Unfortunately the discovery came just a few days late for the former prime minister, who could have used the extraordinary find as proof he was right about Iraq all along during the Chilcot Inquiry.

But from the looks of the rocket, it would appear unlikely it could be deployed anywhere in 45 minutes, let alone be fired at the UK, as a certain dossier led us to believe.

The bomb is thought to have been buried by Saddam Hussein's regime before the UK and U.S. invasion of Iraq started in 2003.

But the e-mails, first reported by MSNBC.com, together provide fresh insight into what many had suspected was a highly influential role played by the self-proclaimed "First Dude." They also reflect the at-times fierce loyalty that Todd Palin and others close to the former governor felt, particularly amid tensions with lawmakers and criticism in the media.

"Have Meg take the news miner off the press release address list for a few days,see how long it takes them to realize their not on the list," Todd Palin wrote to his wife in an e-mail, dated June 21, 2007, after the governor questioned the fairness of an editor in Fairbanks Daily News-Miner.

It's not clear from the e-mails whether there was a policy, unspoken or otherwise, that Todd Palin be copied in on certain matters either because he was a key adviser or a mere backstop to the governor. Several former aides to Sarah Palin declined comment Friday.

Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats.

Five sources who were in the room tell POLITICO that Franken criticized Axelrod for the administration’s failure to provide clarity or direction on health care and the other big bills it wants Congress to enact.

'Imagine 8 million new voters who care about our issues?'

Granting citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants would expand the "progressive" electorate and help ensure a "progressive" governing coalition for the long term, declared a recent adviser to President Obama whose union group is among the most frequent visitors to the White House.

"We reform the immigration laws, it puts 12 million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters," stated Eliseo Medina, international executive vice-president of Service Employees International Union, or SEIU.

The era of big government has returned with a vengeance, in the form of the largest federal work force in modern history.

The Obama administration says the government will grow to 2.15 million employees this year, topping 2 million for the first time since President Clinton declared that "the era of big government is over" and joined forces with a Republican-led Congress in the 1990s to pare back the federal work force.

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. -- Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams will undergo heart surgery later this week in the United States.

Deputy premier Kathy Dunderdale confirmed the treatment at a news conference Tuesday, but would not reveal the location of the operation or how it would be paid for.

"He has gone to a renowned expert in the procedure that he needs to have done," said Ms. Dunderdale, who will become acting premier while Mr. Williams is away for three to 12 weeks.

"In consultation with his own doctors, he's decided to go that route."

Mr. Williams' decision to leave Canada for the surgery has raised eyebrows over his apparent shunning of Canada's health-care system.

The city of Springfield still hasn’t been fully repaid for costs associated with hosting then- U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign stop in the fall of 2008.

Obama’s presidential campaign was sent a bill for $68,139, and still owes the city $55,457, according to Ernie Slottag, the city’s spokesman.

The city has been trying — unsuccessfully — to collect payment, Ken Crutcher, the city’s director of office of budget and management told aldermen recently.

The story Backdoor taxes to hit middle class has been withdrawn. A replacement story will run later in the week.

NEW YORK (Reuters.com) --The Obama administration's plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.

In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year -- effectively a tax hike by stealth.

While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases.

Millions of middle-class households already may be facing higher taxes in 2010 because Congress has failed to extend tax breaks that expired on January 1, most notably a "patch" that limited the impact of the alternative minimum tax. The AMT, initially designed to prevent the very rich from avoiding income taxes, was never indexed for inflation. Now the tax is affecting millions of middle-income households, but...

Researcher Lorianne Updike Toler was intrigued by the centuries-old document at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

On the back of a treasured draft of the U.S. Constitution was a truncated version of the same document, starting with the familiar words: "We The People. . . ."

They had been scribbled upside down by one of the Constitution's framers, James Wilson, in the summer of 1787. The cursive continued, then abruptly stopped, as if pages were missing.

A mystery, Toler thought, until she examined other Wilson papers from the Historical Society's vault in Philadelphia and found what appeared to be the rest of the draft, titled "The Continuation of the Scheme."