Top Items:
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 …
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Bruce Fein / Washington Times:
. . . unlimited? — According to President George W. Bush, being president in wartime means never having to concede co-equal branches of government have a role when it comes to hidden encroachments on civil liberties. — Last Saturday, he thus aggressively defended the constitutionality …
Discussion:
The Corner on National …
William M. Arkin / Early Warning:
Inside NSA's World — Every day, the National Security Agency intercepts and records more that 650 million "events" worldwide: radar signals, radio and data transmissions, satellite, cell and land-line telephone calls, faxes and e-mail and text messages and chats over the Internet.
Ars Technica:
The new technology at the root of the NSA wiretap scandal — When the NSA wiretapping story first hit the pages of the NYT a few days ago, there were clearly a huge number of unanswered questions. Is the wiretapping that the President has authorized illegal under the FISA act? Is it unconstitutional?
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.
Kevin Drum / The Washington Monthly:WARTIME....Do President Bush's inherent constitutional powers …
Michael McGough / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:Specter will question Alito on legality of NSA spying
Discussion:
IntoxiNation-News …
Washington Post:Vital Presidential Power
Discussion:
protein wisdom, Talking Points Memo, Crooked Timber, Opinion Journal, Hit and Run, Angry Bear, The Huffington Post, Left in the West, Crescat Sententia, War and Piece, Daily Kos, elementropy, The Washington Monthly, The Rude Pundit, Kenneth Anderson's Law …, Donklephant, Viking Pundit and AMERICAblog
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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MSNBC:
Judge rules against 'intelligent design' — 'Religious alternative' to evolution barred from public-school science classes — HARRISBURG, Pa. - In one of the biggest courtroom clashes between faith and evolution since the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, a federal judge barred …
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.
Henry Weinstein / Los Angeles Times:Federal Judge Rules Against 'Intelligent Design'
Discussion:
Patterico's Pontifications
National Review:
Clinton Claimed Authority to Order No-Warrant Searches — In a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has "inherent authority" to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without …
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Jeff Goldstein / protein wisdom:NSA kerfuffle: redux (UPDATED)
Discussion:
Instapundit.com, Unclaimed Territory, Concurring Opinions, The Right Coast, Oliver Willis and INDC Journal
Jonathan Allen / The Hill:
Civil liberties don't matter much 'after you're dead,' Cornyn says on spy case — Senators launched new salvos in the battle over national security and civil liberties yesterday as recent revelations of domestic spying continued to color the chamber's stalemate on an extension of the anti-terrorism law known as the Patriot Act.
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Larry McShane / Associated Press:
Court Fines NYC Transit Union $1M a Day — NEW YORK - Commuters trudged through the freezing cold, rode bicycles and shared cabs Tuesday as New York's bus and subway workers went on strike for the first time in more than 25 years and stranded millions of riders at the height of the Christmas rush.
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Jeff Jarvis / BuzzMachine:Un transit — New York transit is on strike.
Discussion:
Asymmetrical Information, The Moderate Voice, Gothamist, Instapundit.com and In Search Of Utopia
Right Wing Nut House:
JONATHAN ALTER IS A PIG — Comrades, do you know who is responsible for this? Do you know the enemy who has come in the night and overthrown our windmill? SNOWBALL! (The pig Napoleon in Orwell's Animal Farm) — Newsweek's Jonathan Alter is a pig. But not just any pig.
Discussion:
The Mahablog, NewsHog, The Carpetbagger Report, The Peking Duck, Prairie Weather, Let Freedom Ring and firedoglake
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Jon / Pensito Review:
Clinton-Hater Toensing Laughs - Literally - at Idea of Investigating Bush's Allegedly Illegal Spying on U.S. Citizens — New lows in hackery: During the 1990's, Victoria Toensing and her husband, Joe diGenova, made over 300 appearances on cable television in the service of the Republican agenda …
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Hullabaloo:
Stocking Stuffer Request — While everybody has their credit cards out buying a "secret Santa" moustache mug for their most hated colleague at the office, I wonder if some of you might want to throw a little cash my way while you're at it? For reasons I haven't figured out, this blog is doing miserably at selling blog-ads.
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 …
Ezra Klein / TAPPED:
WHY BIG BROTHER NEEDS FRIENDS. The emerging consensus is that Bush's program is really a high-tech, wide-net data mining operation. The NSA, either through Echelon or another technology, is intercepting vast quantities of domestic electronic communication data, then subjecting …
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Associated Press:
Donors Underwrite DeLay's Deluxe Lifestyle — WASHINGTON — As Tom DeLay became a king of campaign fundraising, he lived like one too. He visited cliff-top Caribbean resorts, golf courses designed by PGA champions and four-star restaurants _ all courtesy of donors who bankrolled his political money empire.
Discussion:
The Stakeholder
Doug Struck / Washington Post:
Sunnis Allege Fraud, Demand New Iraq Elections — Conservative Shiite Coalition Emerges as Early Leader in Parliamentary Returns — BAGHDAD, Dec. 20 — Sunni and secular political parties angrily claimed Tuesday that Iraq's national election was rigged, threatening to leave in shambles …
