Top Items:
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.
Discussion:
Right Wing Nut House, First Draft, firedoglake, Majikthise, The Carpetbagger Report, The Washington Note, IntoxiNation-News …, Happy Furry Puppy Story …, The RCP Blog, The American Street, ed fitzgerald's unfutz, LiberalOasis, Brilliant at Breakfast, Balloon Juice, Democrat Taylor Marsh …, The Sideshow, PoliticalSports, Left I on the News, The Daily Nightly, Mark in Mexico, Bark Bark Woof Woof, Donklephant, AMERICAblog, Hullabaloo, The Huffington Post, A MOCKINGBIRD'S MEDLEY, Air America Radio and The Next Hurrah
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CNN:
Brown says he's been made Katrina scapegoat — Ex-FEMA chief blames Homeland Security for slow response — WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown told a Senate panel Friday that he feels he's been made a scapegoat for the government's sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina.
Lara Jakes Jordan / Associated Press:
Documents: White House Knew About Levees — WASHINGTON - The earliest official report of a New Orleans levee breach came at 8:30 a.m., hours after Hurricane Katrina roared ashore. Word of the possible breach surfaced at the White House less than three hours later, at 11:13 a.m.
Discussion:
MyDD, KnoxViews, AGITPROP, Just a Bump in the Beltway, The Democratic Party and Think Progress
New York Times:
Brown Asserts He Alerted White House Quickly on Katrina — Michael D. Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, testified today that he let senior White House staffers know as soon as he had heard that flooding had begun in New Orleans on the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall.
Joe Gandelman / The Moderate Voice:
White House Faces Renewed Credibility Problems On Katrina — A new storm is gathering. Right now it looks like a tropical storm...a political tropical storm...but it has the potential of morphing into a full-fledged political hurricane. — The White House house is facing renewed questions …
MSNBC:
Brown blames Homeland for Katrina response — Ex-FEMA chief says he's a scapegoat; 'I certainly feel somewhat abandoned' … MSNBC staff and news service reports — WASHINGTON - Top Department of Homeland Security officials were told that New Orleans was flooding just a few hours …
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 …
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Paul R. Pillar / Foreign Affairs:
Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq — Summary: During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, writes the intelligence community's former senior analyst for the Middle East, the Bush administration disregarded the community's expertise, politicized the intelligence process …
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 …
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 …
Discussion:
JustOneMinute, Associated Press, TalkLeft, Outside The Beltway, Sisyphus Shrugged, AMERICAblog, The Rude Pundit and Donklephant
Daniel Henninger / Opinion Journal:Can We Talk? — If al Qaeda phones, tell them we can't take the call.
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 …
Discussion:
Legal Fiction, The Jawa Report v3.0 Beta, Hyscience, Vodkapundit, Tim Blair, Andrew Sullivan, Oliver Kamm and Riehl World View
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Diana West / Washington Times:Cartoon rage — We need to learn a new word: dhimmitude.
Discussion:
sisu
New York Times:
Bush Gives New Details of 2002 Qaeda Plot to Attack Los Angeles — WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — President Bush offered new information on Thursday about what he said was a foiled plot by Al Qaeda in 2002 to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building west of the Mississippi …
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James Taranto / Opinion Journal:
Best of the Web — Nothing to Fear? — In a speech this morning before the National Guard Association of the United States, President Bush described a terror plot the government thwarted. This is from the White House transcript, including the "sic" and the footnote:
New York Times:
Key Democratic and G.O.P. Senators Are in Accord on Extending Patriot Act — WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — Four recalcitrant Senate Republicans said Thursday that they had reached agreement with the White House on the broad antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act, and two leading Democrats said they would now support the bill.
Discussion:
Washington Times, The Moderate Voice, The Corner on National …, Stop The ACLU and Maverick Views
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Jim VandeHei / Washington Post:
Lobbyist Told Reporter of Nearly a Dozen Contacts With Bush — President Bush met lobbyist Jack Abramoff almost a dozen times over the past five years and invited him to Crawford, Tex., in the summer of 2003, according to an e-mail Abramoff wrote to a reporter last month.
Telegraph:
An experiment? (1) — Another experiment today, this time an exercise in transparency. One reason the blogosphere fascinates me, as someone who makes a living from the mainstream media, is because it so clearly shows the long, pent-up resentment of so many readers at the unequal distribution of power …
Washington Post:
Steele Apologizes for Holocaust Remarks — Compared Stem Cell Research to Nazi Medical Experiments — Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele apologized this morning for telling a Baltimore Jewish group yesterday that he believes stem cell research could be comparable to Nazi medical testing on Jews during World War II.
Discussion:
The Carpetbagger Report
Captain Ed / Captain's Quarters:
Freedom's Just Another Word At Yahoo! — Internet giant Yahoo! joins Microsoft and Google in bending to the Chinese autocracy, only this time they helped jail an activist for freedom in the nominally Communist nation. The London Times reports that Yahoo! coughed up records used to send a dissident to prison for ten years:
Kevin Drum / The Washington Monthly:
ABORTION....Anne Lamott was on a panel about politics and faith recently, and everyone was nodding and agreeing and having a grand old time until the subject of abortion came up: … It's nice to hear a few people of faith still willing to say this. I know it's bad for elections and bad …
New York Times:
Conservatives Unsettled About Movement's Future — WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 — Despite the triumph of placing two conservatives on the Supreme Court within four months, leaders of the conservative movement these days seem less celebratory than divided. — Heading into a midterm Congressional election …
