Top Items:
Noah Shachtman / Wired News:
Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death — The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction …
Discussion:
NewsBusters.org, Ars Technica, Defense Tech, Confederate Yankee, Debsweb, digg, Op For, Blue Crab Boulevard, Atlas Shrugs and Instapundit.com
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Pundit Review Radio / BLACKFIVE:
THE END OF MILITARY BLOGGING — The most excellent Noah Shachtman of Wired's Danger Room has a great article with lots of milblogger reaction to the new OPSEC regulations that will end military blogging as we know it. Yes, that's right - the end of soldier blogging from the war zones.
Chris Cillizza / The Fix:
Parsing the Polls: No Room For Compromise on Iraq — President Bush's veto of the Iraq funding bill returns the debate over the war to square one. — The question for Democratic congressional leaders and the White House is how far is each side willing to push the fight over legislating …
Discussion:
Matthew Yglesias
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Associated Press:
House fails to override Bush's veto of Iraq bill — 222-203 vote falls far short of the two-thirds majority Democrats sought — The Democratic-controlled House failed Wednesday to override President Bush's veto of an Iraqi war spending bill with timetables for troop withdrawals.
Micah L. Sifry / techPresident:
The Battle to Control Obama's Myspace — In November 2004, Joe Anthony, a paralegal living in Los Angeles, started a unofficial fan page for then-newly-elected Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) on MySpace.com. Inspired by Obama's keynote address at that summer's Democratic convention, Anthony had never been politically active before.
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Jerome Armstrong / MyDD:
Obama blows into MySpace — This seems like it was bound to happen with Obama's top-down campaign structure as it grows by leaps and bounds. With much of that energy coming from a bottom up movement that's responsible for that growth, the campaign moves in to take control of the decentralized action.
Discussion:
The Huffington Post, Hugh Hewitt's TownHall Blog, Ezra Klein, Discourse.net, NION and Taylor Marsh
Alan Schwarz / New York Times:
Study of N.B.A. Sees Racial Bias in Calling Fouls — An academic study of the National Basketball Association, whose playoffs continue tonight, suggests that a racial bias found in other parts of American society has existed on the basketball court as well.
Willard Hotel / White House:
President Bush Discusses War on Terror, Economy with Associated General Contractors of America — Washington, D.C. — THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all; please be seated. Steve, unlike you, I have trouble finding the front end of a front-end loader. (Laughter.) Thanks for having me.
Carpetbagger / The Carpetbagger Report:
Is Rice engaging in 'bad behavior'? — I can't wait to hear the noise machine blather endlessly about how Condoleezza Rice is undermining U.S. policy by chatting with Syrian officials. (thanks to L.J. for the tip) … Ah yes, the Pelosi meeting. As I recall, when the Speaker …
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Karen DeYoung / Washington Post:
Rice Meets with Iraq's Prime Minister on Eve of Conference
Rice Meets with Iraq's Prime Minister on Eve of Conference
Discussion:
The Carpetbagger Report
James Risen / New York Times:
Administration Pulls Back on Surveillance Agreement — Senior Bush administration officials told Congress on Tuesday that they could not pledge that the administration would continue to seek warrants from a secret court for a domestic wiretapping program, as it agreed to do in January.
Discussion:
Washington Post, Amygdala, White House Watch, Discourse.net, Hullabaloo, AMERICAblog and State of the Day
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Tim Arango / Fortune:
Imus won't go quietly — The talk show host has hired a top First Amendment lawyer, and an unusual clause in his contract could give him a $40 million payday, writes Fortune's Tim Arango. — NEW YORK (Fortune) — Don Imus, the tousled and acerbic radio host whose racial remarks engendered …
Jane Perlez / New York Times:
U.S. Seeks Closing of Visa Loophole for Britons — Omar Khyam, the ringleader of the thwarted London bomb plot who was sentenced to life imprisonment on Monday, showed the potential for disaffected young men to be lured as terrorists, a threat that British officials said they would have to contend with for a generation.
Jeff Jacoby / Boston Globe:
Lawful incest may be on its way — WHEN THE BBC invited me onto one of its talk shows recently to talk about the day's hot topic — legalizing adult incest — I thought of Rick Santorum. — Back in 2003, as the Supreme Court was preparing to rule in Lawrence v. Texas …
Discussion:
The Volokh Conspiracy
Kevin Drum / Political Animal:
BANANA REPUBLICANISM, CONT'D....Quote of the day, from Thomas Sowell: … Now that's a comforting, conservative thought, isn't it? I wonder what Buckley thinks of NRO publishing stuff like this? — (And in case you're wondering, there's no further context. That's the whole quote.
Sen. Russ Feingold / The Huffington Post:
After the Veto — The ink on the President's veto is barely dry, and already, a lot of Washington insiders - including some Democrats — are saying Congress should just give in to the President. Never mind how hard people have pushed to bring Congress to this point, when we are finally standing …
Glenn Greenwald / Salon:
The right's explicit and candid rejection of "the rule of law" — (updated below) — The Wall St. Journal online has today published a lengthy and truly astonishing article by Harvard Government Professor Harvey Mansfield, which expressly argues that the power of the President is greater than "the rule of law."