Top Items:
New York Times:
Defense Lawyers in Terror Cases Plan Challenges Over Spy Efforts — WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 - Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.
Discussion:
TAPPED, IntoxiNation-News …, Right Wing Nut House, The Washington Monthly, The Heretik, Booman Tribune, Lean Left, Unclaimed Territory, The Counterterrorism Blog, AMERICAN FUTURE, Donklephant, Say Anything, Confederate Yankee, Wonkette, Michelle Malkin, Centerfield, Althouse, The Corner on National …, War and Piece, Mathew Gross and Politics in the Zeros
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ReddHedd / firedoglake:
Meet the Fan — In a NYTimes article that should come as no surprise to the legal minds in the audience, defense counsel for a number of charged and convicted terrorism suspects are planning to challenge cases based on the latest revelations on the NSA spying domestically.
TalkLeft:
Defendants Plan Suits Over NSA Surveillance — Last week I predicted that defense lawyers would soon start filing motions related to Bush's warrantless NSA surveillance. The New York Times reports lawyers from coast to coast are getting ready to hit the courts, and some will seek to reopen cases …
Discussion:
Nevada Thunder
Tom Lasseter / Knight Ridder:
Kurds in Iraqi army proclaim loyalty to militia — KIRKUK, Iraq - Kurdish leaders have inserted more than 10,000 of their militia members into Iraqi army divisions in northern Iraq to lay the groundwork to swarm south, seize the oil-rich city of Kirkuk and possibly half of Mosul …
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Wall Street Journal:
Pro-War Group Takes to the Airwaves — Move America Forward Ads Aim to Lift — Bush's Approval Rating by Backing WMD Claims — WASHINGTON — The television commercials are attention-grabbing: Newly found Iraqi documents show that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction …
Discussion:
MyDD, Loaded Mouth, Gateway Pundit, Main and Central, Seeing the Forest and Rowhouse Logic
Carrie Johnson / Washington Post:
Enron Executive Agrees to Plea Deal — Prosecutors Gain Witness Against Lay and Skilling — Enron Corp.'s former chief accountant agreed to plead guilty today to criminal conduct that preceded the company's collapse into bankruptcy, according to sources familiar with the negotiations …
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Kurt Eichenwald / New York Times:
Plea Deal Is Seen for Enron Figure — In a reversal that transforms the criminal case against Enron's former top officers, the company's former chief accounting officer has reached an agreement with prosecutors to plead guilty to violating federal law during his employment there, people briefed on the decision said yesterday.
Discussion:
White Collar Crime Prof Blog
Judd / Think Progress:
Reality Check: We Did Amend FISA After 9/11 — Defenders of President Bush's secret spying program argue that it would have been impractical for the administration to seek amendments to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the weeks after 9/11. Here's Bill Kristol in the most recent issue of the Weekly Standard:
Discussion:
Daily Kos
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Robert F. Turner / Opinion Journal:
FISA vs. the Constitution — Congress can't usurp the president's power to spy on America's enemies. — In the continuing saga of the surveillance "scandal," with some congressional Democrats denouncing President Bush as a lawbreaker and even suggesting that impeachment hearings may be in order …
Chicago Tribune:
Judging the case for war — Did President Bush intentionally mislead this nation and its allies into war? Or is it his critics who have misled Americans, recasting history to discredit him and his policies? If your responses are reflexive and self-assured, read on.
Blaine Harden / Washington Post:
A Shared Uncertainty — Hurricane Unites Evacuees on Both Sides Of New Orleans's Divide of Race and Class — NEW ORLEANS Joseph and Kesa Williams have come home once since Hurricane Katrina chased them off to Atlanta. Once was all they could bear. — Inside their ruined house …
Matthew Yglesias / yglesias.tpmcafe.com:
Matthew Yglesias — Gifted Children Left Behind? — A Washington Post op-ed complaints that with No Child Left Behind forcing schools to focus more attention on their worst-performing students, the "gifted" are being left out of the picture. Paul Glastris says "Progressive-minded folks ought …
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Raymond Hernandez / New York Times:
Frustration Over Iraq Vote Unlikely to Trouble Clinton — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's support for the war in Iraq has outraged many liberal activists in the Democratic Party, who are warning of retribution, including a primary challenge to her re-election campaign next year.
Donald Lambro / Washington Times:
Centrist Democrats hit anti-Bush tactics — Some centrist Democrats say attacks by their party leaders on the Bush administration's eavesdropping on suspected terrorist conversations will further weaken the party's credibility on national security. — That concern arises from recent moves …
Kathleen Parker / Townhall.com:
Lord of the blogs — Of all the stories leading America's annual greatest-hits list, the one that subsumes the rest is the continuing evolution of information in the Age of Blogging. — Not since the birth of the printing press have our lives been so dramatically affected by the way we create …
Robert Fisk / Los Angeles Times:
Telling it like it isn't — I FIRST REALIZED the enormous pressures on American journalists in the Middle East when I went some years ago to say goodbye to a colleague from the Boston Globe. I expressed my sorrow that he was leaving a region where he had obviously enjoyed reporting.
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Joseph Kahn / New York Times:
When Chinese Sue the State, Cases Are Often Smothered — SHIQIAO, China - The peasants surrounded the clerk in the busy court anteroom, badgering him to let them sue the officials who had seized their land. — No, no, the clerk said, shaking his head and waving his hands, as the peasants recalled it.
Discussion:
The Peking Duck
