Top Items:
Walter Pincus / Washington Post:
Pentagon Expanding Its Domestic Surveillance Activity — Fears of Post-9/11 Terrorism Spur Proposals for New Powers — The Defense Department has expanded its programs aimed at gathering and analyzing intelligence within the United States, creating new agencies, adding personnel …
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Jo Fish / Democratic Veteran:
WELCOME TO GERMANY, 1933 — Holy Crap. This is some serious s**t, and it's not being talked about much...or I've been sleeping waaaay too long. … Alarmist? No, I don't think so...read on... (and the emphasis in the quotes is mine) … OK, wait a f**king minute here...this is the US of A, right?
Peter Beaumont / Observer:
Abuse worse than under Saddam, says Iraqi leader — · Allawi in damning indictment of new regime — · Bush prepares way for US troop pull-out — Human rights abuses in Iraq are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein and are even in danger of eclipsing his record …
David D. Kirkpatrick / New York Times:
From Alito's Past, a Window on Conservatives at Princeton — WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 - In the fall of 1985, Concerned Alumni of Princeton was entering a crisis. — The group's members at the time included Samuel A. Alito Jr., now President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court …
Reuters:
US military admits it burned bodies — KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The U.S. military admitted on Saturday that its soldiers in Afghanistan had burned the bodies of two dead Taliban guerrillas and taunted insurgents about it, but had not meant it as a desecration.
Discussion:
NewsHog
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Angus McDowall / Independent:
Iran's President digs in as leadership crisis deepens — A power struggle of titanic proportions has broken out between Iran's newly elected President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the country's parliament. — Now the President's domestic political agenda is in danger of collapse …
Sarah Baxter / Times of London:
Rumsfeld's Al-Jazeera outburst — THE Middle Eastern news network Al-Jazeera was accused by Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, of broadcasting "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable" reports about the war in Iraq the day before President George W Bush met Tony Blair at the White House …
Discussion:
firedoglake
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Adam Liptak / New York Times:
In Terror Cases, Administration Sets Own Rules — When Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales announced last week that Jose Padilla would be transferred to the federal justice system from military detention, he said almost nothing about the standards the administration used in deciding whether …
Dave Schuler / The Glittering Eye:
Discussing withdrawal from Iraq — I tried a little while ago to start a discussion of this subject without a great deal of success. The conversation quickly degenerated into name-calling. Now Dan Darling has started a discussion of the same subject over at Winds of Change.
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New York Times:
Pension Officers Putting Billions Into Hedge Funds — Faced with growing numbers of retirees, pension plans are pouring billions into hedge funds, the secretive and lightly regulated investment partnerships that once managed money only for wealthy investors.
The Heretik:
TOTAL HAWKS**T — WILL THE LAST HAWK Bush declare victory and leave Iraq? Can he do it without cutting and running? Or will he say the troops are trained enough and now we can start to pull out of that country we helped towards democracy? Are we witnessing freedom on the march interruptus?
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Peter Slevin / Washington Post:
Ohio Scandals May Give Democrats a Lift — Republicans' Standing In Key State Endangered — COLUMBUS, Ohio — The scandal began as a curiosity. Tom Noe, a gregarious businessman and Republican Party leader in northwest Ohio, had been entrusted with $50 million in state money to invest in rare coins …
Discussion:
The American Street
Bruce Kesler / Democracy Project:
Thankgiving for Midge Decter: Thanks Mom — Unbeknownst to Midge Decter, until last year, although having children of her own to raise, she has been my spiritual mother since I was 20. Midge Decter's writings, on the nexus of culture and politics, the guide of the values we have at home …
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Edward Wong / New York Times:
Shiite Cleric Increases His Power in Iraq — BAGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 26 - Men loyal to Moktada al-Sadr piled out of their cars at a plantation near Baghdad on a recent morning, bristling with Kalashnikov rifles and eager to exact vengeance on the Sunni Arab fighters who had butchered one of their Shiite militia brothers.
Andrew Jacobs / New York Times:
Just Try to Sleep Tight. The Bedbugs Are Back. — They're the scourge of hobo encampments and hot-sheet motels. To impressionable children everywhere, they're a snippet of nursery rhyme, an abstract foe lurking beneath the covers that emerges when mommy shuts the door at night.
The Heretik:
THIS BLOWS — THE WIND BLOWS but not so much as Joe Biden who now is prepared for what he wasn't prepared for last week. We should be prepared for "leaders" like Bush and Biden to look at the polls and blow accordingly. The time has come for many things, to speak of Iraq and withdrawal and the dream of would be kings.
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Kevin Drum / The Washington Monthly:
VOCABULARY QUIZ....Bret Chenkin, a social studies and English teacher at Mount Anthony Union High School in Vermont, is in hot water for giving his students a politically loaded vocabulary quiz. AP's much-quoted story provides this example: … Well, that seems funny enough to me. But let's test this.
Discussion:
ProfessorBainbridge.com
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Barb Howe / Lucky White Girl:
Medium rare electronics — Sometimes life is like the movies: just when you think the world is going end, deus ex machina steps in and magically everything is okay. — Today I come rushing home because it's the end of the semester and I have finals coming up and I need to write …
New York Times:
100 Notable Books of the Year — Fiction & Poetry — BEYOND BLACK. By Hilary Mantel. (John Macrae/Holt, $26.) Neurotic, demanding ghosts haunt a British clairvoyant in this darkly comic novel. — A CHANGED MAN. By Francine Prose. (HarperCollins, $24.95.)
Charles Burress / San Francisco Chronicle:
Governor agrees to Williams hearing Convicted killer gets closer to possible clemency — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has decided to hold a clemency hearing Dec. 8 for Stanley Tookie Williams, the condemned killer who has attracted a number of high-profile backers calling for his life to be spared.
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