memeorandum: Thousands gather in Pakistan to hear Taliban speeches (Agence France Presse)

U.S. Not Pushing for Attack on Iran, Rice Says — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought today to minimize any sense of division within the Bush administration over Iran after the head of the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency delivered a pointed new warning against what he called the …

Discussion: Balkinization and Michael P.F. van der Galiën

Kevin Drum / Washington Monthly:

CHENEY AND IRAN....Remember that report from Steve Clemons last week about how Dick Cheney is hoping to get Israel to attack Iran in order to provoke a shooting war that will suck in the United States? Today in the New York Times, Helene Cooper confirms it: … Good 'ol David Wurmser. A neocon's neocon.

Discussion: Hullabaloo

Glenn Kessler / Washington Post:

Rice Insists Cheney Supports Diplomacy for Iran — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday that Vice President Cheney fully supports a diplomatic course over Iran's nuclear program, denying impressions of divisions among President Bush's foreign-policy advisers.

Discussion: State of the Day, Balloon Juice, Connecting.the.Dots and My Two Sense

Reuters:

Kidney-donor TV show a hoax, producers admit … AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (Reuters) — A Dutch reality television show in which a supposedly dying woman had to pick one of three contestants to whom she would donate a kidney was revealed as an elaborate hoax on Friday.

Discussion: The Moderate Voice

Ed Morrissey / Captain's Quarters: Exploitation Squared — Yesterday, I wrote about the Dutch …

Gaius / Blue Crab Boulevard:
You Know, This Actually Makes It Worse

Discussion: Associated Press

ABCNEWS:

Soldiering On — ABC News Learns of Plans to Keep Troops in Iraq Beyond 2009 — Sgt. John Guerra, 21, from Dallas, Tex., walks with his platoon from the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team during a patrol in the Shaab neighborhood of Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Feb. 16, 2007.

Discussion: Democratic Underground …, The Left End of the Dial v2.0 and My Two Sense

World Tribune.com:

Al Qaida suspects sue Boeing, with ACLU's help — WASHINGTON — Boeing has been sued by suspected Al Qaida operatives transported by the CIA to Arab countries for interrogation and torture. — The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan …

Discussion: Stop The ACLU, VodkaPundit and Jules Crittenden

Adam Zagorin / Time:

Rove Linked to Prosecution of Ex-Alabama Governor — In the rough and tumble of Alabama politics, the scramble for power is often a blood sport. At the moment, the state's former Democratic governor, Don Siegelman, stands convicted of bribery and conspiracy charges and faces a sentence of up to 30 years in prison.

Discussion: Hullabaloo and TIME: Swampland

Edmund L. Andrews / New York Times:
Ex-Governor Says Affidavit Shows Politics in Bribe Case

Discussion: Talking Points Memo

Nate Anderson / Ars Technica:

Venezuela's counter-revolution won't be televised... but it will be on YouTube — When YouTube CEO Chad Hurley told a Congressional committee that his company "advances democracy," perhaps this was the sort of thing he had in mind. — An opposition Venezuelan television station whose broadcast license …

Discussion: Venezuela News And Views, The Belmont Club, Gateway Pundit, CNN and Fausta's blog

Mark Martin / San Francisco Chronicle:

Gays and lesbians allowed conjugal visits in prisons — (06-01) 04:00 PDT Sacramento — California's prison system is changing its regulations to allow conjugal visits for gay and lesbian inmates in response to a legal threat and a 2003 law that gave domestic partners many of the same rights as married couples.

Discussion: TalkLeft

Michael Isikoff / Newsweek:

Isikoff: Congress Wants Ashcroft's Testimony — The House and Senate Intelligence Committees have asked the former attorney general to testify about his role in a dramatic showdown over a controversial eavesdropping program. Will he play ball? — The Senate and House Intelligence Committees …

Colum Lynch / Washington Post:

U.N. Team Still Looking for Iraq's Arsenal — Though Work Is Seen as Irrelevant, Security Council Can't Agree to End It — UNITED NATIONS — More than four years after the fall of Baghdad, the United Nations is spending millions of dollars in Iraqi oil money to continue the hunt …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo

Mooneycnn / CNN Political Ticker:

Gonzales vows 'sprint to the finish line' — WASHINGTON (CNN) — Beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales vowed Friday to remain in his post through the end of President Bush's second term, in a "sprint to the finish line." — In his most definitive statement on the issue to date …

Robert Burns / Associated Press:

Gates won't say who's winning terror war — SINGAPORE - Declining to say whether the U.S. and its partners are winning the war on terror, Defense Secretary Robert Gates called Saturday for more focus on combating poverty and other underlying causes of extremism.

Discussion: Greatscat! and AMERICAblog

C. Jacob / MEMRI:

'We Are Facing a Second Nakba'-Reactions in the Palestinian Press to the Hamas-Fatah Clashes … Introduction — The current wave of violent Hamas-Fatah clashes is one of the most brutal the PA has known, especially considering that it broke out only a short while after the signing of the Mecca Agreement …

Discussion: QandO, Captain's Quarters, Jay Currie and Blue Crab Boulevard

Crunchy Con:

Noonan to Bush: It's over — Powerful Peggy Noonan column today, calling on conservatives to throw the president overboard. Actually, she says he's thrown us overboard, so let's act like it. Excerpt: … And this: … It's called hubris, and now nemesis is upon the White House, and the Republican Party.

Discussion: The Atlantic Online, Central Sanity, Dinocrat and Daimnation!

Paul Mirengoff / News Bloggers Blog:
Buyer's remorse — Yesterday, Cenk Uygur wrote this line …

Discussion: The American Mind, Power Line, Heading Right, The Carpetbagger Report and Tapscott's Copy Desk