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  Ever-Expanding Secret
  Ever since its secret domestic wiretapping program was exposed, the Bush administration has depicted it as a narrow examination of calls made by and to suspected terrorists. But its refusal to provide any details about the extent of the spying has raised doubts. Now there is more reason than ever to be worried — and angry — about how wide the government's web has been reaching.
  
  According to an article in USA Today, the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting telephone records on tens of millions of Americans with the cooperation of the three largest telecommunications companies in the nation. The scope of the domestic spying described in the article is breathtaking. The government is reported to be working with AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth to collect data on phone calls made by untold millions of customers.
  
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  Bush Breaks and Ignores Hundreds of Laws
  President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
  
  Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
  
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  With Massive Deficits and a War, GOP Gives $70 Billion Tax Break to the Wealthy
  The Senate voted 54 to 44 on Thursday to pass almost $70 billion in tax cuts, mostly for the nation's wealthiest taxpayers. The action ensures that virtually all of President Bush's tax cuts will be locked in place until after the next presidential election.
  
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  House Injects Prayer Into Defense Bill
  The House passed a $513 billion defense authorization bill yesterday that includes language intended to allow chaplains to pray in the name of Jesus at public military ceremonies, undercutting new Air Force and Navy guidelines on religion.
  
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  Names of the Dead
  The Department of Defense has identified 2,418 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans this week:
  
  CARBONARO, Alessandro, 28, Sgt., Marines; Bethesda, Md.; Second Marine Division.
  
  LATIMER, Aaron P., 26, Specialist, Army; Ennis, Tex.; 562nd Engineer Company, 172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team.
  

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  AT&T Helped Government Spy on American Citizens
  Attorneys for AT&T have asked a federal judge to order a San Francisco civil liberties group to return ``highly confidential'' documents that allegedly show that the telecommunications giant provided detailed records of millions of its customers to a government intelligence agency.
  
  In documents filed on Monday, AT&T's attorneys also asked Judge Vaughn Walker to order the Electronic Frontier Foundation to refrain from referencing the documents in its lawsuit.
  
  The EFF filed a lawsuit against AT&T in January alleging that AT&T had collaborated with the National Security Agency in a ``massive and illegal program to wiretap and data-mine Americans' communications.''
  
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  Archives Kept a Secrecy Secret
  The National Archives helped keep secret a multi-year effort by the Air Force, the CIA and other federal agencies to withdraw thousands of historical documents from public access on Archives shelves, even though the records had been declassified.
  
  In a 2002 memorandum, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and released yesterday by the National Security Archive, a nonprofit research library housed at George Washington University, Archives officials agreed to help pull the materials for possible reclassification and conceal the identities of anyone participating in the effort. The Associated Press reported yesterday that it had requested a copy of the memo three years ago.
  
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  Deaths of U.S. Soldiers Climb Again in Iraq
  The American military on Tuesday announced the deaths of five soldiers, bringing the number of troops killed this month to at least 32. That figure already surpasses the American military deaths for all of March.
  
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  Names of the Dead
  The Department of Defense has identified 2,348 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:
  
  GARDNER, James W., 22, Specialist, Army; Glasgow, Ky.; 101st Airborne Division.
  
  LOVE, Joseph I., 22, Pfc., Army; North Pole, Alaska; 94th Engineer Combat Battalion, Eighth Sustainment Command.
  
  MISSILDINE, Jody W., 19, Pvt., Army; Plant City, Fla.; First Armored Division.
  
  NAVARROARELLANO, Juana, 24, Lance Cpl., Marines; Ceres, Calif.; Ninth Engineer Support Battalion, Third Marine Logistics Group, Third Marine Expeditionary Force.
  
  TAYLOR, Bryan N., 20, Lance Cpl., Marines; Milford, Ohio; Second Marine Division.
  
  WALLER, Richard P., 22, Cpl., Marines; Fort Worth; First Battalion, First Marines, Fi
  
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  Adventures in Testifying
  It's very hard to figure out what Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is trying to tell the nation when he testifies about President Bush's domestic spying program. But it is important to listen, because there is news between the lines. None of it is good.
  
  But there were two important pieces of information buried in the testimony. For one thing, he seemed to confirm that the one warrantless N.S.A. spying program Mr. Bush has owned up to is not the only one going on. And Mr. Gonzales told the committee he could not rule out that Mr. Bush believes he has the authority to intercept not just international telephone calls but also domestic calls between American citizens. Mr. Gonzales said this would happen only if the call was about Al Qaeda, but we have to wonder exactly how the government would know what the call is about without listening. And what we've been able to learn about the admitted spying suggests that it mostly turns up false leads.
  
