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.
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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 …
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.
Spencer S. Hsu / Washington Post:
Former FEMA Director to Testify About Katrina — Denied Executive Privilege, Brown Plans to Discuss Communications With Bush — Michael D. Brown, the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was rebuffed in his request for a claim of executive privilege and plans to testify …
Discussion:
The RCP Blog
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 …
Discussion:
White House, Unclaimed Territory, JustOneMinute, The Rittenhouse Review and Michelle Malkin
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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 …
Discussion:
First Draft, The Carpetbagger Report, King of Zembla, Brilliant at Breakfast and Democratic Veteran
James Taranto / Opinion Journal:Best of the Web
Discussion:
White House, Althouse, Power Line, California Conservative, sisu, Blogs for Bush and Daniel W. Drezner
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 …
Discussion:
JustOneMinute, Dr. Sanity, GOP Bloggers, California Conservative, No More Apples and Betsy's Page
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Daniel Henninger / Opinion Journal: Can We Talk? — If al Qaeda phones, tell them we can't take the call.
The Hill:
Small typo, big headache — A typo in the budget-reconciliation bill may give congressional Democrats another shot at making political hay out of the $39 billion deficit-reduction measure President Bush signed yesterday. — Democratic leaders could block an attempt by Republicans to correct …
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Charles Babington / Washington Post:Patriot Act Compromise Clears Way for Senate Vote
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volokh.com
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.
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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 …
Toni Locy / Associated Press:Libby: White House 'Superiors' OK'd Leaks
Discussion:
TalkLeft, truthout.org, The Huffington Post, Andrew Sullivan, The Reaction and The Reality-Based Community
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
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
Discussion:
The Mahablog, Outside The Beltway, ed fitzgerald's unfutz, Shakespeare's Sister, Daily Kos and KnoxViews
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 …
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
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.
