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 …, The Washington Monthly, Right Wing Nut House, Booman Tribune, Lean Left, Unclaimed Territory, The Counterterrorism Blog, AMERICAN FUTURE, Donklephant, Say Anything, Confederate Yankee, Wonkette, 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.
Discussion:
Rising Hegemon
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 …
Discussion:
Houston's Clear Thinkers, David Corn, Off the Kuff, Middle Earth Journal and Sentencing Law and Policy
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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
Hullabaloo:
Standards — Matthew Yglesias points out that William Kristol is acting dumb, which he is. This ridiculous excuse that Bush had to act quickly in the days after 9/11 to "perteckt thea Murican peepul" makes no sense at all in light of the fact that the administration continues to do it more than four years later.
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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 …
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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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 …
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 …
Katherine Shrader / Associated Press:
CIA Probes Renditions of Terror Suspects — WASHINGTON - The CIA's independent watchdog is investigating fewer than 10 cases where terror suspects may have been mistakenly swept away to foreign countries by the spy agency, a figure lower than published reports but enough to raise some concerns.
Discussion:
Pacific Views, Generation Why?, the talking dog, The Heretik, The Peking Duck, Say Anything and War and Piece
Ian Fisher / New York Times:
Limbo, an Afterlife Tradition, May Be Doomed by the Vatican — ROME, Dec. 27 - It may seem half a shame to get rid of a church tradition, however cruel and antiquated, if it can inspire poetry like "The Inferno" or spooky lines like these from Seamus Heaney: "Fishermen at Ballyshannon/Netted an infant last night/Along with the salmon."
Discussion:
Althouse
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
Michelle Malkin / Townhall.com:
The New York Times vs. America — 2005 was a banner year for the nation's Idiotarian newspaper of record, The New York Times. — What's "Idiotarian"? Popular warblogger Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs and Pajamas Media coined the useful term to describe stubborn blame-America …
Discussion:
Power Line
Associated Press:
Judge tosses Letterman restraining order — Woman had claimed host caused her 'mental harassment' — SANTA FE, New Mexico (AP) — A state judge has lifted a restraining order granted to a Santa Fe woman who accused talk-show host David Letterman of using coded words to show that he wanted to marry her and train her as his co-host.
Discussion:
IMAO
