FLASH: Alvarez in final season at Wisconsin

Barry Alvarez will hand the Wisconsin coaching job to Bret Bielema after this season and focus on running the school's athletics department.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported the coaching move, which sources confirmed to ESPN.com's Pat Forde.

Alvarez is in his 16th season as the school's football coach and has also been serving as the athletic director since last year.

Bielema, who is 35, is in his second season as the team's defensive coordinator. He previously was the co-defensive coordinator at Kansas State.

Alvarez is 108-70-4 at Wisconsin with three Rose Bowl victories and seven other bowl appearances.

Some pull 'Doonesbury' over Rove moniker

KANSAS CITY, Missouri (AP) -- It may be President Bush's nickname for key political adviser Karl Rove, but some editors don't think it belongs in their newspapers.

About a dozen papers objected to Tuesday's and Wednesday's "Doonesbury" comic strips, and some either pulled or edited them.

The strips refer to Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, as "Turd Blossom."

Lee Salem, editor at Kansas City-based Universal Press Syndicate, which distributes the strip to 1,400 papers, said the complaints from 10 to 12 newspapers weren't unexpected. As opposed to other times when editors have objected to Doonesbury content, the syndicate did not send out replacement strips.

"Given the coverage of Karl Rove, we thought it was appropriate, especially given the history of the strip," Salem said.

Doonesbury's creator, Garry Trudeau, has infuriated some editors over the years with his language, images and political themes. An e-mail to Trudeau wasn't immediately returned Tuesday.

Salem said that since newspapers don't have to notify the syndicate when they choose to remove a strip, it's impossible to know how many papers ran Tuesday's comic.

In the strip, Bush and an aide are lamenting the problems the administration has had over allegations that Rove leaked the name of a CIA officer to reporters.

Bush says, "Karl's sure been earnin' his nickname lately."

The unnamed aide says, "Boy Genius? I'm not so sure sir ..."

Bush then says, "Hey Turd Blossom! Get in here."

The term is said to be one of several nicknames Bush uses for Rove, one of his closest allies and who is widely credited for Bush's election in 2000 and re-election in 2004. The mainstream U.S. media have rarely mentioned the nickname, but it has gained traction in the international press and on the Internet.

Among those with concerns was the Providence (Rhode Island) Journal, whose editors removed the offensive word from the strip's final panel.

"I didn't think (taking out the word) hurt it," Executive Editor Joel Rawson said. "I would prefer to run the strip and if we can edit it, that's fine."

Other papers, such as The Kansas City Star, removed the strip entirely, replacing it with an older one.

"We thought it was in bad taste and probably unclear to a lot of people why we would be using the term," said Steve Shirk, the Star's managing editor/news.

Whitehouse says won't hand over some Roberts papers

WASHINGTON - The White House said on Tuesday it will refuse to hand over to the Senate some documents related to Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' government legal work, a sign of a possible battle ahead with Senate Democrats.

Senate Democrats, who have demanded access to relevant information as the confirmation process gets under way, expressed disappointment and said the documents being held back could hold information necessary to evaluate Roberts.

"A blanket statement that entire groups of documents are off limits is both premature and ill advised," said a letter to Bush from eight Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the administration would make public 62,000-65,000 pages of documents concerning Roberts' work during the administration of Republican President Ronald Reagan.

But he said the Justice Department will withhold internal memos generated from 1989 to 1993, during Roberts' work as deputy solicitor general during the presidency of George Bush, father of the current president and a fellow Republican.

Roberts wrote a legal brief during this period on the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing a woman's right to abortion, in which he said "we continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled."

Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said the White House had decided to hold back some documents and that Ed Gillespie, President Bush's point man on the nomination, informed him of it on Monday.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, which will hold confirmation hearings, said he hoped the White House move was not intended to hinder the Senate's consideration of Roberts' nomination.

"There will be additional documents we ask for," he said.

Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy said in his 42 years on the Judiciary committee, "we have received many internal Justice Department documents as least at sensitive as these, even for confirmation proceedings that don't come close to the importance of a Supreme Court appointment."

Specter said it was premature to talk about documents but noted, "I'd have to be an ostrich not to be concerned."

LINE OF ATTACK?

