Daily Briefing: How 'A Good Man Looks At Life'

•Congress will approve $51.8b relief package for Katrina; joint House-Senate inquiry into hurricane response is approved. Budget director: "This will not be the last request." [ WP , WSJ , NYT ]

•Politicians look to gain momentum from Katrina fallout.Rothenberg: "Politicians see this as a potentially defining event and they are worried how they are going to be seen. Politicians realize that public opinion could turn on this, just the way it turned on 9/11." [ WSJ , WP ]

•Democrats launch multi-front attack on administration's response to Katrina.PelosionBush: "Oblivious. In denial. Dangerous."Kerry: "What you see here is a harvest of four years of complete avoidance of real problem solving and real governance in favor of spin and ideology." [ NYT ]

• Hillarystirs up opposition with Katrina-related proposals as strategists warn Democratic rhetoric could backfire; "Privately, [Bill Clinton] has been incredulous over what he regards as the administration's failure to grasp quickly the perilous situation materializing in New Orleans, particularly for poor African Americans." [ WP , LAT ]

• Rehnquistshowed "how a wise man looks at the law and a good man looks at life,"Busheulogizes. [ WP , NYT , USAT ]

•Army Corps of Engineers wasted hundreds of millions of dollars before Katrina on pork-barrel spending. [ WP ]

•Democrats wantRoberts' legal memos. [ WP , NYT , LAT ]

•Lawmakers criticizeChertoffat private briefing. [ NYT ]

• Brownstein: Bush"may have enlistedRobertsfor a job that others could have done: winning confirmation as a conservative replacement for the staunchly conservativeRehnquist. Meanwhile,Bushmay have divertedRobertsfrom a mission for which he appeared unusually well-suited: winning confirmation to succeedO'Connor." [ LAT ]

• Schwarzeneggerwill veto gay marriage bill. [ LAT , NYT , USAT ]

•Scholar warns Western Europe could easily be a breeding ground for terrorism: "Fixing the Middle East is only part of the problem. It is a West European problem, too." [ WP ]

•MoveOn ad linksRobertsto Katrina: "The images after Hurricane Katrina show we still live in a society where significant racial inequities exist. We believeJohn Roberts' record on civil rights. . . is clearly not the direction our country needs to head now." [ USAT ]