White House documents are normally exempt from public records laws, but a federal judge ruled in December that Secret Service visitor logs must be released. The court sided with a liberal watchdog group that sought records showing visits by prominent religious conservatives to the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney's residence.

The Bush administration appealed and lawyers were scheduled to argue the case Monday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Government lawyers argue the president and vice president must be able to receive visitors and solicit advice privately. They portrayed the request for Secret Service records as an end-around, saying those same logs maintained by the White House would never be considered public documents.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington wants to use the Secret Service documents to show the influence religious conservatives have on the Bush administration. The government argues that proves the records are related to the White House, not to the workings of the Secret Service, and should not be released.

"The prospect of each and every appointment record immediately becoming the subject of forced public disclosure would surely cast a chill over the ability of the president and vice president to collect information and advice," Justice Department lawyers wrote in court documents.

CREW lawyers reject that argument. They say the documents shouldn't be considered White House records simply because a watchdog group is trying to find out what the White House is up to. The Secret Service created and controlled the documents, the lawyers said, so they should be public.

Consequently, a Republican administration finds itself aligned against the most popular tenet of social conservatism: gun rights, which enjoy much wider agreement than do opposition to abortion or gay marriage. Promises in two presidential campaigns are being abandoned, and Bush finds himself to the left of even Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama.

The 1976 D.C. statute prohibiting ownership of all functional firearms was called unconstitutional a year ago in an opinion by Senior Judge Laurence Silberman, a conservative who has served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for 22 years. It was assumed that Bush would fight Mayor Adrian Fenty's appeal.

The president and his senior staff were stunned to learn, on the day it was issued, that Clement's petition called on the high court to return the case to the appeals court. The solicitor general argued that Silberman's opinion supporting individual gun rights was so broad that it would endanger federal gun control laws such as the bar on owning machine guns. The president could have ordered a revised brief by Clement.

But facing congressional Democratic pressure to keep his hands off the Justice Department, Bush did not act.

Cheney did join 55 senators and 250 House members in signing a brief supporting the Silberman ruling. Although this unprecedented vice presidential intervention was widely interpreted as a dramatic breakaway from the White House, longtime associates could not believe that Cheney would defy the president. In fact, he did not. Bush approved what Cheney did in his constitutional role as president of the Senate.

That has not lessened puzzlement over Clement, a 41-year-old conservative Washington lawyer who clerked for Silberman and later for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Clement has tried to explain his course to the White House by claiming that he feared Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme Court's current swing vote, would join a liberal majority on gun rights if forced to rule on Silberman's opinion.

The more plausible explanation for Clement's stance is that he could not resist opposition to individual gun rights by career lawyers in the Justice Department's Criminal Division (who clashed with the Office of Legal Counsel in a heated internal struggle). Newly installed Attorney General Michael Mukasey, a neophyte at Justice, was unaware of the conflict and learned about Clement's position only after it had been locked in.

A majority of both houses in the Democratic-controlled Congress are on record as being against the District's gun prohibition. So are 31 states, with only five (New York, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and Hawaii) in support. Sen. Barack Obama has weighed in against the D.C. law, asserting that the Constitution confers an individual right to bear arms -- not just collective authority to form militias.

This popular support for gun rights is not reflected by an advantage in the oral arguments to take place Tuesday. Former solicitor general Walter Dellinger, an old hand at arguing before the Supreme Court, will make the case for the gun prohibition. Opposing counsel Alan Gura, making his first appearance before the high court, does not have the confidence of gun-ownership advocates (who tried to replace him with former solicitor general Ted Olson).

The cause needs help from Clement during his 15-minute oral argument, but it won't get it if he reiterates his written brief. The word was passed in government circles this week that Clement would amend his position when he actually faces the justices -- which would be an odd ending to bizarre behavior by the Justice Department.

Spitzer was scheduled to announce his resignation midday, according to a second top Spitzer staffer. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made.

Spitzer and his wife, Silda, left their apartment around 11 a.m. and got into a black SUV to take them to his office. Cameras aboard news helicopters tracked the movement of Spitzer's three-vehicle motorcade from his apartment on the Upper East Side to his office in midtown Manhattan.

Spitzer would be replaced by Lt. Gov. David Paterson, who will become New York's first black governor.

The scandal erupted Monday when allegations surfaced that Spitzer, a 48-year-old married man with three teenage daughters, spent thousands of dollars on a call girl named Kristen at a swanky Washington hotel on the night before Valentine's Day.

"I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family and violates my — or any — sense of right and wrong," the governor said at a news conference with his wife at his side. "I apologize to the public, whom I promised better."

Calls for his resignation came immediately. Republicans began talking impeachment if he didn't step aside. Meanwhile, Spitzer stayed holed up in his Manhattan apartment, where he was reportedly weighing his options, including waiting to use resignation as a bargaining chip with federal prosecutors to avoid indictment.

The case involving Spitzer started when banks noticed frequent cash transfers from several accounts and filed suspicious activity reports with the Internal Revenue Service, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press. The accounts were traced back to Spitzer, leading public corruption investigators to open an inquiry.

