Top Items:
Carol D. Leonnig / Washington Post:
Secret Court's Judges Were Warned About NSA Spy Data — Program May Have Led Improperly to Warrants — Twice in the past four years, a top Justice Department lawyer warned the presiding judge of a secret surveillance court that information overheard in President Bush's eavesdropping program …
Discussion:
firedoglake, TAPPED, PoliBlog, Macsmind, Amygdala, Hugh Hewitt, The Left Coaster, The Democratic Daily Blog, Democrat Taylor Marsh …, Think Progress, WTF Is It Now??, Stygius, The Volokh Conspiracy, The American Street, The Washington Monthly, AMERICAblog, Just a Bump in the Beltway, Democratic Veteran and Bark Bark Woof Woof
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Charles Babington / Washington Post:
White House Agrees to Brief Congress on NSA Surveillance — Responding to congressional pressure from both parties, the White House agreed yesterday to give lawmakers more information about its domestic surveillance program, although the briefings remain highly classified and limited in scope.
Discussion:
Captain's Quarters, Big Lizards, The Heretik, The Left Coaster, The Moderate Voice, the talking dog, Stop The ACLU, PoliBlog and Reuters
Katherine Shrader / Associated Press:White House Gives Details on Surveillance
Discussion:
Sister Toldjah
Hassan M. Fattah / New York Times:
At Mecca Meeting, Cartoon Outrage Crystallized — BEIRUT, Lebanon, Feb. 8 — As leaders of the world's 57 Muslim nations gathered for a summit meeting in Mecca in December, issues like religious extremism dominated the official agenda. But much of the talk in the hallways was of a wholly different issue …
Discussion:
Ezra Klein, The Blogging of the President, Daimnation!, Althouse, Tim Worstall and PoliBlog
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Nick Britten / Telegraph:
100,000 Muslims to vent anger in London at cartoon protest — A mass demonstration of 100,000 Muslims will take place in London next weekend as anger continues over publication of cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. — The Muslim Action Committee, an umbrella group which claims to represent …
Associated Press:
Ex-FEMA chief: I may tell all about Katrina — Michael Brown asks White House if they want him to stay quiet — WASHINGTON (AP) — Former disaster agency chief Michael Brown is indicating he is ready to reveal his correspondence with President Bush and other officials during Hurricane Katrina unless …
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Jim VandeHei / Washington Post:
Bush Shifts on Muslim Protests — Violence Is Criticized, Not the Cartoons — The Bush administration yesterday condemned the violent response to European cartoons mocking Islam and accused Iran and Syria of exploiting the international controversy to incite unrest and protests in the Middle East.
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Tim Golden / New York Times:
Tough U.S. Steps in Hunger Strike at Camp in Cuba — United States military authorities have taken tougher measures to force-feed detainees engaged in hunger strikes at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, after concluding that some were determined to commit suicide to protest their indefinite confinement, military officials have said.
Steven Lee Myers / New York Times:
Toast of the TV in Russian Eyes: It's Solzhenitsyn — MOSCOW, Feb. 8 — A grandfatherly figure, his bearded face wrinkled into a smile, peers down from billboards around town. — It is surprise enough that the man is Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, the once-exiled writer, Nobel Prize winner and, of late, octogenarian scold.
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Jonathan D. Glater / New York Times:
Applications to Law Schools Are Declining — Has law school lost its appeal? — Last year, for the first time since the 1997-98 admission cycle, the number of applicants to law school declined, by 4.6 percent, and so far this year, the number has declined by 9.5 percent.
Pew Research Center:
Summary of Findings — Public concern over Iran's nuclear program has risen dramatically in the past few months. Today, 27% of Americans cite Iran as the country that represents the greatest danger to the United States. In October, just 9% pointed to Iran as the biggest danger to the U.S. …
Elisabeth Bumiller / New York Times:
The Nation's Dual Political Dynasties Are Growing Closer Than Arm's Length — WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 — When the Bushes and Clintons held hands before 15,000 mourners at Coretta Scott King's funeral on Tuesday, it looked like a prayerful moment in the life of the nation.
Discussion:
BrothersJudd Blog
Lolita C. Baldor / commondreams.org:
Lawyers: Many Gitmo Detainees Not Accused — More than half of the terror suspects being held at Guantanamo Bay have not been accused of committing hostile acts against the United States or its allies, two of the detainees' lawyers said in a report released Tuesday.
Nancy Goldstein / rawstory.com:
Money shot — Twenty bloggers. Seventeen states. One question: If you had $100 to invest politically, where would it go? — True confessions: when I queried folks, I told them that I, like so many disenchanted progressives, had sworn off giving money to the Democratic National Party …
Discussion:
Shakespeare's Sister
James Glanz / New York Times:
Iraq Utilities Are Falling Short of Prewar Performance — WASHINGTON, Feb. 8 — Virtually every measure of the performance of Iraq's oil, electricity, water and sewerage sectors has fallen below preinvasion values even though $16 billion of American taxpayer money has already been disbursed …
Discussion:
Andrew Sullivan
Austin Bay Blog:
A lesson for Anne Applebaum: Reporting versus Editorial Opinion — Anne Applebaum is confused, so what does a confused American liberal do? Blame American conservatives. Hey, read the DailyKos and you'll conclude Bush is the enemy, not Al Qaeda. — Let me praise her first.
Bernard-Henri Levy / Opinion Journal:
Moral Atomic Bomb — In the midst of a planetary intifada, let us stand by the moderate Muslims. — One can find these cartoons mediocre. — One can perceive in them, as I do, a certain similarity with the anti-Semitic and racist caricatures of the 1930s or '50s.
Jeff Flake / New York Times:
Earmarked Men — BACK on the F-Bar Ranch, when I was too young to load the chute, de-horn, vaccinate, hold a hot iron or otherwise make myself useful as my father and older brothers branded calves, I would spend my time collecting "earmarks" — V-shaped pieces of a calf's left ear detached with two swift strokes of a pocketknife.
Jim Geraghty / Washington Times:
The growing role of bloggers — Imagine what the mood at President Bush's State of the Union address would have been if the big news before the speech was the Senate's confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Harriet Miers. — It's hard to believe that as recently as late October that was the White House's goal.
