Top Items:
Insight:
Rove counting heads on the Senate Judiciary Committee — The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee's investigation of the administration's unauthorized wiretapping.
Discussion:
Shakespeare's Sister, firedoglake, TAPPED, The Moderate Voice, The Mahablog, IntoxiNation-News …, WTF Is It Now??, The Carpetbagger Report, TalkLeft, The Heretik, Pam's House Blend, War and Piece, The American Street, AMERICAblog, Tennessee Guerilla Women, Right Wing Nut House, State of the Day, Prairie Weather and Booman Tribune
RELATED ITEMS:
Charles Babington / Washington Post:
Activists on Right, GOP Lawmakers Divided on Spying — Despite President Bush's warnings that public challenges to his domestic surveillance program could help terrorists, congressional Republicans and conservative activists are split on the issue and are showing no signs of reconciling soon.
Adam Liptak / New York Times:
In Limelight at Wiretap Hearing: 2 Laws, but Which Should Rule? — It is the sort of problem that judges confront every day. One law forbids a certain activity. The other may allow it. Which one counts? — Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales made the case to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday …
Discussion:
NewsHog, THE ASTUTE BLOGGER, Washington Post, Election Law, Left in the West and JoeTrippi.com
Jonathan Weisman / Washington Post:
Budget Plan Assumes Too Much, Demands Too Little — President Bush's budget blueprint would bring the federal government's budget deficit under control by decade's end. But to do that without raising taxes, the White House would need a sweeping tax reform that it has avoided proposing and a swift end to the war in Iraq.
RELATED ITEMS:
John Byrne / rawstory.com:
Bush 2007 budget quietly omits impact of policies on deficit — President George W. Bush's fiscal year 2007 budget quietly omits a table included in previous years which lays out the impact of the Administration's proposed policies on the deficit, RAW STORY has learned.
John Dickerson / Slate:
Where's My Subpoena? — Valerie Plame, Scooter Libby, and me. — In Washington, the only thing worse than having to testify before a grand jury is not being asked to. I never wanted to go to prison or make hard choices about protecting my sources, but I thought I'd get more out of my bit part …
RELATED ITEMS:
ReddHedd / firedoglake:
Dickerson Speaks...And Drops Some Bombshells — Well, well, well...can you say concerted effort to discredit Wilson, planned carefully by folks at the White House, executed with precision planning, and...conspiracy? John Dickerson, formerly of Time Magazine, has a doozy of a two-part story on Slate.
Discussion:
Wampum
John Dickerson / Slate:
Where's My Subpoena? — Valerie Plame, Scooter Libby, and me. … While the president finished his meeting with Museveni, I hung out with a "senior administration official" by an old yellow school bus. This was the first of my two conversations about Wilson. In his letter to Libby, Fitzgerald has the chronology mixed up.
Discussion:
The American Street
Nasser Karimi / Associated Press:
Iranian Paper Plans Holocaust Cartoons — TEHRAN, Iran - A prominent Iranian newspaper said Tuesday it would hold a competition for cartoons on the Holocaust to test whether the West extends the principle of freedom of expression to the Nazi genocide as it did to the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.
RELATED ITEMS:
Associated Press:
Protests Against Cartoon Flare in Afghanistan — KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — NATO peacekeepers exchanged fire with protesters who attacked their base Tuesday in the second straight day of violent demonstrations in Afghanistan over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, Afghan officials said.
Eli Lake / New York Sun:
Congress's Secret Saddam Tapes — The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is studying 12 hours of audio recordings between Saddam Hussein and his top advisers that may provide clues to the whereabouts of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. — The committee has already confirmed through …
obama.senate.gov:
Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain Exchange Letters on Ethics Reform — Dear John: — Thank you for inviting me to participate in the meeting yesterday to discuss lobbying and ethics reform proposals currently before the Senate. I appreciate your willingness to reach out to me and several …
RELATED ITEM:
Michelle Malkin:
WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER — ***scroll for updates...Danish ping-pong team cancels trip...Iranian demonstrators stone Norwegian embassy...2nd try to storm Danish mission in 2 days...*** — President Bush phoned the Danish Prime Minister today to express support:
RELATED ITEM:
Antonia Zerbisias / Toronto Star:
Hate behind right-wing blogburst — No need to publish offensive cartoons — Feb. 7, 2006. — Well that didn't take long. — While Muslim religious extremists are rioting in the streets of Beirut, Gaza City and Kabul, Scandinavian embassies are being torched and Jordanians are deprived …
Discussion:
Instapundit.com, ++ relapsed catholic …, Right Wing Nut House, Sister Toldjah, Ace of Spades HQ, azerbic and Daimnation!
