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Eric Lipton / New York Times:
White House Knew of Levee's Failure on Night of Storm — WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Bush administration officials said they had been caught by surprise when they were told on Tuesday, Aug. 30, that a levee had broken, allowing floodwaters to engulf New Orleans.
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Walter Pincus / Washington Post:
Ex-CIA Official Faults Use of Data on Iraq — Intelligence 'Misused' to Justify War, He Says — The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision …
Charles Babington / Washington Post:
Patriot Act Compromise Clears Way for Senate Vote — Efforts to extend the USA Patriot Act cleared a major hurdle yesterday when the White House and key senators agreed to revisions that are virtually certain to secure Senate passage and likely to win House approval, congressional leaders said.
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volokh.com
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MSNBC:Abramoff says Bush met, even joked, with him
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Democrat Taylor Marsh …, The Moderate Voice, The Democratic Daily Blog, Macsmind and AMERICAblog
Neil A. Lewis / New York Times:
Ex-Cheney Aide Testified Leak Was Ordered, Prosecutor Says — WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, told a grand jury that he was authorized by his "superiors" to disclose classified information to reporters about Iraq's weapons capability …
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Carol D. Leonnig / Washington Post:
Libby Testified He Was Told To Leak Data About Iraq — Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff testified that his bosses instructed him to leak information to reporters from a high-level intelligence report that suggested Iraq was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction, according to court records in the CIA leak case.
Discussion:
Outside The Beltway
Toni Locy / Associated Press:Libby: White House 'Superiors' OK'd Leaks
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TalkLeft, truthout.org, The Huffington Post, Prairie Weather, Donklephant and The Reality-Based Community
Washington Post:
Bush Details 2002 Plot to Attack L.A. Tower — Intelligence Officials Play Down Importance of Case, Attribute Remarks to Politics — President Bush, under pressure from Congress, defended his campaign against terrorism yesterday, offering for the first time a vivid account of a foiled al Qaeda plot …
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Associated Press:
Abramoff Team and Reid's Office Had Frequent Contact, Records Show — Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid wrote at least four letters helpful to Indian tribes represented by Jack Abramoff, and Reid's staff had frequent contact with the disgraced lobbyist's team about legislation.
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Scott Shields / MyDD:
Smearing Harry Reid — Checking the latest headlines at Yahoo! News a few minutes ago, I was shocked to read that "Reid Aided Abramoff Clients, Records Show." Immediately, I clicked on it to get the story. My first impression was that, unless I wanted to be a complete and total hypocrite …
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Outside The Beltway, Associated Press, Shakespeare's Sister, ed fitzgerald's unfutz, Daily Kos and KnoxViews
Porter Goss / New York Times:
Loose Lips Sink Spies — AT the Central Intelligence Agency, we are more than holding our own in the global war on terrorism, but we are at risk of losing a key battle: the battle to protect our classified information. — Judge Laurence Silberman, a chairman of President Bush's commission …
Paul Reynolds / BBC:
Bloggers: an army of irregulars — World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website — For many in the "mainstream media", as bloggers call us, weblogs are at best a nuisance and at worst dangerous. — They are seen as the rantings and ravings either of the unbalanced or the tedious.
Discussion:
Harry's Place
Andrew C. Revkin / New York Times:
NASA Aide Who Resigned Over Warming Offers Defense — George C. Deutsch, the young NASA press aide who resigned on Tuesday in the center of a storm over claims that he had tried to keep keep the agency's top climate scientist from speaking publicly about global warming, defended himself today in his first public interviews.
Antonio Regalado / Wall Street Journal:
Academy to Referee Climate-Change Fight — Scientists' Group Agrees — To Congressional Request to Study — Temperature-History Charting — Seeking to resolve a scientific dispute that has taken on a rancorous political edge, the National Academy of Sciences said it had agreed …
Discussion:
Dean's World
Charles Krauthammer / Washington Post:
Curse of the Moderates — As much of the Islamic world erupts in a studied frenzy over the Danish Muhammad cartoons, there are voices of reason being heard on both sides. Some Islamic leaders and organizations, while endorsing the demonstrators' sense of grievance and sharing their outrage …
Michelle Malkin:
THE WAR ON THE FREE PRESS — The Cartoon Jihadists are winning... Malaysia: … New: Malaysia bans possession of Prophet cartoons — Yemen: … South Africa (via VOA): … Ukraine: Editor-in-chief of popular Ukrainian newspaper "Today" apologizes before Muslims for publishing cartoons, satirizing Prophet Muhammad
Reza Aslan / Slate:
Depicting Mohammed — Why I'm offended by the Danish cartoons of the prophet. — Not long ago, as I was strolling through the sprawling bazaars of the holy city of Qom in Iran—a city often referred to as "the Vatican of Shiism"—I came across a cramped, catacomblike shop that sold religious trinkets to tourists.
Clive Crook / The Atlantic Online:
Capitalism: The Movie — Why Americans don't value markets enough—and why that matters — C apitalism is not much loved, even in the parts of the world it has served best. If only one country were to dote on free enterprise, America surely ought to be it.
