Top Items:
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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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.
Jeff Goldstein / protein wisdom:
NSA kerfuffle: redux (UPDATED) — Drawing on remarks from both the President and the Attorney General yesterday—and on the responses I was reading around the blogosphere—I began to suspect that the divisions we're seeing in the debate over executive authority to authorize domestic surveillance …
Washington Post:Vital Presidential Power
Discussion:
The Washington Monthly, protein wisdom, Opinion Journal, Talking Points Memo, Crooked Timber, Hit and Run, Angry Bear, The Huffington Post, Left in the West, Crescat Sententia, War and Piece, Daily Kos, elementropy, The Rude Pundit, Kenneth Anderson's Law …, Donklephant, AMERICAN FUTURE, Viking Pundit and AMERICAblog
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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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.
Bruce Fein / Washington Times:. . . unlimited? — According to President George W. Bush …
Discussion:
The Corner on National …
Michael McGough / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:Specter will question Alito on legality of NSA spying
Discussion:
IntoxiNation-News …
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 …
Discussion:
Pharyngula
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
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
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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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, The Carpetbagger Report, The Peking Duck, Prairie Weather and Let Freedom Ring
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sldn.org:
Pentagon Labels Gay Kiss-In a 'Credible Threat' — WASHINGTON, DC - According to recent press reports, Pentagon officials have been spying on what they call "suspicious" meetings by civilian groups, including student groups opposed to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual military personnel.
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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.
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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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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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 …
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.
Los Angeles Times:
Legal Test Was Seen as Hurdle to Spying — Some say the court's tougher standard of 'probable cause' led to the surveillance order. — WASHINGTON — Since Sept. 11, 2001, an obscure but powerful tribunal — the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — has been a solid ally of the Bush administration …
