Ny Safidinao

A majority of Americans want the Bush administration to get court approval before eavesdropping on people inside the United States, even if those calls might involve suspected terrorists, an AP-Ipsos poll shows. Over the past three weeks, President Bush and top aides have defended the electronic monitoring program they secretly launched shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, as a vital tool to protect the nation from al-Qaida and its affiliates. Yet 56 percent of respondents in an AP-Ipsos poll said the government should be required to first get a court warrant to eavesdrop on the overseas calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens when those communications are believed to be tied to terrorism. Agreeing with the White House, some 42 percent of those surveyed do not believe the court approval is necessary. "We're at war," Bush said during a New Year's Day visit to San Antonio. "And as commander in chief, I've got to use the resources at my disposal, within the law, to protect ...

President George W. Bush defended domestic eavesdropping by the National Security Agency on Sunday after a newspaper report about a Justice Department official's resistance to the program prompted new calls for a Senate inquiry. The New York Times reported on Sunday that James Comey, a deputy to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, was concerned about the legality of the NSA program and refused to extend it in 2004. White House aides then turned to Ashcroft while the attorney general was hospitalized for gallbladder surgery, the Times said. "This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America," Bush said after visiting wounded troops at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. The NSA program "listens to a few numbers called from the outside of the United States and of known al Qaeda or affiliate people," he said. "If somebody from al Qaeda is calling you, we'd like to know why," Bush said. White House spokes...

- U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote as a lawyer in the Reagan administration 20 years ago that he personally backed its efforts to ban abortion and racial quotas, a 1985 memo released on Monday showed. ADVERTISEMENT Alito wrote the memo as part of his successful bid that year to be elevated to a deputy assistant attorney general. "It has been an honor and source of personal satisfaction for me to serve in the office of the Solicitor General during President Reagan's administration and to help advance legal positions which I personally believe in very strongly," wrote Alito, then an assistant U.S. solicitor general. "I am particularly proud of my contributions in recent cases in which the government has argued in the Supreme Court that racial and ethnic quotas should not be allowed and that the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion," Alito added. The memo, part of a job application, was among more than 100 pages of documents releas...

No, it doesn't have the sexy allure of chocolate, the glamour of raspberry or the Southern charm of peach. But we had to have it, even when the price soared to about $8 for a measly 2-ounce bottle of extract last year. We yearned for the wholesome, comforting, slightly exotic flavor. Vanilla prices are falling now, so it's time to break out the recipes. Lavish the stuff in a homemade cream soda, a double vanilla pound cake with rum-vanilla sauce or a luxuriously rich vanilla custard sauce for berries. Or make some vanilla extract to steep all summer and fall, and bottle for gifts in December. For the pound cake, you'll need a vanilla bean, vanilla sugar and vanilla extract. The cream soda, homemade extract and custard sauce are made with whole vanilla beans. Whole vanilla beans are available in the spice aisle of many supermarkets. The pliable, dark-brown pods usually are packaged in a bottle or glass tube. Some stores sell vanilla sugar, or you could make your own by buryi...

All it took to make us appreciate plain old vanilla was a couple of cyclones, an oil boom and political unrest. By the time vanilla extract prices peaked in December at $4 to $10 an ounce, the tropical spice seemed downright exotic. But hold on to your recipes, because happy days for vanilla lovers are almost here again. Vanilla extract soon may be inexpensive enough to bathe in — or to at least make a batch of homemade cream soda or a double vanilla pound cake. "Prices started coming down in February," said Jim Trout, vice president of merchandising and sales for the Fred W. Albrecht Grocery Co., parent firm of Acme stores. Predictions in December of a lush 2005 harvest in Madagascar, the world's top producer of vanilla, helped drive down the price. Unprecedented harvests worldwide are expected this year, which should send the wholesale price of vanilla beans through the floor. "This is the first year (since 1999) we have more than enough — roughly double what the w...