five-day joint Israeli and American military exercise that began in a stretch of desert in southern Israel on Monday," AP reports.
• "Philippine police and U.S. officials have seized more than $2 trillion in fake U.S. Federal Reserve bonds in the southern region of Mindanao," AP reports.
• Human Rights Watch is calling for an investigation into witness reports that "fighters of the ruling Taliban movement may have systematically killed hundreds of civilians... in central Afghanistan last month," CBSNews.com reports.
• NASA is hoping the weather will permit the space shuttle Atlantis to land today, two days after it was scheduled to do so, AP reports.

• Today the Supreme Court will hear the case of an Oregon man who "says narcotics agents invaded his privacy and trampled on his Fourth Amendment rights when they used a device to detect excessive heat coming from his house -- without a search warrant," AP reports. The police found marijuana plants in the man's home.
• "On Wednesday, the court will consider how long the U.S. Immigration and Nationalization Service can hold immigrants they plan to deport when no country will take them," CNN.com reports.
• Since Bush's inauguration last month, which was the last time the Supreme Court justices appeared together in public, "they have been reaching out to reassure the public -- and perhaps each other -- that all is well at the court despite the bitter words spoken and deep divisions revealed by the 5-to-4 vote in Bush v. Gore," the New York Times reports.
• Leaders of the American Bar Association recommended Monday that "zero tolerance" school discipline policies should be done away with and said "the government's use of secret evidence in most immigration cases" should be stopped, AP reports.

• A new report from the United Nations says that global warming could "touch off climate changes that would literally alter ocean currents, wipe away huge portions of Alpine snowcaps and aid the spread of cholera and malaria," the Washington Post reports.
• The AP reports that the snow on top of Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro "may be disappearing."

• Former president Clinton spoke to high-tech executives at a conference sponsored by Oracle Corp. in New Orleans on Sunday, the Washington Post reports. "He discussed the Internet, the world and U.S. economic policy, but said nothing about his pardon of billionaire fugitive Marc Rich and the fierce criticism it has provoked."
• In an op-ed he wrote Sunday for the New York Times, Clinton said "he believes he acted 'in the best interests of justice' when he pardoned the fugitive financier Marc Rich, and the move had nothing to do with political donations by Rich's ex-wife," ABCNews.com reports.
• Rich business partner Pincus Green -- who did not receive a pardon -- was a "loyal lieutenant" to Rich throughout his business troubles, the New York Times reports.
• Today is the deadline for "Denise Rich to turn bank account records over to Congress," the New York Post reports.
• Clinton's half brother, Roger Clinton, was arrested over the weekend on suspicion of drunk driving, AP reports.

• "Austin is rife with rumor that respected Laredo businessman Tony Sanchez Jr." (D) will run for governor of Texas, the Washington Times reports. It is rumored that Sanchez "would spend from $10 million to $30 million of his own money and seek $10 million to $15 million more from contributors."
• Chicago Mayor Richard Daley (D) "said he plans to sit on the sidelines and watch the political donnybrook that's shaping up between former mayoral chief-of-staff John Schmidt" (D), Rep. Rod Blagojevich (D) and state Rep. Lou Lang (D) in the race for governor, the Chicago Sun-Times reports.
• "Entrepreneur Brian Sullivan officially entered the race for the 2002 GOP gubernatorial nomination" in Minnesota "Monday when he faxed papers to the state to form a campaign committee," AP reports.

• Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., announced this weekend "that he'll seek an unprecedented fifth straight term as a Michigan senator next year," the Detroit News reports.
• Former Sen. Rod Grams, R-Minn., "said last week that he is considering a challenge" to Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn, in 2002, Roll Call reports.
• When Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., made the announcement that he will not run for governor and that he will "probably" seek re-election in 2002, he "sparked a political free-for-all in Tennessee.... His move simultaneously squelched the Senate ambitions of Rep. Ed Bryant (R), revived Rep. Van Hilleary's (R) bid for governor and buoyed the prospects of two Democrats eyeing the state's top job, Reps. Bob Clement and John Tanner," Roll Call reports.
• Rep. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., "will formally kick off his campaign" to replace Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., "in a five-stop tour on Wednesday," Roll Call reports.

• California Gov. Gray Davis' (D) "plan to bring on line new power plants by as early as this summer could be hampered by serious capacity problems in the vast network of pipelines that delivers natural gas to fuel these plants," the Los Angeles Times reports.
• "Central Florida firefighters will try to stop a three-mile-wide, 1,500-acre wildfire that is expected to threaten hundreds of homes" by this afternoon, the Miami Herald reports.
• A drought in Broward County, Fla., has forced authorities to order restaurants "to stop serving water unless customers request it," the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reports.
• In Missouri, state Sen. Sen. John Loudon (R) has introduced a bill stopping "third-party 'spoiler' candidates by requiring runoffs after elections in which no one has received at least 50 percent of the vote," the Kansas City Star reports.

• After Robert Tulloch, 17, and James Parker, 16, were picked up in Indiana Monday for "two slayings that occurred three weeks ago" at Dartmouth University, "the pair remained in the jail on Monday while lawyers worked out their extradition to New Hampshire," the Indianapolis Star reports.
• AP reports that "several NASCAR teams ordered a safety device designed to protect drivers from head and neck injuries" on the day following the death of Dale Earnhardt during the Daytona 500 Sunday.
• The Washington Times spoke with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and reports that his "latest pursuit is Wall Street, where he feels minorities have not gotten a fair shake."
• "Stanley Kramer, the director of 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner,' 'Judgment at Nuremberg' and 'Inherit the Wind,' is dead at 87," UPI reports.