Top Items:
Allahpundit / Hot Air:
Video: Rudy blasts Ron Paul's apology for 9/11 — Ahem. — The smartass reply would have been to ask Paul whether, if in fact conditions in Iraq precipitated 9/11, it wasn't perfectly appropriate then to take extreme measures to try to remedy those conditions afterwards.
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Michelle Malkin:
Liveblogging: The South Carolina debate is on - Video links adds, post-mortem reax — The stage will still be crowded. Elephants soon to be in the room. — Hot buttons: Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. Immigration, immigration, immigration. — What do you want to see asked tonight?
Discussion:
CBN.com, Fox News, Townhall.com, Power Line, Sister Toldjah, Don Surber, Washington Post, Hot Air and Iowa Voice
Andrew Sullivan / The Atlantic Online:
Palmetto Punditry — The debate took a while to gain any traction, but there were some clarifying moments for me. The questions were often excellent - especially the tough ones at the beginning about the war. The Republicans, we learned, have absolutely no idea what to do about Iraq.
Ed Morrissey / Captain's Quarters:
Giuliani Wins, But Paul Threw The Game — Team Rudy should send a hundred roses to Ron Paul — yellow roses, of course — after the Congressman essentially tossed the debate to Giuliani. Rudy had a pretty good night going anyway, but when Paul as much as said that the terrorists had a point …
Hotline On Call:
Pre-Spin Room Thoughts: McCain, Rudy, Romney — Invoking the Roger Simon rule: in my judgment, John McCain convincingly and incontrovertibly won tonight's debate. He was strong, confident, answered tough questions with ease and dispatch, and seemed the most presidential.
ABCNEWS:
Bush Taps New 'War Czar' — ABC News Learns Pentagon Official Selected to Oversee Iraq, Afghanistan Wars — After a frustrating search for a new "war czar" to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ABC News has learned that President Bush has chosen the Pentagon's director of operations, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, for the role.
Discussion:
Eschaton, The Left Coaster, The Reaction, The Gun Toting Liberal™, TPMmuckraker, Captain's Quarters, Comments From Left Field, MSNBC, The Huffington Post, Needlenose, World-O-Crap, MotherJones.com, The Carpetbagger Report, The Next Hurrah, The Impolitic, Democrats.com, The Talent Show, Blah3, Middle Earth Journal, The Democratic Daily, Taylor Marsh, Angry Bear, The Mahablog, Daily Kos and rubber hose
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Ben Feller / Associated Press:
Pentagon General to Be 'War Czar' — WASHINGTON — President Bush has chosen Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the Pentagon's director of operations, to oversee the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as a "war czar" after a long search for new leadership, administration officials said Tuesday.
David Johnston / New York Times:
President Intervened in Dispute Over Eavesdropping — President Bush intervened in March 2004 to avert a crisis over the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program after Attorney General John Ashcroft, Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. and other senior Justice Department aides …
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Kevin Drum / Washington Monthly:
HEALTHCARE IN AMERICA....The Commonwealth Fund has released its latest comparison of healthcare performance among various countries, and you can read all about it here. However, since I know you're all busy people, I'll just cut to the chase: we suck. Despite the fact that we see doctors less often …
Discussion:
Angry Bear
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commonwealthfund.org:
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: An International Update on the Comparative Performance of American Health Care — Authors: … Overview — Despite having the most costly health system in the world, the United States consistently underperforms on most dimensions of performance, relative to other countries.
Logan Murphy / Crooks and Liars:
GOP Debate II: Romney - "Double Guantanamo" — During the second GOP debate, Fox News' Brit Hume sets up a hypothetical situation where three terrorist attacks occur at shopping malls in major cities. A fourth attack is thwarted and that would-be attacker, who we know has information about an impending …
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Steven Erlanger / New York Times:
News Analysis: Reality Overtakes the Illusion of Unity in Gaza — A third day of deadly clashes between Hamas and Fatah fighters suggests that the Palestinian unity government, put together under Saudi auspices at the end of March, is something of a fiction.
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Bernard Lewis / Opinion Journal:
Was Osama Right? — Islamists always believed the U.S. was weak. Recent political trends won't change their view. — During the Cold War, two things came to be known and generally recognized in the Middle East concerning the two rival superpowers. If you did anything to annoy the Russians, punishment would be swift and dire.
One Jerusalem:
VIDEO EXCLUSIVE:: Semi-protected Schools, Damaged Homes and Kassam Rockets: A Day in the Life of Sderot — Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting the city of Sderot. Sdert is a city of 20,000 people located directly east of Northern Gaza. In the last seven years …
Brandon Keim / Wired News:
New Phytoplankton Model May Revise Warming Estimates — Global climate models are missing a good chunk of plant information that could significantly alter long-term climate change predictions. A new technique for modeling phytoplankton — microscopic plants in the upper layers of the Earth's waters …