Top Items:
Digby / Hullabaloo:
Bipartisan BS — The media is working hard to make this into a bi-partisan scandal but that is simple bulls**t. Ed Henry on CNN, for instance, couldn't stop talking about Byron Dorgan being implicated in this scandal. I don't know if Dorgan's going to be swept up, but let's …
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Anne E. Kornblut / New York Times:G.O.P. Lobbyist to Plead Guilty in Deal With Prosecutors
Discussion:
firedoglake, Washington Post, Captain's Quarters, TalkLeft, Dispatches from the …, Balloon Juice, The American Mind, Obsidian Wings, THE BRAD BLOG, The Reaction, Booman Tribune, David Corn, Bark Bark Woof Woof, Houtopia, PSoTD, Democrat Taylor Marsh …, The Truth Laid Bear, The Heretik, Eschaton, Stop The ACLU, Brilliant at Breakfast, Politics in the Zeros, The Carpetbagger Report, Boston Globe, NewsBusters.org, TAPPED, The Green Knight, Off the Kuff, Hotline On Call, The Lippard Blog and Fired Up! America
Allen G. Breed / Associated Press:
Families Say 12 W.Va. Miners Found Alive — Twelve miners caught in an explosion in a coal mine were found alive late Tuesday, more than 41 hours after the blast, family members said. — Bells at a church where relatives had been gathering rang out as family members ran out screaming in jubilation.
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James Dao / New York Times:
12 Miners Are Found Alive, Family Members Say — SAGO, W.Va., Wednesday, Jan. 4 - Forty-one hours after an explosion trapped 13 men in a West Virginia coal mine here, family members and a state official said 12 of the miners had been found alive Tuesday night.
Discussion:
Confined Space
Ann Scott Tyson / Washington Post:
12 Found Alive in W.Va. Coal Mine — Body of 13th Miner Had Been Found In Adjacent Area — SAGO, W.Va., Jan. 3 — A dozen miners trapped 12,000 feet into a mountainside since early Monday were found alive Tuesday night just hours after rescuers found the body of a 13th man …
Guardian:
Secret services say Iran is trying to assemble a nuclear missile — Document seen by Guardian details web of front companies and middlemen — The Iranian government has been successfully scouring Europe for the sophisticated equipment needed to develop a nuclear bomb …
Discussion:
Atlas Shrugs, A Blog For All, protein wisdom, THE BELGRAVIA DISPATCH and Ace of Spades HQ
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New York Times:
Agency First Acted on Its Own to Broaden Spying, Files Show — WASHINGTON, Jan. 3 - The National Security Agency acted on its own authority, without a formal directive from President Bush, to expand its domestic surveillance operations in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to declassified documents released Tuesday.
Discussion:
Captain's Quarters, The Strata-Sphere, The Volokh Conspiracy, Media Lies, AMERICAblog and Democratic Veteran
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Tom Maguire / JustOneMinute:
A Question For James Risen — James Risen, NY Times reporter and book author, has hit the talk show circuit to promote State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration . Mr. Risen and his book have been all over the news, of course, since it was Messrs.
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Thomas Joscelyn / thomasjoscelyn.blogspot.com:About Your Sources, Mr. Risen — James Risen's appearance …
Discussion:
JunkYardBlog, THE ASTUTE BLOGGER, NewsBusters.org, The Corner on National … and Power Line
White House:
Press Briefing by Scott McClellan — MR. MCCLELLAN: Good afternoon everyone, and welcome back; Happy New Year. I want to begin with just an update on the situation in Upshur County, West Virginia, and the coal miners who have been trapped there. — The President continues to be kept informed about the situation.
Jim VandeHei / Washington Post:
Bush Assails Democrats Over Patriot Act — Opponents Are Blocking Law's Full Renewal for Political Reasons, President Says — President Bush accused Democrats yesterday of blocking a full reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act for political reasons, as the White House stepped …
Mark Steyn / Opinion Journal:
It's the Demography, Stupid — The real reason the West is in danger of extinction. — Most people reading this have strong stomachs, so let me lay it out as baldly as I can: Much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear within …
Jane Hamsher / firedoglake:
GOP EXCLUSIVE!!! — The airwaves are full of the obedient and the credulous this morning trying to tar the Democrats with Jack Abramoff's filthy lucre, so let's set the record straight for those too busy sucking down hairspray fumes to pay full attention. As Media Matters noted …
Steven E. Landsburg / Slate:
Do the Poor Deserve Life Support? — A woman who couldn't pay her bills is unplugged from her ventilator and dies. Is this wrong? — Tirhas Habtegiris, a 27-year-old terminal cancer patient at Baylor Regional Medical Center in Plano, Texas, was removed from her ventilator last month because she couldn't pay her medical bills.
Rebecca MacKinnon / RConversation:
Microsoft takes down Chinese blogger — Microsoft's MSN Spaces continues to censor its Chinese language blogs, and has become more aggressive and thorough at censorship since I first checked out MSN's censorship system last summer. On New Years Eve, MSN Spaces took down the popular blog written by Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti.
Discussion:
The Peking Duck, The Anchoress, La Shawn Barber's Corner, battlepanda.blogspot.com, asiapundit and Boing Boing
