Top Items:
Sarah Baxter / Times of London:
Friends of Hillary hint she may pull out of presidential race — FRIENDS of Hillary Clinton have been whispering the unthinkable. Despite her status as the runaway frontrunner for the 2008 Democratic nomination for president, some of her closest advisers say she might opt out of the White House race …
RELATED ITEMS:
Washington Post:
More GOP Districts Counted as Vulnerable — Facing the most difficult political environment since they took control of Congress in 1994, Republicans begin the final two months of the midterm campaign in growing danger of losing the House while fighting to preserve at best a slim majority in the Senate …
New York Times:
Rove's Word Is No Longer G.O.P. Gospel — Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, is struggling to steer the Republican Party to victory this fall at a time when he appears to have the least political authority since he came to Washington, party officials said.
Discussion:
The Moderate Voice, TalkLeft, DownWithTyranny!, NewsBusters.org, Donklephant, The Horse's Mouth and Daily Pundit
Fred Barnes / Weekly Standard:
The Plamegate Hall of Shame — Instead of Cheney or Rove or Libby, the real culprits are favorites of the Washington elite and the mainstream press. — The rogues' gallery of those who acted badly in the CIA "leak" case turns out to be different from what the media led us to expect.
Alan Cowell / New York Times:
14 Arrested in London Anti-Terror Raids — The British police arrested 14 men in south, east and north London overnight, raiding a halal restaurant and an Islamic school in the latest display of concern about the spread of potential terrorists among British Muslims, police officials said Saturday.
Discussion:
Bring it On!
RELATED ITEMS:
Jason Lewis / Daily Mail:
Police swoop on Britain's first 'jihad training camp' — Anti-terror police raided what is believed to be Britain's first home-grown jihad training camp in the grounds of a former English ballet school. — They rounded up a network of alleged terrorist recruiters after spying on them at the secluded country mansion.
Lee Keath / Associated Press:
Al-Qaida's deputy issues new videotape — CAIRO, Egypt - An American thought to be an al-Qaida activist appeared in a videotape with the terror group's deputy leader Saturday and called on his countrymen to convert to Islam and for U.S. soldiers to switch sides in the Iraq and Afghan wars.
RELATED ITEMS:
Walid Phares / counterterrorismblog.org:
The "Azzam" Threat: A prelude to Future Jihad in America — PS: This is a short version posting. The longer version will be posted later. — The video tape issued by al Qaeda's "as-sahhab" production, in which Ayman Zawahiri introduces Jihadist Adam Gahdan to the world as a senior speaker …
Wall Street Journal:
Wrong Door — The Supreme Court ruled this June that evidence seized in an illegally performed "no-knock" police raid can still be used against a defendant. Though disturbing in its own right, Hudson v. Michigan touched on only a small part of a larger problem — the trend toward paramilitary tactics in domestic policing.
Discussion:
Instapundit.com
Bill Sizemore / Virginian-Pilot:
Blackwater and Colombian workers clash over pay scale — About three dozen former Colombian soldiers are engaged in a pay dispute with Blackwater USA, saying their salaries for security work in Iraq turned out to be one-quarter what they had been promised by recruiters in Bogota.
RELATED ITEMS:
Matt O. / Firedoglake:
Blackwater Recruited Colombian Soldiers; Paid $34/Day
Blackwater Recruited Colombian Soldiers; Paid $34/Day
Discussion:
The News Blog
Times of London:
Israel plans for war with Iran and Syria — Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv, and Sarah Baxter, New York — THREATENED by a potentially nuclear-armed Tehran, Israel is preparing for a possible war with both Iran and Syria, according to Israeli political and military sources.
Discussion:
AMERICAN FUTURE
Jennifer Medina / New York Times:
War Veterans Lend Support to Lieberman in TV Ads — An independent group, Vets for Freedom, will begin sponsoring television commercials early next week for Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, thanking him for his support of the war in Iraq. — Vets for Freedom is a group of veterans of the wars …
Telegraph:
I no longer have power to save Iraq from civil war, warns Shia leader — The most influential moderate Shia leader in Iraq has abandoned attempts to restrain his followers, admitting that there is nothing he can do to prevent the country sliding towards civil war.
Jim Dwyer / New York Times:
2 U.S. Reports Seek to Counter Conspiracy Theories About 9/11 — Faced with an angry minority of people who believe the Sept. 11 attacks were part of a shadowy and sprawling plot run by Americans, separate reports were published this week by the State Department and a federal science agency insisting …
Carlotta Gall / New York Times:
Opium Harvest at Record Level in Afghanistan — Afghanistan's opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul.