The Obama administration has scheduled a rare Saturday principals committee meeting to assess the rapidly-moving situation in Egypt as anti-government protests intensify in that country...

...The State Department and White House have expressed concern about violence and have repeatedly urged -- to no avail -- that Egyptian authorities not block social networking sites and the Internet, and respect the universal rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression.

Meantime, senior Egyptian military leaders are currently holding annual bilateral meetings with their U.S. counterparts at the Pentagon this week about U.S.-Egyptian military cooperation.

"If the administration truly wants that message to be received by the Mubarak government, and the Egyptian people, it needs to speak with greater clarity and back its words with actions," a bipartisan Egypt working group of foreign policy scholars and former U.S. officials said in a statement Wednesday.

"We urge the administration to press the Mubarak government to lift the state of emergency that restricts freedom of assembly and to end police brutality and torture," the group, co-chaired by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Michele Dunne and the Brookings Institution's Robert Kagan, said. "The administration should also press for constitutional and administrative changes necessary for a free and competitive presidential election open to candidates without restrictions, supervised by judges and monitored by domestic and international observers."