worldpublicopinion.org:
Global Poll Finds Iran Viewed Negatively — US Continues to Get Low Marks — Views of China, Russia, France Down Sharply — Europe and Japan Viewed Most Positively — A major BBC World Service poll exploring how people in 33 countries view various countries found not a single country …
RELATED ITEM:
Carl Bialik / Wall Street Journal:
Sometimes in Polling, It's All in the Question — What does the public think about the Bush administration's wiretapping program? — It depends on how you ask the question. — A half dozen polls on the issue have turned up different conclusions, and a key distinction appears …
tcsdaily.com:
The American Social Model — American capitalism really is a harsh taskmaster, isn't it? Those excessively long hours that everyone works, so different from the ease and leisure that applies in Europe along with our whiskey fountains, lakes of stew and the big rock candy mountain.
Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff / Washington Post:
Tolerance Toward Intolerance — Last week the publication I work for, the German newsweekly Die Zeit, printed one of the controversial caricatures of the prophet Muhammad. It was the right thing to do. — When the cartoons were first published in Denmark in September, nobody in Germany took notice.
Discussion:
Blinq, INDC Journal, New Sisyphus, TKS on National Review Online, AmSpec Blog, Balloon Juice, USS Neverdock and Hit and Run
Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish:
Enabling Jihadism — Fouad Ajami is on form today: … Fouad is right, as he often is. And that's why the cartoon controversy, pace Hugh Hewitt, is good for the war on terror. One massive supporting pillar of Jihadism has been the West's refusal to treat the Islamic world as it would any other part of the world.
Julie Bosman / New York Times:
Protesters at Philadelphia Paper Ask It to Apologize for Cartoon — The Philadelphia Inquirer became the first major American newspaper to publish any of the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad on Saturday, prompting a small protest outside the newspaper's offices yesterday morning.
Media Matters for America:
Robertson: Europe committing "racial suicide" … During the February 6 edition of Christian Broadcasting Network's (CBN) The 700 Club, host Pat Robertson said that "Europe is right now in the midst of racial suicide because of the declining birth rate." Robertson blamed the declining birth rate …
ABCNEWS:
EXCLUSIVE: Is CIA Leak Probe a 'Witch Hunt'? — Director Launches Internal Investigation Into Who Gave Sensitive Information to the Media — Feb. 7, 2006 — The director of the CIA has launched a major internal probe into media leaks about covert operations.
Digby / Hullabaloo:
Process Talk — Via Armando over at Kos I see this statement from Tom Vilsack today: … There are many things about this statement that are bulls**t. I don't have to lay them all out for you. But I would like to expound on one aspect of this statement that drives me crazy: it's a process answer.
Robert W. Welkos / Los Angeles Times:
Lawyer to Celebrities Is Subject of Inquiry — The names cited in an indictment of private eye Anthony Pellicano read like a road map leading to Bertram Fields and his famous clients. — His name is nowhere in Monday's 60-page indictment of celebrity gumshoe and alleged wiretapper Anthony Pellicano.
Richard Beeston / Times of London:
Hawks have warplanes ready if the nuclear diplomacy fails — IT IS the option of last resort with consequences too hideous to contemplate. And yet, with diplomacy nearly exhausted, the use of military force to destroy Iran's nuclear programme is being actively considered by those grappling …
Eric Eyre / wvgazette.com:
Soldier pays for armor — Army demanded $700 from city man who was wounded — The last time 1st Lt. William "Eddie" Rebrook IV saw his body armor, he was lying on a stretcher in Iraq, his arm shattered and covered in blood. — A field medic tied a tourniquet around Rebrook's right arm …
