In the picture, President Bush is talking with Chief Raul Garza of the Kickapoo tribe of southwest Texas. The New York Times, which published the photo, reports:

[The picture] leaves unanswered questions about how Mr. Abramoff and the tribal leader, whom he was trying to sign as a client, gained access to a meeting with the president on the White House grounds that was ostensibly for a group of state legislators who were supporting Mr. Bush’s 2001 tax cut plan.

The photo of Abramoff with Bush at a private meeting undermines White House claims that any meetings between the two occured at “widely attended” holiday parties. The White House has confirmed the picture’s authenticity.

UPDATE: Time Magazine has more details on the meeting:

Talking about the photo, Abramoff has told friends, “I was standing right next to the window and after the picture was taken, the President came over and shook hands with me, and we chatted and joked.” A photograph of that scene as described by Abramoff was shown to TIME two weeks ago.

The TIME article also features a color version of the photo where Karl Rove is visible. It leads with a discussion of the Abramoff email, first published by ThinkProgress.

Congress voted to shut down the Pentagon’s controversial Total Information Awareness program in 2003 (though not before it was renamed “Terrorism Information Awareness” — sound familiar?).

During a Senate hearing last week, General Michael Hayden was asked whether TIA had simply been “moved to various intelligence agencies” after Congress tried to terminate it. As ThinkProgress noted, Hayden stonewalled:

SEN. RON WYDEN (D-OR): I and others on this panel led the effort to close it [Total Information Awareness]. We want to know if Mr. [John] Poindexter’s programs are going on somewhere else. Can anyone answer that? …

HAYDEN: Senator, I’d like to answer in closed session.

In fact, the answer is yes.

[T]oday, very quietly, the core of TIA survives with a new codename of Topsail (minus the futures market), two officials privy to the intelligence tell NEWSWEEK. … “It is truly Poindexter’s brainchild. Of all the people in the intelligence business, he has the keenest appreciation of using advanced information technology for intelligence gathering,” [says John Arquilla, an intelligence expert at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.]. Poindexter, who lives just outside Washington in Rockville, Md., could not be reached for comment on whether he is still involved with Topsail.

The will of Congress thwarted again. Why do they even bother?

is crumbling. “When Representative Heather A. Wilson broke ranks with President Bush on Tuesday to declare her “serious concerns” about domestic eavesdropping, she gave voice to what some fellow Republicans were thinking, if not saying. Now they are speaking up “” and growing louder…A growing number of Republicans say the program appears to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act…”