make latex honor newlines

I suggest using the tabularx package. This will let LaTeX automatically break long lines, unlike the ordinary tabular environment.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabularx}

\begin{document}
\begin{tabularx}{\columnwidth}{rX}
Feb 22 06:00AM -& Wake up \\
Feb 22 06:15AM -& Have breakfast \\
Feb 22 08:00AM -& A very long sentence that I will have to break at some point
                  but maintaining indentation \\
Feb 22 08:00AM -& Or maybe just a list here
                  One
                  Two
                  Three
\end{tabularx}
\end{document}

If you want to put manual breaks in, that's easy:

Feb 22 08:00AM -& Or maybe just a list here \\
                & One \\
                & Two \\
                & Three

More information:

• LaTeX documentation (I found this using the Visual LaTeX FAQ)
• TeX FAQ entry Fixed-width tables