Top Items:
Emptywheel / The Next Hurrah:
Heeee's Baaack!!! — Steve Clemons reports that Richard Lugar will schedule consideration of John Bolton's reappointment as Ambassador to the UN next Thursday. Already, George Voinovich announced he will vote for Bolton. Which means unless we can find another Republican to bail on Bolton …
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David Ignatius / Washington Post:
To Save a Revolution — You could sense the hurt and anger as Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora pleaded this week to the U.S. ambassador and other diplomats in Beirut for a halt to Israeli attacks on Lebanese targets. "The country has been torn to shreds," he said. "I hope you will not let us down."
Discussion:
PSoTD, Blue Crab Boulevard, The Real Ugly American.com, FP Passport, Sister Toldjah and Israel Matzav
Forkum / Cox & Forkum Editorial Cartoons:
Helter Shelter — After the Cedar Revolution, the Lebanese managed to eject Syria from their nest, but Hezbollah was allowed to stay, whether out of fear or sympathy or some combination of both. The Lebanese were supposed to disarm Hezbollah, but the "Party of God," supported …
Discussion:
CNN, Vital Perspective, TigerHawk, Winds of Change.NET, PartisanTimes.com and protein wisdom
Amos Harel / Associated Press:
Four soldiers killed in clashes with Hezbollah; thousands of IDF troops in Lebanon — Warplanes resumed strikes on targets across Lebanon on Friday as Israel warned hundreds of thousands of people to flee the south "immediately," preparing for a likely ground invasion to set up a deep buffer zone in southern Lebanon.
Discussion:
Jerusalem Post, Counterterrorism Blog, The Glittering Eye, Ynetnews, Kishkushim Ø … and Blue Crab Boulevard
Michael Abramowitz / Washington Post:
In Mideast Strife, Bush Sees a Step To Peace — President Bush's unwillingness to pressure Israel to halt its military campaign in Lebanon is rooted in a view of the Middle East conflict that is sharply different from that of his predecessors. — When hostilities have broken out in the past …
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Josh Manchester / TCS Daily:
Shaken and Stirred — The US invasion of Iraq has so shaken and stirred the Middle East that some exceptionally strange things are happening. More importantly, these things unequivocally favor the US in influencing the outcome of the Israeli-Hezbollah War now taking place in Lebanon.
Thomas Sowell / Townhall.com:
Pacifists versus peace — One of the many failings of our educational system is that it sends out into the world people who cannot tell rhetoric from reality. They have learned no systematic way to analyze ideas, derive their implications and test those implications against hard facts.
Genghis Conn / Connecticut Local Politics:
The Lieberman Campaign: What Happened? — How did it come to this? — Joe Lieberman and his campaign staff must be asking themselves just that question this morning. How does an 18-year veteran of the U.S. Senate, a central figure in Connecticut Democratic politics for more than 35 years …
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Hartford Courant:
Two N.J. Casinos Sued Schlesinger Over Debts — When Alan Schlesinger gave a fake name while playing blackjack at Foxwoods in the early 1990s, he had already been sued over a gambling debt by one Atlantic City casino and was on the way to racking up an even bigger debt that led to a second lawsuit.
Michael J. Berlin / Washington Post:
A Secret the Media Kept — Toward the end of 1979, hundreds of American and Canadian journalists and news organizations got hold of a dynamite news story that would have made personal reputations and careers and sent circulation or broadcast ratings soaring. The facts were confirmed, unassailably.
CNN:
Hezbollah leader apologizes for attack's child victims — Nasrallah: Militant group not harmed by Israeli attacks — (CNN) — Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah apologized for an attack that killed two Israeli Arab children in northern Israel, saying the youngsters were "martyrs for Palestine."
Discussion:
Blue Crab Boulevard, Daily Pundit, Mere Rhetoric, Bring it On! and The Real Ugly American.com
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DMI Blog:
the Right has no solution to poverty (shocking!) — Interesting story in the Washington Post Thursday about Bush and that brief moment he declared a war on poverty. Interviewing the insiders on why Bush and the conservative run congress haven't done more to fight poverty an "expert" says:
Ken Silverstein / Harper's:
Sources: Negroponte Blocks CIA Analysis of Iraq "Civil War" — I reported in May that despite the deteriorating situation in Iraq, no National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) has been produced on that country since the summer of 2004. The last NIE, a classified document that the CIA describes as …
David Wooding / The Sun:
Exiled Bakri in SOS plea — EXILED preacher of hate Omar Bakri has begged the Royal Navy to rescue him from war-torn Beirut. — The Muslim cleric who fled Britain last year, tried to board a ship full of women and children yesterday but was turned away. — He also wrote to the British …
Discussion:
Captain's Quarters, Hot Air, The Moderate Voice, Security Watchtower, Blue Crab Boulevard and Gateway Pundit
Austan Goolsbee / New York Times:
Count Ethnic Divisions, Not Bombs, to Tell if a Nation Will Recover From War — WITH repeated Shiite and Sunni killings in Iraq, the Hezbollah rocket attacks on Israel, Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Gaza, the assaults by the Taliban and counterassaults by American forces in Afghanistan …
Dana Priest / Washington Post:
Top-Secret World Loses Blogger — CIA Contractor Is Fired When Internal Post Crosses the Line — Christine Axsmith, a software contractor for the CIA, considered her blog a success within the select circle of people who could actually access it. — Only people with top-secret security clearances …
Discussion:
GroupIntel, Outside The Beltway, The Gun Toting Liberal, The Carpetbagger Report and Law Librarian Blog
Dana Bash / CNN:
Sen. Reid: Iraq devolves into 'civil war' — Democratic leader will try to revive Senate debate on Iraq — WASHINGTON (CNN) — Declaring that he believes the situation in Iraq has devolved into a civil war, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday he plans to try to bring the war back up for debate on the Senate floor.
Will Lester / Associated Press:
Democrats ready to shake up primary; Lynch warns of chaos — WASHINGTON —Democrats are prepared to jumble the states in the presidential primary calendar to add more diversity in early voting, prompting the governor of soon-to-be-slighted New Hampshire to warn of chaos in the nominating process.