Top Items:
Washington Post:
Vital Presidential Power — A U.S. president has just received word that American counterterrorist operatives have captured a senior al Qaeda operative in Pakistan. Among his possessions are a couple of cell phones — phones that contain several American phone numbers.
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George F. Will / Washington Post:
Why Didn't He Ask Congress? — The president's authorization of domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency contravened a statute's clear language. Assuming that urgent facts convinced him that he should proceed anyway and on his own, what argument convinced him that he lawfully could?
Charles Lane / Washington Post:
White House Elaborates on Authority for Eavesdropping — Facing mounting criticism over use of the National Security Agency to listen to phone calls of suspected al Qaeda contacts in the United States without court approval, the Bush administration went public yesterday with its most detailed legal defense yet of the program.
Opinion Journal:Thank You for Wiretapping — Why the Founders made presidents dominant …
Discussion:
Carol Platt Liebau
New York Times:
Judge Bars 'Intelligent Design' From Pa. Classes — HARRISBURG, Pa. — "Intelligent design" cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.
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Martha Raffaele / Associated Press:
Judge Rules Against Pa. Biology Curriculum — HARRISBURG, Pa. - "Intelligent design" cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district, a federal judge said Tuesday, ruling in one of the biggest courtroom clashes on evolution since the 1925 Scopes trial.
Eric Lichtblau / New York Times:
F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show — WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment …
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Bull Moose:
Big Brother W.? — The Moose doesn't think it's 1984. — The latest imbroglio over the revelation that the government eavesdropped into the international phone calls of U.S. citizens does not set the Moose's antlers on fire. The Administration is going to have to offer a better explanation …
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Noahmax / Defense Tech:
WIRETAP MYSTERY: SPOOKS REACT — A few current and former signals intelligence guys have been checking in since this NSA domestic spying story broke. Their reactions range between midly creeped out and completely pissed off. — All of the sigint specialists emphasized repeatedly …
Discussion:
Early Warning …, Shakespeare's Sister, The Next Hurrah, Balloon Juice, The Heretik, Power Line and Eric Umansky
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Kevin Drum / The Washington Monthly:WHAT IS THE NSA UP TO?....So what's the nature of the secret NSA bugging program?
Discussion:
TAPPED, The Democratic Party, Begging to Differ, TalkLeft, The Left Coaster, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, PoliticalSports, Ezra Klein, Middle Earth Journal, whatever already!, The Carpetbagger Report, Jesse Berney dot com, Billmon, Balkinization, Hullabaloo, Eschaton, Mathew Gross and ACSBlog
Evan Coyne Maloney / >bt: Brain Terminal:
Strike Shuts Down NYC Subways & Buses — 20 December 2005 @ 3:43AM >> For the first time since 1980, the New York City public transit system is completely shut down due to a strike. Transit Workers Union head Roger Toussaint made the announcement shortly after 3:00AM local time.
Discussion:
Suitably Flip, Alarming News, A Blog For All, Gothamist, Michelle Malkin, GOP and the City and The Anchoress
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New York Times:
Millions Are Left to Make It to Work Any Way They Can — Workers walked to their offices in bitter cold, long lines formed for taxis and the police inspected cars at tunnels and bridges as transit workers started a strike this morning, shutting down New York City's subway and bus system …
James Rainey / Los Angeles Times:
Critics Question Timing of Surveillance Story — The New York Times, which knew about the secret wiretaps for more than a year, published because of a reporter's new book, sources say. — The New York Times first debated publishing a story about secret eavesdropping on Americans as early as last fall …
CNN:
Bush: Secret wiretaps won't stop — President accuses senators of 'playing politics with Patriot Act' — WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush defended using government wiretaps without court authorization to monitor terrorism suspects and urged the Senate to renew the USA Patriot Act during his year-end news conference Monday.
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New York Times:
Administration Cites War Vote in Spying Case — WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - President Bush and two of his most senior aides argued Monday that the highly classified program to spy on suspected members of terrorist groups in the United States grew out of the president's constitutional authority …
Discussion:
Centerfield, Unclaimed Territory, Scrutiny Hooligans, AMERICAblog, Amygdala, The Next Hurrah and Confederate Yankee
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Jonathan Allen / The Hill:
Standoff over ANWR — Senate Republicans prepared a targeted version of the so-called "nuclear option" yesterday as they tried to ensure adoption of a defense-spending conference report that includes a controversial provision opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas drilling.
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Scotsman:
Stalin's half-man, half-ape super-warriors — THE Soviet dictator Josef Stalin ordered the creation of Planet of the Apes-style warriors by crossing humans with apes, according to recently uncovered secret documents. — Moscow archives show that in the mid-1920s Russia's top animal breeding scientist …
Mark Blumenthal / Mystery Pollster:
NOT SUCH AN OUTLIER AFTER ALL? … Advantage, Mr. Todd. A new national poll is out tonight from ABC News (summary, full results) and the Washington Post (article, full results), and it suggests that the Hotline poll may have been more of harbinger than a fluke after all.
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Washington Post:
Senator Sounded Alarm in '03 — Rockefeller Wrote Cheney to Voice Concerns on Spying — John D. Rockefeller IV, a wealthy man representing a poor state, had been the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee for six months when he sat down to a secret briefing on July 17, 2003.
