Top Items:
Jim VandeHei / Washington Post:
Troops Put In a Good Word to Bush About Iraq — 10 U.S. Soldiers Upbeat in Staged Teleconference — President Bush yesterday sought to rally U.S. troops behind his Iraq strategy — and he and his aides left little to chance. — Before the president spoke via a video link …
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Joe Gandelman / The Moderate Voice:Staged Bush Military Photo Op Caught By Reporters: The Nose Grows?
Discussion:
BottleOfBlog, Associated Press, Iowa Voice, NewsBusters.org, Editor and Publisher, TheAgitator.com and The Huffington Post
Juan / Informed Comment:
Zawahiri Letter to Zarqawi: A Shiite Forgery? — The Arabic text of the recently released letter alleged to be by Zawahiri (al-Qaeda's number two man) to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq raises questions for me as to its authenticity. — The very first element of the letter is the blessing on the Prophet.
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Aljazeera:
Al-Qaida: US faked al-Zawahiri letter — A purported al-Qaida web posting has charged the United States with fabricating a letter from the group's second in command allegedly to its leader in Iraq asking for money and laying out the group's plans for the Middle East.
cyber.law.harvard.edu:
GLOBAL VOICES WEBLOG — Echoes from the Tunisian blogosphere — Tunisia, Middle East & North Africa, Weblog — The beginning of this week marked a big buzz in the Tunisian blogosphere about Tunisia's national soccer team qualifying to the World Cup next year after a 2-2 draw with Morocco.
Matthew Scully / New York Times:
The Harriet Miers I Know — WHITE House speechwriters first learned the name Harriet Miers in January 2001, when drafts started reappearing full of corrections, instructions and particularly annoying requests for factual substantiation. In the campaign, life had been simpler, the editing and fact-checking a little more casual.
Vaughn Ververs / CBS News:
Outside Voices - The Anchoress Speaks — Each week we invite someone from the outside to weigh in with their thoughts about CBS News and the media at large. This week, we invited The Anchoress, one of the blogosphere's most mysterious and interesting voices who this week turned …
Mark Finkelstein / NewsBusters.org:
Up the Creek: Out to Embarrass Bush Over Alleged Video Stunt, Today Gets Caught in Stunt of Its Own — In a deliciously ironic twist of fate, shortly before airing a segment aimed at embarrassing the Bush administration by suggesting that it had staged a video conversation between the president …
Roger L. Simon / Mystery Novelist and Screenwriter:
Harold Pinter Wins Nobel Prize — For what I imagine to be a variety of reasons... perhaps because I have been a professional writer of screenplays and novels for more years than I care to admit in public or perhaps because I have served on awards committees for PEN and the Los Angeles Times …
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Washington Post:
Scandals Take Toll On Bush's 2nd Term — A series of scandals involving some of the most powerful Republicans in Washington have converged to disrupt President Bush's agenda, distract aides and allies, and exacerbate political problems for an already weakened administration, according to party strategists and White House advisers.
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Richard W. Stevenson / New York Times:Jitters at the White House Over the Leak Inquiry
Discussion:
mediabistro, The Huffington Post, firedoglake, TalkLeft, Decision '08, Charging RINO, AMERICAblog, Wonkette, Legal Fiction and WTF Is It Now??
Charles Krauthammer / Washington Post:
A Flu Hope, Or Horror? — While official Washington has been poring over Harriet Miers's long-ago doings on the Dallas City Council and parsing the byzantine comings and goings of the Patrick Fitzgerald grand jury, relatively unnoticed was perhaps the most momentous event of our lifetime — what is left of it, as I shall explain.
National Review:
Mm'Doh! — This is my last column on Harriet Miers until her confirmation hearings begin — or until her press conference announcing that for the good of her (insert "country," "president," "family," "party," "faith" or "sanity") she's withdrawing from consideration for the Supreme Court.
BREITBART.COM:
Leave exorcism to the experts, warns Church — A far cry from sorcerers, satanists and other practitioners whom he dismisses as "charlatans," Italian exorcist Andrea Gemma fights the devil only with the strength of his prayers and advises Catholics: 'Don't do this at home".
Discussion:
INDC Journal
Los Angeles Times:
Window Into Miers' Legal Thinking in the 1990s Reflects a Glint of Liberalism — HOUSTON — In the early 1990s, lawyer-bashing was all the rage. And Harriet Miers didn't like it one bit. — Then the president of the State Bar of Texas, Miers used her monthly column in the Texas Bar Journal …
National Review:
Conservative vs. Conservative: Inside the Battle Over Miers — On Monday morning, October 3, not long after President Bush announced his decision to nominate Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, Wendy Long of the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network appeared on CNN to defend the choice.
Donna St. George / Washington Post:
For Injured U.S. Troops, 'Financial Friendly Fire' — Flaws in Pay System Lead to Dunning, Credit Trouble — His hand had been blown off in Iraq, his body pierced by shrapnel. He could not walk. Robert Loria was flown home for a long recovery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center …
Peter Robinson / The Corner on National Review Online:
MATT SCULLY, FRED BARNES, AND BROTHER HUGH — Item: In the New York Times this morning, my good friend Matt Scully argues, persuasively, that Harriet Miers is a very good and very hard-working person. (I'd add that she's charming: The one time I met her, it was Matt who introduced us, and, really, she couldn't have been nicer.)
Jonathan S. Landay / Knight Ridder:
Administration scrambles to prepare U.S. against possible pandemic — WASHINGTON - The Bush administration is scrambling to prepare the nation for a possible global rampage by a new flu germ that it fears could kill nearly 2 million Americans, sicken tens of millions more and shatter the economy.
