WASHINGTON - Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich Sunday said Sen. Hillary Clinton's call for repealing congressional authority for the Iraq war "made her look foolish." "Well, I think, quite frankly, it made her look foolish," Gingrich told host Bob Schieffer on CBS's "Face the Nation." If she honestly believed that we should get out of Iraq, vote no on the funding. The Congress has every authority under the Constitution to force the president out ... [full story]

WICHITA, Kan. - President George W. Bush declared a major disaster in Kansas Sunday as more storms roared across the U.S. midsection. Six states were on alert one day after a tornado killed at least nine people in Kansas. More than 60 touchdowns were reported Saturday night in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Iowa, the National Weather Service said. Rescuers searched for people trapped in rubble in devastated Greensburg, Kan. The twister leveled ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - Former senator and Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said Democrats should not negotiate with President George W. Bush on an Iraq funding bill. The North Carolina Democrat and 2004 vice presidential candidate said Democrats should not back down and, in a television commercial that began airing last week, urged Congress to keep sending the same bill to the White House. The House Wednesday sustained Bush's veto of a $124 billion bill to fund ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., said Sunday he doesn't believe former CIA Director George Tenet "has credibility with anyone in the United States." The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee told CBS' "Face the Nation" Tenet should be investigated for his role in the buildup to the Iraq War. Rangel was responding to a question about Tenet's new book, "At the Center of the Storm," in which Tenet tries to explain his ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - A church pastor said he wanted to rid Virginia Tech shooter Cho Seung-hui of "demonic power" before the troubled student went on his shooting rampage. "His problem needed to be solved by spiritual power," the Rev. Dong Cheol Lee of the One Mind Church in Woodbridge, Va., told Sunday's Washington Post. "We were helping several people like him." Cho's mother, Hyang In Cho, contacted Lee for help to release her son from demonic ... [full story]

HARTFORD, Conn. - Connecticut, along with other states, is in a bind over how to protect children and teenagers from online predators. The issue has attracted growing concern due to the exponential growth of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, The New York Times reported. Politicians in a half dozen states are pushing for legislation that would require such sites to verify the age of every user, requiring parental permission for those under 18. ... [full story]

ORLANDO, Fla. - A driver in Orange County, Fla. opened fire on a woman, nearly killing her 2-year-old son, when the woman stopped at a changing traffic light. WKMG-TV Orlando reported on the incident, which occurred Saturday when the woman approached the intersection as the light was changing to red, and stopped instead of running the light. "She stopped for a red light and apparently for the person behind her, that wasn't good enough," Orange ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - Congressional investigators are looking into claims that a top U.S. Justice Department official illegally hired lawyers based on party affiliation. Investigators are turning their attention to Bradley Schlozman, a top official in the department's civil rights division, McClatchy Newspapers reported. Two former department lawyers told McClatchy that Schlozman told them in 2005 -- after noticing mention of their Republican affiliations on their job applications -- to delete the references and resubmit their resumes. ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - A U.S. federal appeals court ruling striking down a gun control law resulted from the work of a group of liberal law professors, The New York Times reported. The ruling is an indication that the courts are shifting their reading of the Second Amendment -- from an emphasis on the government's right to bear arms to the rights of individuals -- the newspaper said. Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe is part of the ... [full story]

WASHINGTON - The phrase "war on terror" has been quietly ditched by U.S. and British officials who are emphasizing the ideological aspect of the struggle with al-Qaida. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a speech this week that the west was battling a movement that sought to "advance a totalitarian world vision" and that terrorism was one tactic used to reach that goal. "If we don't understand that and contend in the field ... [full story]