“A roadside bomb struck a police commando patrol while passing near the al-Mustansriya University in eastern Baghdad, killing a policeman and wounding four others,” the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

The blast damaged a police vehicle and several nearby civilian cars, he said.

Also in the morning, two roadside bombs detonated in a quick succession near another police commando patrol near a bridge in Baghdad’s eastern neighborhood of Ghadeer, damaging a police vehicles and wounding five policemen aboard, the source said.

Another roadside bomb went off near a police patrol close to a church in the al-Nidhal street in Baghdad’s central neighborhood of Karrada, wounding two civilians, he said.

In addition, a mortar round landed on Baghdad’s western neighborhood of Mansour, leaving three people injured, he added.

Violence continues in Baghdad despite the announcement of U.S. and Iraqi officials about a steep drop of violence as a result of a major security plan aimed at checking the insurgency and sectarian strife in the capital.

But Bush’s GOP allies were divided over whether the omnibus appropriations bill represented a win for the party in a monthslong battle with Democrats over domestic agency budgets.

In rapid succession, the Senate cast two votes to approve the hybrid spending bill. By a 70-25 vote, the Senate approved the Iraq and Afghanistan war funds—without restrictions that Democrats had insisted on for weeks.

Senators followed with a 76-17 vote to agree to a bundle of 11 annual appropriations bills funding domestic agencies and the foreign aid budget for the budget year that began Oct. 1.

The House is slated Wednesday to ready the entire package for Bush, though the vote will be only on the Iraq portion of the measure. That vote would cap a parliamentary dance choreographed to ease the overall package through a chamber split between Democratic opponents of the Iraq war and GOP foes of the domestic spending portion of the bill.

The result on domestic spending created a divide between Republicans who thought it was a good deal, such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and those who said it was too expensive and larded with pork-barrel spending.

“We’ve held the line, achieved what everyone thought was the unachievable,” McConnell said. “We are very proud of this bill.”

House Republicans and a few Senate GOP conservatives felt otherwise and were disappointed that Bush hadn’t taken a harder line in end-stage negotiations. The omnibus measure held to Bush’s “top line” for the one-third of the federal budget passed by Congress each year, but only through a combination of budget maneuvers that allowed Democrats to restore funding to budget accounts targeted by Bush and finance billions of dollars worth of lawmakers’ home-state projects.

“Congress refuses to rein in its wasteful spending or curb its corruption,” said Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz.

Conservatives estimated the measure contained at least $28 billion in domestic spending above Bush’s budget, funded by a combination of “emergency” spending, transfers from the defense budget, budget gimmicks and phantom savings.

Twenty-one Democrats and Connecticut independent Joe Lieberman— who stood with Republicans at a post-vote news conference—voted with every Republican but Gordon Smith of Oregon to approve the Iraq funding.

Democrats again failed to win votes to force removal of U.S. troops or set a nonbinding target to remove most troops by the end of next year.

With Bush winning the $70 billion infusion of troop funding, other Republicans muted their criticism.

“I do think the president has a victory here,” said House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo.

Still, the win was hardly clear-cut for Republicans hoping the president would emerge from the battle with Democrats over the budget with a result that would more clearly demonstrate to core GOP voters the party’s commitment to fiscal discipline.

While disappointed by ceding Iraq funding to Bush, Democrats hailed the pending appropriations bill for smoothing the rough edges of Bush’s February budget plan, which sought below-inflation increases for most domestic programs and contained numerous cutbacks and program eliminations.

“The omnibus bill largely yields to the president’s top-line budget numbers, but it also addresses some of the bottom-line priorities of the American people,” said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa. “The Grinch tried to steal Christmas, but we didn’t let him get all of it.”

Democrats were able to fill in most of the cuts by using the very budgetary sleight of hand lambasted by conservative groups such as the Club for Growth and Citizens Against Government Waste.

The White House, which maintained a hard line for months, has been far more forgiving in recent days, accepting $11 billion in “emergency” spending for veterans, drought relief, border security and firefighting accounts, among others. Other budget moves added billions more.

“Congress did come down to the president’s overall top line,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said. “And in regards of the emergency spending, most of that spending would have passed on an emergency basis anyway. It’s not added into the baseline of the budget.”

The bill passed the House late Monday. Under an unusual legislative two-step, the Iraq portion of the bill would be returned to the House on Wednesday, with Republicans supplying the winning margin. That vote, if successful, would send the entire omnibus bill to Bush for his signature.

Democrats succeeded in reversing cuts sought by Bush to heating subsidies, local law enforcement, Amtrak and housing as well as Bush’s plan to eliminate the $654 million budget for grants to community action agencies that help the poor.

Democrats also reversed Bush-sought cuts to state and local law enforcement grants, aid to community action groups and airport modernization grants.

Democrats also added funding for food programs, subsidies to community development banks and Homeland Security Department grants to first responders.

Taxpayers for Common Sense, a Washington-based watchdog group that opposes so-called pork barrel projects, counted 8,983 such “earmarks” worth $7.4 billion. These hometown pet projects include economic development grants, aid to local transit and police departments and clean water projects, among many others.