A law enforcement official said Tuesday that Spitzer had spent tens of thousands of dollars with the call-girl service Emperors Club VIP. Another official said the amount could be as high as $80,000.

Still another law enforcement official said investigators found that during the tryst with Kristen, Spitzer used two rooms at Washington's Mayflower Hotel — one for himself, the other for the prostitute. Sometime around 10 p.m., Spitzer sneaked away from his security detail and made his way to her room, the official said.

According to an affidavit, a federal judge approved wiretaps on the escort service's telephone in January and February. FBI agents in Washington had the Mayflower under surveillance when Spitzer was in town, a senior law enforcement official said.

The officials spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Spitzer, a first-term Democrat, built his political reputation on rooting out government corruption, and made a name for himself as attorney general as crusader against shady practices and overly generous compensation. He also cracked down on prostitution.

He was known as the "Sheriff of Wall Street." Time magazine named him "Crusader of the Year," and the tabloids proclaimed him "Eliot Ness." The square-jawed graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law was sometimes mentioned as a potential candidate for president.

He rode into the governor's office with a historic margin of victory on Jan. 1, 2007, vowing to stamp out corruption in New York government in the same way that he took on Wall Street executives with a vengeance while state attorney general.

His term as governor has been fraught with problems, including an unpopular plan to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants and a plot by his aides to smear his main Republican nemesis. The prostitution scandal, some said, was too much to overcome.

Barely known outside of his Harlem political base, Paterson, 53, has been in New York government since his election to the state Senate in 1985. He led the Democratic caucus in the Senate before running with Spitzer as his No. 2.

Though legally blind, Paterson has enough sight in his right eye to walk unaided, recognize people at conversational distance and even read if text is placed close to his face. While Spitzer is renowned for his abrasive style, Paterson has built a reputation as a conciliator.

At a morning news conference, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, Spitzer's chief rival, said he had not yet heard from the governor but that he was moving on with the business of the state. Lawmakers were set to vote on budget bills Wednesday afternoon.

"We are going to partner with the lieutenant governor when he becomes governor," said Bruno. "David has always been very open with me, very forthright ... I look forward to a positive, productive relationship."

Bruno, though the next highest-ranking official, does not become lieutenant governor upon Paterson's ascension to governor. The lieutenant governor's office would remain vacant until the next general election in 2010 under state law. However, whenever Paterson is out of state or if he were to become incapacitated, Bruno would be acting governor.

Cheney departs Sunday for a trip to Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank and Turkey. Oil is also on his agenda, as the White House — coping with high energy prices that have socked American consumers — continues to push for greater oil production in the Mideast.

The White House announced the trip Monday. "This is the president continuing to show the commitment that he has to the region," said White House press secretary Dana Perino.

The vice president's visit comes on the heels of a brief troubleshooting mission to the Mideast by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She was able to pressure the moderate Palestinian leadership to resume peace talks with Israel, which broke off after a deadly Israeli military incursion into Gaza.

Bush's view of the economy was decidedly rosier than that of many economists, who say the country is nearing recession territory or may already be there.

The centerpiece of government efforts to brace the wobbly economy is a package Congress passed and Bush signed last month. It will rush rebates ranging from $300 to $1,200 to millions of people and give tax incentives to businesses.

On one issue particularly worrisome to American consumers, there are indications that paying $4 for a gallon of gasoline is not out of the question once the summer driving season arrives. Asked about that, Bush said "That's interesting. I hadn't heard that. ... I know it's high now."

Bush also used his news conference to press Congress to give telecommunications companies legal immunity for helping the government eavesdrop after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

He continued a near-daily effort to prod lawmakers into passing his version of a law to make it easier for the government to conduct domestic eavesdropping on suspected terrorists' phone calls and e-mails. He says the country is in more danger now that a temporary surveillance law has expired.

The president and Congress are in a showdown over Bush's demand on the immunity issue.

Bush said the companies helped the government after being told "that their assistance was legal and vital to national security." "Allowing these lawsuits to proceed would be unfair," he said.

More important, Bush added, "the litigation process could lead to the disclosure of information about how we conduct surveillance and it would give al Qaida and others a roadmap as to how to avoid the surveillance."

The Senate passed its version of the surveillance bill earlier this month, and it provides retroactive legal protection for telecommunications companies that wiretapped U.S. phone and computer lines at the government's request and without court permission. The House version, approved in October, does not include telecom immunity.

The report by Legislative Analyst Elizabeth Hill shifted the state's fledgling budget debate to whether new taxes should be part of the solution — an approach the Republican governor has opposed.

It also sparked the kind of partisan sniping that Democrats and Republicans had so far avoided in hopes of preventing a repeat of the protracted budget debate that paralyzed the capital last summer.

Schwarzenegger last month pegged the shortfall at $14.5 billion through June 2009, but Hill said it has grown to $16 billion. She said Schwarzenegger's proposal for the 2008-09 budget year was flawed because it fails to set funding priorities or correct the state's chronic imbalance between spending and revenue.

"A decline in revenue means we have a larger shortfall than the governor projected," she said. "Our recommendations will affect all Californians in some way. However, we think that will benefit all Californians in the long run."