Morning News Roundup (07 Mar)

• Gov. Michael Rounds of South Dakota signed into law the nation's most sweeping state abortion ban on Monday, an intentional provocation meant to set up a direct legal challenge to Roe v. Wade. The law makes it a felony to perform any abortion except in a case of a pregnant woman's life being in jeopardy. Under state law, if opponents collect 16,728 signatures of registered voters in the next three months the law will be delayed and a vote held on the issue in November. [NYTimes]
  
  At least eleven more states -- Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia -- are currently considering bans similar to the one enacted in South Dakota, which outlaws abortion in almost all cases. [The Nation's Notion blog]
  
  The law takes the abortion debate away from issues at the margins -- parental notification requirements, the federal ban on late-term, or so-called partial-birth, abortion -- and puts it at the core of the abortion question. Americans are divided on the former; they are not on the latter. In a CBS News poll taken in January, Americans rejected, by 75 percent to 23 percent, the notion that abortion should be outlawed entirely or remain legal only when necessary to protect the life of the mother. [Salon's War Room]
  
  
• Seeking to reassert his party's scuffed reputation for fiscal conservatism, President Bush yesterday proposed a law giving him authority to veto individual items in legislation as a way to curb fast-growing federal spending. Congress passed legislation authorizing the line-item veto in 1996, but the Supreme Court struck it down as an unconstitutional abridgement of the separation of powers shortly after it was enacted by President Bill Clinton. [WaPo]
  
  Senator John Kerry announced not only his support of President Bush's request for a line-item veto power, but also plans to introduce legislation giving President Bush just such power. The catch:The President's veto would then head to Congress for an up or down vote. [Raw Story]
  
  
• On many a workday lunchtime, the nominal boss of U.S. intelligence, John D. Negroponte, can be found at a private club in downtown Washington, getting a massage, taking a swim, and having lunch, followed by a good cigar and a perusal of the daily papers in the club’s library. “He spends three hours there [every] Monday through Friday,” gripes a senior counterterrorism official [Congressional Quarterly]
  
  
• Lieutenant General Nick Houghton, Britain’s most senior officer in Iraq, has established a timetable for the phased withdrawal of British troops from Iraq. “The process will involve a four-stage disengagement that is scheduled to begin this spring, or at the latest by the end of the summer.” [ThinkProgress]
  
  
• Turkey is reviving its long-deferred quest for nuclear power, pressed both by serious energy shortfalls within its own borders and by strident nuclear ambitions in neighboring Iran that threaten to upset a regional balance of power. [WaPo]
  
  
• A series of guerrilla attacks in and around Baghdad killed at least 11 people on Monday, including an Iraqi general, and wounded at least 58. [NYTimes]
  
  
• "Ang Lee is the pride of Chinese people," said the China Daily after his win for Best Director at the Oscars. However, state TV cut part of his speech mentioning China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Beijing regards Taiwan as sovereign territory and Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997. Brokeback Mountain will not be released in Chinese cinemas and can only been seen on pirate DVD, due to its gay theme. [BBC]