Top Items:
Deb Riechmann / Associated Press:
Bush: Iraq violence is al-Qaida plot — RIGA, Latvia - President Bush said Tuesday that an al-Qaida plot to stoke cycles of sectarian revenge in Iraq is to blame for escalating bloodshed, refusing to debate whether the country has fallen into civil war. — "There's a lot of sectarian …
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New York Times:
Bush Blames Al Qaeda for Wave of Iraq Violence — President Bush today said Al Qaeda was to blame for the rising wave of sectarian violence in Iraq, which he refused to label a civil war. Mr. Bush said he would press Iraq's prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, during meetings in Jordan later …
Helene Cooper / New York Times:
Bush Asking Arab Friends for Iraq Help
Bush Asking Arab Friends for Iraq Help
Discussion:
SyriaComment, TAPPED, Informed Comment, American Footprints, The Road to Surfdom, Needlenose and Foreign Policy Watch
Reuters:
Pelosi rejects Hastings bid to head committee —Text+WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings of Florida, impeached as a federal judge in 1989 on corruption charges, dropped his bid under pressure on Tuesday to chair a congressional panel designed to help protect America's security, a party aide said.
Discussion:
Washington Post, Roger L. Simon, Outside The Beltway, Don Surber, Media Lies and Blogs for Bush
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Fox News:
PELOSI-HASTINGS MEETING COULD SIGNAL END OF CHAIRMANSHIP BID — WASHINGTON — House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi will meet Tuesday with Florida Rep. Alcee Hastings, and those with knowledge of Pelosi's thinking told FOX News that Hastings will be told he is not going to be the next chairman …
Discussion:
Blue Crab Boulevard, Hotline On Call, On Deadline, Decision '08, Bill's Bites and Pajamas Media
Lesley Clark / The State:
Hastings not likely to lead House Intelligence Committee — WASHINGTON — Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., will not be the next chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a Democratic aide confirmed Tuesday as Hastings left a private meeting with Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Katherine Shrader / Associated Press:
Pelosi passes Hastings for Intel chair
Pelosi passes Hastings for Intel chair
Discussion:
Blue Crab Boulevard
Michelle Malkin:
Burning Six update: The AP responds (to USA Today); update: and now, a new AP account — ***scroll for updates... (fyi, my gmail is still down. if you are trying to reach me, use this temporary address: malkinblog-at-yahoo.com)...see below for AP tinfoil hat editorializing...plus …
Discussion:
Townhall.com Blog's …, Power Line, CBS News, BizzyBlog, The Jawa Report and PrairiePundit
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Steven R. Hurst / Associated Press:
Witnesses detail immolation attack on six Sunnis in Baghdad last week
Witnesses detail immolation attack on six Sunnis in Baghdad last week
Mark Memmott / On Deadline:
AP, U.S. military spar over atrocities report
AP, U.S. military spar over atrocities report
Discussion:
Democracy Project, Unqualified Offerings, BizzyBlog, Michelle Malkin, Romenesko, Wake up America and UNCoRRELATED
Editor and Publisher:
'Civil' Disobedience Spreads — 'NYT' Adjusts Language on Iraq — NEW YORK In the wake of the highly-publicized NBC and MSNBC decision to start referring to the conflict in Iraq as a "civil war," other media outlets, which have long used phrases such as "sectarian violence," are re-considering their language in this regard.
Discussion:
MSNBC, Hot Air, The Horse's Mouth, Flopping Aces, NewsBusters.org, jules crittenden and Ace of Spades HQ
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Ahmed Rashid / Telegraph:
Accept defeat by Taliban, Pakistan tells Nato — Senior Pakistani officials are urging Nato countries to accept the Taliban and work towards a new coalition government in Kabul that might exclude the Afghan president Hamid Karzai. — Pakistan's foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri …
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Glenn Harlan Reynolds / Popular Mechanics:
SWAT Overkill: The Danger of a Paramilitary Police Force — In a guest editorial, law professor and instupundit.com blogger Glenn Reynolds argues that overagressive tactics and surplus military gear have turned some police units into a dangerous menace. — SOLDIERS AND POLICE are supposed to be different.
Discussion:
Unqualified Offerings
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Linda Deutsch / Associated Press:
Judge strikes down Bush on terror groups — LOS ANGELES - A federal judge struck down President Bush's authority to designate groups as terrorists, saying his post-Sept. 11 executive order was unconstitutionally vague, according to a ruling released Tuesday.
Discussion:
CorrenteWire
Atrios / Eschaton:
Centrism — Just adding on to Ezra, I have hostility to the concept of "centrism" for a variety of reasons. First, except on a few mostly social issues there really isn't all that much which can be neatly fit into a left-center-right-axis. Mostly centrism is used be elite opinionmakers …
Discussion:
Firedoglake, The American Street, Seeing the Forest, Booman Tribune and The Huffington Post
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Lesley Clark / Miami Herald:
Congressman calls Miami a `Third World country' — WASHINGTON - Rep. Tom Tancredo, the leader of the anti-illegal immigration faction in the U.S. House, spent a recent weekend at The Breakers in Palm Beach. — Ninety miles to the south, he found a symbol to bolster his belief …
Discussion:
Reason Magazine, The American Street, Oliver Willis, Right Wing News and The Political Pit Bull
BBC:
Iran: US exit key to Iraq peace — US troops must leave Iraq if security is to be restored, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said during talks with the Iraqi president. — He said the US was powerless to stop the unrest in Iraq, which was also bad for other countries in the region.
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Dennis Prager / Townhall.com:
America, Not Keith Ellison, decides what book a congressman takes his oath on — Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran.
Jonathan Karl / ABCNEWS:
EXCLUSIVE: Pentagon Considers Moving Troops From al-Anbar Province to Baghdad — Major Strategic Shift Considered to Secure Iraqi Capital — ABC News has learned that Pentagon officials are considering a major strategic shift in Iraq, to move U.S. forces out of the dangerous Sunni-dominated …
Fox News:
JUDGE ORDERS TREASURY DEPARTMENT TO MAKE PAPER MONEY RECOGNIZABLE TO BLIND PEOPLE — WASHINGTON — American paper money represents an unfair impediment to the blind, and the Treasury Department must come up with new U.S. currency to help the visually impaired use cash, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
Jon Boyle / Reuters:
French police the target in urban guerrilla war — PARIS (Reuters) - Stoned, beaten and insulted, their vehicles torched by crowds of hostile youths, French police say they face an urban guerrilla war when they enter the run-down neighborhoods that ring the major cities.
Discussion:
A Blog For All
Brian C. Ledbetter / snapped shot:
Cheerleading for the Terrorists — The media, in all of its glory, wholeheartedly participating in the celebration of a new weapon designed to kill Jews: — More details will follow shortly, as soon as I have the time. I hope to track down the news articles attached to this event …
Adam Liptak / New York Times:
Court Clears Way for Prosecutor to Review Records in Times Case — The United States Supreme Court refused yesterday to stop a federal prosecutor from reviewing the telephone records of two reporters for The New York Times. The records, the newspaper said, include information about many of the reporters' confidential sources.
Michael Kinsley / Washington Post:
Like I Care — The first person I knew who had a Web site of his own was a fellow Washington journalist. This was when many journalists were still just getting into e-mail, but the URL for this Web site quickly circulated around town and around the world. Why? Well, we were all impressed by the technological savvy.
Discussion:
GINA COBB, Jackie Danicki, Michelle Malkin, Blue Crab Boulevard and Alabama Liberation Front