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  Phone-Jamming Records Point to White House
  Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.
  
  The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 — as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.
  
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  With One Filing, Prosecutor Puts Bush in Spotlight
  From the early days of the C.I.A. leak investigation in 2003, the Bush White House has insisted there was no effort to discredit Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man who emerged as the most damaging critic of the administration's case that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.
  
  But now White House officials, and specifically President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, have been pitched back into the center of the nearly three-year controversy, this time because of a prosecutor's court filing in the case that asserts there was "a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House," to undermine Mr. Wilson.
  
  Mr. Fitzgerald's filing talks not of an effort to level with Americans but of "a plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson." It concludes, "It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish Wilson.' "
  

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  Bush Ordered Declassification, Official Says
  A senior administration official confirmed for the first time on Sunday that President Bush had ordered the declassification of parts of a prewar intelligence report on Iraq in an effort to rebut critics who said the administration had exaggerated the nuclear threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
  
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  U.S. Study Paints Somber Portrait of Iraqi Discord
  An internal staff report by the United States Embassy and the military command in Baghdad provides a sobering province-by-province snapshot of Iraq's political, economic and security situation, rating the overall stability of 6 of the 18 provinces "serious" and one "critical." The report is a counterpoint to some recent upbeat public statements by top American politicians and military officials.
  
  The report, 10 pages of briefing points titled "Provincial Stability Assessment," underscores the shift in the nature of the Iraq war three years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein. Warnings of sectarian and ethnic frictions are raised in many regions, even in those provinces generally described as nonviolent by American officials.
  
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  Third Retired General Wants Rumsfeld Out
  The three-star Marine Corps general who was the military's top operations officer before the invasion of Iraq expressed regret, in an essay published Sunday, that he did not more energetically question those who had ordered the nation to war. He also urged active-duty officers to speak out now if they had doubts about the war.
  
  Lt. Gen. Gregory Newbold, who retired in late 2002, also called for replacing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and "many others unwilling to fundamentally change their approach." He is the third retired senior officer in recent weeks to demand that Mr. Rumsfeld step down.
  
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  A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic
  As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.
  
  Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
  
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  U.S. Military Secrets for Sale at Afghan Bazaar
  No more than 200 yards from the main gate of the sprawling U.S. base here, stolen computer drives containing classified military assessments of enemy targets, names of corrupt Afghan officials and descriptions of American defenses are on sale in the local bazaar.
  
  Shop owners at the bazaar say Afghan cleaners, garbage collectors and other workers from the base arrive each day offering purloined goods, including knives, watches, refrigerators, packets of Viagra and flash memory drives taken from military laptops. The drives, smaller than a pack of chewing gum, are sold as used equipment.
  

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  $29 billion in congressional pork
  Nearly 10,000 projects account for a record $29 billion in federal pork-barrel spending for the current budget year, Citizens Against Government Waste said. Spending on local line-items rose 6.2 percent last year, the group said.
  
  Pork — generally defined as local projects folded into large spending bills without a hearing — has long been a favorite target of government watchdogs. A ballooning national debt, growing war costs and huge reconstruction costs along the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast have raised pork hunting to new heights.
  
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  Resolving the Wiretap Debate
  Congress seems to lack the backbone to stop President Bush from authorizing wiretaps without court orders, and censuring him would probably not do much to make him follow the law. What could make a real difference would be a Supreme Court ruling that found his domestic surveillance program to be illegal.
  
  A recently introduced bill would provide a good way to resolve the matter: putting the National Security Agency's secret spying program on a fast track to Supreme Court review.
  
  Under the bill, which was introduced by Senator Charles Schumer, the New York Democrat, people who suspect that they are being subjected to warrantless electronic surveillance could challenge the spying in court. The bill would give people, like academics and journalists, who communicate regularly with people in places like Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan standing to sue if they are refraining from communicating out of fear that the government is illegally listening.
  
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  Bush Wants Capacity to Make 125 Nukes a Year
  The Bush administration Wednesday unveiled a blueprint for rebuilding the nation's decrepit nuclear weapons complex, including restoration of a large-scale bomb manufacturing capacity.
  
  The plan calls for the most sweeping realignment and modernization of the nation's massive system of laboratories and factories for nuclear bombs since the end of the Cold War.
  
  Until now, the nation has depended on carefully maintaining aging bombs produced during the Cold War arms race, some several decades old. The administration, however, wants the capability to turn out 125 new nuclear bombs per year by 2022.
  
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  77 TV stations aired 'fake news reports'
  A study by a group that monitors the media reveals that, over a ten month span, 77 television stations from all across the nation aired video news releases without informing their viewers even once that the reports were actually sponsored content.