memeorandum: Administration Pulls Back on Surveillance Agreement (James Risen/New York Times)

4:45 PM ET, May 2, 2007

Top Items:

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

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.

Discussion: DownWithTyranny! and Connecting.the.Dots

New York Times:
Bush Vetoes Bill Tying Iraq Funds to Exit

Discussion: TIME: Swampland, The Newshoggers, NewsBusters.org, Washington Post, The Carpetbagger Report, BAGnewsNotes, First Read, Kiko's House, The Impolitic, Central Sanity, PoliticalSports and The Heretik

Charles Babington / Associated Press:
Bush, Democrats to meet today on Iraq

Discussion: PoliBlog (TM) and Captain's Quarters

New York Times:
Citing 'Rigid' Deadline, Bush Vetoes Iraq Bill

Discussion: Right Wing Nut House, Ezra Klein, The Heretik, the talking dog, TalkLeft and WorkingForChange

Politics / Washington Post:
Edwards Ads Take Aim At Veto

Discussion: Associated Press and Taylor Marsh

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, Discourse.net, Hugh Hewitt's TownHall Blog, Ezra Klein and NION

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.

Discussion: MyDD, Hotline On Call and PrezVid

Jonathan Stein / MotherJones.com:

Obama's Selective Memory on His Anti-War Stance — An old friend writes in on Obama: … Why the omission indeed? I'd bet the first the omission is all about one phrase: "developed chemical and biological weapons." Now, that could be referring to Iraq's production of WMDs in the late 80's …

Discussion: JustOneMinute, Hot Air and BLACKFIVE

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: Captain's Quarters, NewsBusters.org, Confederate Yankee, Defense Tech, The Carpetbagger Report, Debsweb, digg, Atlas Shrugs, Instapundit.com and Op For

Pundit Review Radio / BLACKFIVE:
THE END OF MILITARY BLOGGING

Discussion: TIME: Swampland and Dynamist Blog

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.

Discussion: theneweditor.com, Ezra Klein, Outside The Beltway, NewsBusters.org, Marginal Revolution, Economist's View and Connecting.the.Dots

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.

Discussion: PoliBlog (TM), The Carpetbagger Report, Outside The Beltway, ProfessorBainbridge.com ®, Lawyers, Guns and Money, The Impolitic, All Spin Zone, Think Progress and JustOneMinute

Matthew Yglesias: Sowell's Coup — This is interesting. Utterly without further …

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: The Carpetbagger Report, Amygdala, White House Watch, State of the Day, Hullabaloo, Discourse.net, Political Animal, AMERICAblog, Shakesville and The Heretik

Walter Pincus / Washington Post: Intelligence Chief Decries Constraints

Calvin Woodward / Associated Press:

PERSONAL SIDE: Desert island necessities — John McCain (news, bio, voting record)'s answer was both practical and deeply personal when he was asked in the 2000 presidential campaign what item he'd most like to have if he were stranded on a desert island: "SPF 45 sunblock."

Discussion: The Caucus, CNN Political Ticker and MotherJones.com

Taegan Goddard's Political Wire:
Desert Island Necessities

Discussion: Unfogged

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.

Discussion: Counterterrorism Blog, Unfogged, TalkLeft, On Deadline, Dean's World and rubber hose

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 …

Discussion: Think Progress

Karen DeYoung / Washington Post:
Rice Meets with Iraq's Prime Minister on Eve of Conference

Discussion: The Carpetbagger Report

Kevin Rose / Digg the Blog:

Digg This: 09-f9-11-02-9d-74-e3-5b-d8-41-56-c5- 63-56-88-c0 — Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts... In building and shaping the site I've always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We've always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community.

Discussion: Hot Air, Ars Technica, NewsBusters.org, Valleywag, Little Green Footballs, Boing Boing, Riehl World View, Blogs of War, Confederate Yankee, Jay Currie, Michelle Malkin, Vox Popoli and Donklephant

Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Digg Surrenders to Mob

Discussion: Digg the Blog, Valleywag and Althouse

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 …

Discussion: TalkLeft and QandO

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

Greg Mitchell / Editor and Publisher:

Back in the Days of 'Mission Accomplished': How One Paper Covered Bush Declaration Four Years Ago — NEW YORK Today marks the fourth anniversary of President Bush's jet landing on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and his speech declaring major fighting in Iraq over, all in front of a giant "Mission Accomplished" banner.

Discussion: Agence France Presse, Salon, Hullabaloo, DSCC, CorrenteWire, The BRAD BLOG, WTF Is It Now??, KnoxViews, Comments From Left Field and AMERICAblog

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.

Discussion: First Draft, All Spin Zone and Bring it On!