McClellan accused Democrats of demanding documents as part of a line of attack prepared even before Roberts' nomination.

The White House cited an agreement in 2002 by seven former solicitor generals in declaring the internal memos protected by attorney-client privilege. The solicitor general argues cases on behalf of the U.S. government before the Supreme Court.

Releasing the documents, McClellan said, "would have a chilling effect on the ability of the solicitor generals to receive candid, honest, and thorough advice from their attorneys during the decision-making process."

He said he did not know how many documents might be in question.

Roberts spent a fifth day visiting with lawmakers before his confirmation hearings.

Partisan bickering also broke out over their timing.

Specter said he and Leahy, despite numerous talks, have yet to agree on when to start. Some Democrats favor mid-September; some Republicans are pushing to have committee members end their summer recess early and start in late August.

Specter, who has scheduling power as chairman, said he wants the full Senate to vote on Roberts no later than Sept. 29, so he could be seated before the Supreme Court begins its new term on Oct. 3.

McClellan said all documents from Roberts' 1981-1982 tenure as special assistant to the attorney general during the Reagan administration would be sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

They were also being made available to the media in a special reading room outside Washington later on Tuesday.

The administration also agreed to work with the Reagan presidential library in California to release documents relating to Roberts' work in the White House counsel's office from 1982 to 1986.

Roberts, a federal appeals court judge for the past two years, has received a generally upbeat reception on Capitol Hill since being nominated last Tuesday to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

(Additional reporting by Tom Ferraro)

Democrats Watch in Horror as Union Base Falls Apart

by David Usborne

The American labor movement was on the brink of civil war last night as two major unions, including the Teamsters, prepared to leave the country's main labor congress, the AFL-CIO, amid bitter recriminations over its leadership and failure to reverse a steep membership decline. Hostilities broke into the open on Sunday when four large unions announced that they were boycotting the annual convention of the AFL-CIO, which got under way in Chicago yesterday. It then emerged that two of the four were likely also to withdraw from the alliance altogether. The two departing unions, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union, have 1.4 and 1.8 million members respectively. Their revolt represents a body blow - both in morale terms and financially - to the AFL-CIO and was being described as the worst rift in the labor movement since 1930. It risks further undermining union strength in the United States which has been in decline for decades, eroded by dwindling membership rolls, the effects of automation, the relentless rush to improve productivity, and the ramifications of globalization and increased world competition. The AFL, the American Federation of Labor, and the CIO, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, broke away from one another in the 1930s. However, they merged again in 1955 and this year's convention was meant to be a celebration of that 50-year marriage. In all that time, the AFL-CIO, roughly equivalent to Britain's TUC, has been the voice of organized labor in the country. But while roughly one in three workers in the private sector belonged to a union in America half a century ago, only 8 per cent do so today. The relentlessness of that decline and the political environment now makes union power still less credible and has given rise to the tensions of today. A splintering of the labor movement also bodes ill for the Democratic Party, which for generations has depended on labor leaders to galvanize voters as well as raise funds for candidates for the White House and Congress. Last year, almost a quarter of all the votes cast in the presidential race came from union households, a majority of which supported the Democrat, John Kerry. Part of the battle is being fought over John Sweeney, leader of the AFL-CIO for 10 years, who is expected to win re-election this week. Activists have been fighting to have him removed, arguing he has failed to re-energize the movement. Seven unions now belong to an ad hoc grouping - the "Change to Win Coalition" - opposed to Mr Sweeney's re-election. All may end up breaking ranks. They are demanding new leadership and more funds to allow individual unions to merge and launch new membership drives. "The AFL-CIO, to its credit, has listened to us. But in the end, they have not heard us. The language of reform has been adopted, but not the substance ... We have reached a point where our differences have become unresolvable," said Anna Burger, the chairman of Change to Win. Backers of Mr Sweeney, 71, have come close to branding their departing brethren as traitors to the cause. "Today is a tragic day because those that left the house of labor ... are weakening our house and shame on them," growled Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers, which will remain in the fold. Others contended that the dissidents, far from helping, were playing into the hands of those who would like to see the movement grow weaker still. "I think the only one who wins from this is George Bush and his minions who are trying to weaken labor unions," said Gerald McEntee, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.