The attack was staged around 8:20 a.m. (12:20 a.m. ET) on al-Zaytoun Street, bordering the heavily fortified International Zone, as police were gathering for a shift change.

The suicide attacker was in a white Toyota Corolla car, which has been blown up into many small pieces. According to the Interior Ministry, three vehicles and a number of concrete blast barriers were destroyed.

“Right now, I’m leaning against it,” Albarran said, looking ahead with distaste to a possible desk job.

But whatever he decides, Spc. Albarran, 20, won’t be leaving Army life behind now that his wife enlisted to take his place among the ranks.

“After everything he’s gone through — and he loves the Army — he kind of inspired me,” Janay Albarran said. “I made him a promise that I would finish what he started.”

So, while he underwent five-day-a-week rehab to recover his balance and strength on a prosthetic leg at an Army rehabilitation facility here, she learned to shoot a rifle and stand in formation in boot camp at Fort Jackson, S.C.

Mrs. Albarran became Pvt. Albarran on Friday. The couple’s 2-year-old daughter is staying with a grandmother in Arizona.

Across the Army, roughly 24,000 soldiers, roughly 9 percent of the force, are married to other soldiers. There are no statistics on how many join after a spouse or family member is badly wounded in combat, but Maj. Anne Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman, said she’s heard of siblings joining after the injury or death of a soldier and at least one woman who joined after her husband was killed in combat.

“The courage of our soldiers and their families is remarkable,” she said.

Janay Albarran, 19, wasn’t always thrilled with the prospect of Army life. She met her husband at a high school football game in Yuma, Ariz., near where they grew up.

She learned later from an online profile he already had signed up for the Army.

“I was like, ‘Well, I met somebody and he’s about to leave.’ I was a little upset,” Janay Albarran said. “I knew he was joining the Army and we’re at war.”

The couple married in February 2006, and he deployed to Iraq six months later.

He was in a Humvee escorting a unit that was sent to the scene of a detonated bomb in November 2006 when a second blast hit. The vehicle reared up and slammed to the ground. Alejandro Albarran only remembers flashes: a medic over him, the helicopter.

A 5 a.m. phone call told Janay Albarran her husband was hurt and she should have a bag packed.

She met him at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington several days later, and they traveled to Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, where some of the most severely wounded are treated.

It quickly became clear that efforts to save Alejandro Albarran’s lower right leg were failing. When the pain became too great, he told his wife to let the doctors amputate.

At first, Janay Albarran had to help her husband dress and get out his wheelchair.

“She had to be my memory. My short term memory is bad,” said Alejandro Albarran, who also suffered a head injury in the blast.

But as he got more mobile, the teen wife who was afraid of guns decided to take her husband’s place in the ranks.

Janay Albarran will not, strictly speaking, be replacing her husband in the Army. He was an infantryman, a position not open to women. (But he notes with chagrin that she outscored him on her basic training rifle test.)

She expects to get a human resources assignment, one less likely to lead to deployment in Iraq.

“It’s just another job,” Alejandro Albarran said, taking a break between weight lifting sets at the large amputee rehab facility here.

But a safe assignment isn’t guaranteed.

Janay Albarran said she worries about possible deployment when she thinks about their daughter, Iliana.

“That’s the only thing that scares me. He’s already been hurt,” she said. “If I do get deployed, I’m going to miss him so much. But it’s nothing I can’t handle.”

President Bush’s mortgage relief plan was “set by the mortgage industry and Wall Street firms. The effort is voluntary and it leaves plenty of wiggle room for lenders. Moreover, it would affect only a small number of subprime borrowers.”

“Senate Republicans are planning to call for a congressional commission to investigate the conclusions of the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran as well as the specific intelligence that went into it.”

“In a sharp rebuke to White House counterterrorism policy,” the Senate and House intelligence committees agreed last night “to require all American interrogators to abide by the Army Field Manual, which prohibits coercive methods,” effectively outlawing harsh techniques used by the CIA.

With just a week before News Corporation takes control of Dow Jones & Company, Rupert Murdoch plans to remove many executives in the “upper echelon at Dow Jones” and replace them with his “trusted lieutenants.” (more…)

[W]e want to convey our strong concern regarding any commitments made by the United States with respect to American security assurances to Iraq to help deter and defend against foreign aggression or other violations of Iraq’s territorial integrity. Security assurances, once made, cannot be easily rolled back without incurring a great cost to America’s strategic credibility and imperiling the stability of our nation’s other alliances around the world. […]

It is unacceptable for your Administration to unilaterally fashion a long-term relationship with Iraq without the full and comprehensive participation of Congress from the very start of such negotiations. […]

We trust you agree that the proposed extension of long-term U.S. security commitments to a nation in a critical region of the world requires the full participation and consent of the Congress as a co-equal branch of our government.

Read the full letter to President Bush below: (more…)

UPDATE: The AP reports that “House and Senate intelligence committee leaders were informed of the existence of the tapes and the CIA’s intention to destroy them.”