Top Items:
CNN:
Purported bin Laden tape slams West for 'crusader-Zionist war' — (CNN) — Parts of an audiotape purportedly from Osama bin Laden aired Sunday on an Arabic-language TV network in which the al Qaeda leader attacks the West for cutting off funds to the Palestinian Hamas-led government and referred to a …
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Austin Bay Blog:
Why is Osama declaring war on the world? — Salah Nasrawi reports for the Associated Press that bin Laden is urging jihadis to head for Sudan. Why? To prepare to wage holy war against...get ready... The United Nations. — The AP's lede: … The AP report says the tape was broadcast …
Walid Phares / Counterterrorism Blog:
New Bin Laden Tape: Ten Main Points
New Bin Laden Tape: Ten Main Points
Discussion:
ShrinkWrapped, Atlas Shrugs, Associated Press, Riehl World View, The Jawa Report v3.0 Beta and PrairiePundit
TigerHawk / tigerhawk.blogspot.com:
Bin Laden changes the subject
Bin Laden changes the subject
Discussion:
The Belmont Club, Dr. Sanity, A Blog For All, The Jawa Report v3.0 Beta and PrairiePundit
Glenn Greenwald / Unclaimed Territory:
Treason by association — Almost every Bush follower screeching about the Mary McCarthy story thinks it is extremely significant that (a) she donated money to John Kerry's campaign; (b) Dana Priest's husband knows Joe Wilson, as does McCarthy herself; and (c) McCarthy has professional ties to Sandy Berger.
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Zbigniew Brzezinski / Los Angeles Times:
Been there, done that — Talk of a U.S. strike on Iran is eerily reminiscent of the run-up to the Iraq war. — IRAN'S ANNOUNCEMENT that it has enriched a minute amount of uranium has unleashed urgent calls for a preventive U.S. airstrike from the same sources that earlier urged war on Iraq.
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Times of London:
Iran's president recruits terror master — Sarah Baxter, Washington and Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv — Plot for revenge attacks on West — IRAN'S president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, attended a meeting in Syria earlier this year with one of the world's most wanted terrorists …
Lawrence Wilkerson / Baltimore Sun:
Is U.S. being transformed into a radical republic? — We Americans came not from a revolution but from an evolution. — That is in large part why our so-called revolution produced success while most throughout history did not. We came as much from the Magna Carta as from our own doings …
Mike Allen / Time:
Can Josh Bolten Rescue the Bush Presidency? — He started by shaking up the staff. Next comes a five-point White House "recovery plan" — At the George W. Bush campaign headquarters in Austin, Texas, in 1999, policy director Josh Bolten was a low-key Washingtonian in a building full of brash Texans.
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Cathy Siepp / Los Angeles Times:
Battling cancer — and Blue Cross — Unlike THE TYPICAL Blue Cross "valued member," as the annual letter on rate and benefit changes always calls us, I wasn't upset to learn that my monthly premium would increase by $50, to $395 a month, for me and my daughter. — That's because I'm not really a Blue Cross valued member.
Discussion:
Cathy's World
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Kevin Drum / The Washington Monthly:
BATTLING THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY....Cathy Seipp, who contracted …
BATTLING THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY....Cathy Seipp, who contracted …
Discussion:
Brad DeLong's Semi …
New York Times:
Moves Signal Tighter Secrecy Within C.I.A. — WASHINGTON, April 23 — The crackdown on leaks at the Central Intelligence Agency that led to the dismissal of a veteran intelligence officer last week included a highly unusual polygraph examination for the agency's independent watchdog …
Discussion:
PrairiePundit
Los Angeles Times:
Bush's third term — IF PRESIDENT BUSH HOPES the "shake-up" of his administration initiated last week will re-energize his listless presidency, he's bound to be disappointed. A far more audacious makeover is needed — one that sends Vice President Dick Cheney into early retirement.
Discussion:
CensureBush.org, ProfessorBainbridge.com, The Reaction, TalkLeft, Upper Left, THE NEWS BLOG and First Draft
Daniel / Venezuela News And ViewsVenezuela News …:
A commemoration for the 70 000 that died under Chavez — Acuestate por la Vida, — commemorating the 70 000 deaths by violence in Venezuela in the last 6 years. — Since Hugo Chavez has become president in 1998, the toll of violent death from crime has been multiplied by three.
Discussion:
A Chequer-Board of Nights …
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A.M. Mora y Leon / Publius Pundit:
TENS OF THOUSANDS PROTEST 70k MURDERS IN VENEZUELA
TENS OF THOUSANDS PROTEST 70k MURDERS IN VENEZUELA
Discussion:
Daily Pundit
Ibrahim Barzak / Associated Press:
Fatah, Hamas Gunmen Clash in Gaza — GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Violent clashes and mass protests erupted Saturday across the West Bank and Gaza Strip between followers of the militant group Hamas and Fatah rivals, after a Hamas leader accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of treachery.
Discussion:
A Blog For All
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NY Daily News:
Border battler — Hillary wants to build a U.S.-Mexico fence first — and she's right — Apart from a well-chosen warning about criminalizing Jesus, Sen. Hillary Clinton hasn't waded too deeply into the details of the immigration mess. Until now. — In an interview Friday …
Discussion:
JunkYardBlog, The Gun Toting Liberal, The Strata-Sphere and FullosseousFlap's Dental Blog
Mark Steyn / Chicago Sun Times:
Nothing to fear but the climate change alarmists — Do you worry? You look like you do. Worrying is the way the responsible citizen of an advanced society demonstrates his virtue: He feels good by feeling bad. — But what to worry about? Iranian nukes?
Shakespeare's Sister / Ezra Klein:
The Three-Ring Circus Floats Some Trial Balloons — Shakes here... Some Republicans are urging Bush to dump Cheney and replace him with Condi "if he is serious about presenting a new face to the jaded American public." — Well, that's certainly a big if, but okay, I'll play along.
Con Coughlin / Telegraph:
'We would have been close even if 9/11 hadn't happened' — Tony Blair had just finished a video conference with George W. Bush when I arrived to meet him at Downing Street. Their conversation, inevitably, had been mainly about Iraq. "Every week, we have a video conference to catch up on things," he explained.
Discussion:
RedState
Nico / Think Progress:
60 Minutes: CIA Official Reveals Bush, Cheney, Rice Were Personally Told Iraq Had No WMD in Fall 2002 — Tonight on 60 Minutes, CIA analyst Tyler Drumheller revealed that in the fall of 2002, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and others …
Eliot A. Cohen / Opinion Journal:
Honor in Discretion — Conduct unbecoming from retired generals. — One could say much to defend Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld against the recent attacks of half a dozen retired generals—that the indictments are either old ("not enough troops," a trope from April 2003) or vague …
Brian Bennett / Time:
The Missing Girls of Iraq — Sex trafficking, virtually nonexistent under Saddam Hussein, has resurfaced in Iraq. TIME reports on a seldom-discussed epidemic: girls being kidnapped and sold to brothels — The man on the phone with the 14-year-old Iraqi girl called himself Sa'ad.