Top Items:
Eric Lichtblau / New York Times:
Bush Defends Legality of Domestic Spy Program — WASHINGTON, Jan. 1 - President Bush today continued to defend both the legality and necessity of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, and he denied that he had misled the public last year when he asserted that any government wiretap required a court order.
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Deb Riechmann / Associated Press:
Bush Defends Domestic Spying Program — SAN ANTONIO — President Bush on Sunday strongly defended his domestic spying program, saying it's a limited initiative that tracks only incoming calls to the United States. — "It's seems logical to me that if we know there's a phone number associated …
White House:
President Visits Troops at Brooke Army Medical Center — THE PRESIDENT: Happy New Year to you all. Thanks. I can't think of a better way to start 2006 then here at this fantastic hospital — a hospital that's full of healers and compassionate people who care deeply about our men and women in uniform.
MSNBC:
Transcript for January 1 — Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jon Meacham, William Safire & Eugene Robinson — MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this New Year's Day: What was the biggest story of 2005? What stories should we watch for in 2006? And the New Hampshire primary is only two years away.
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Newsweek:
Full Speed Ahead — After 9/11, Bush and Cheney pressed for more powerand got it. Now, predictably, the questions begin. Behind the NSA spying furor. — Jan. 9, 2006 issue - The talk at the White House in the days and weeks after 9/11 was all about suitcase nukes and germ warfare and surprise decapitation strikes.
Walter Pincus / Washington Post:NSA Gave Other U.S. Agencies Information From Surveillance
Discussion:
Captain's Quarters, Power Line, Suburban Guerrilla, firedoglake, Amygdala, The Strata-Sphere, AMERICAN FUTURE, Daily Kos, Betsy's Page and THE BRAD BLOG
BBC:
Gas row sends shiver through EU — Russia's decision to cut gas imports to Ukraine is causing dismay across Europe, where supplies in a number of countries have been disrupted. — The US has also expressed concern, saying the move raised "serious questions about the use of energy to exert political pressure".
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Andrew E. Kramer / New York Times:
Russia Cuts Off Gas to Ukraine in Cost Dispute — MOSCOW, Jan. 1 - Russia cut off the natural gas intended for Ukraine on Sunday as talks over pricing and transit terms unraveled into a bald political conflict that carried consequences for Ukraine's recovering economy and possibly for gas supplies to Western Europe.
John / AMERICAblog:
Bush now basically claiming that court wouldn't approve warrants to listen in on Osama's phone calls to Americans — That is exactly what he said today, in so many words. Read on. — Now Bush is claiming that the phone calls he was tapping were solely Al Qaeda members calling people in the US.
Discussion:
MyDD
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Tabassum Zakaria / Reuters:Bush defends eavesdropping amid calls for testimony
Discussion:
WTF Is It Now??
Katharine Q. Seelye / New York Times:
Answering Back to the News Media, Using the Internet — Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, or so goes the old saw. For decades, the famous and the infamous alike largely followed this advice. Even when subjects of news stories felt they had been misunderstood or badly treated …
New York Times:
Muslim Scholars Were Paid to Aid U.S. Propaganda — WASHINGTON, Jan. 1 - A Pentagon contractor that paid Iraqi newspapers to print positive articles written by American soldiers has also been compensating Sunni religious scholars in Iraq in return for assistance with its propaganda work, according to current and former employees.
hexblog.com:
Windows WMF Metafile Vulnerability HotFix — This week a new vulnerability was found in Windows: — Browsing the web was not safe anymore, regardless of the browser. Microsoft will certainly come up with a thouroughly tested fix for it in the future, but meanwhile I developed a temporary fix - I badly needed it.
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Larry David / New York Times:
Cowboys Are My Weakness — SOMEBODY had to write this, and it might as well be me. I haven't seen "Brokeback Mountain," nor do I have any intention of seeing it. In fact, cowboys would have to lasso me, drag me into the theater and tie me to the seat, and even then I would make every effort to close my eyes and cover my ears.
Andrew / www.AndrewSullivan.com:
DEFENDING THE NYT: — I think I should second Shafer on the NYT NSA story. Here too. Calame's Public Editor column today seemed weak to me. The only place the NYT obviously scrwed up was in not disclosing Risen's forthcoming book. But taking a year to verify an important story …
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Glenn Reynolds / Instapundit.com:THE NEW YORK TIMES' PUBLIC EDITOR, Byron Calame, criticizes …
Discussion:
Rantingprofs, Mediacrity, PressThink, AMERICAN FUTURE, PrawfsBlawg, The Huffington Post, justbarkingmad.com, BuzzMachine, Pandagon and The Right Coast
BBC:
Syria party kicks out 'traitor' — Syria's ruling Baath Party has expelled former Vice-President Abdul Halim Khaddam - a day after parliament voted to bring treason charges against him. — The moves follow remarks by Mr Khaddam implicating President Bashar al-Assad in the murder …
Discussion:
Winds of Change.NET
Associated Press:
Florida weirdness spawns three books — TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) — How weird is Florida? So weird that not one, not two, but three different books have been titled "Weird Florida." — The first, written by Palm Beach Post reporter Eliot Kleinberg, hit stores in 1998 and detailed years of strange news stories.
Discussion:
Ang's Weird Ideas
