Top Items:
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform:
Vice President Exempts His Office from the Requirements for Protecting Classified Information — The Oversight Committee has learned that over the objections of the National Archives, Vice President Cheney exempted his office from the presidential order that establishes government-wide procedures …
Discussion:
Balloon Juice, Sisyphus Shrugged, Thought Theater, Blast Off!, Threat Level, Liberty Street, Shakesville, War and Piece, The Mahablog, On Deadline, Secrecy News, Donklephant, All Spin Zone, Cliff Schecter, Obsidian Wings, Macsmind, Salon, Hullabaloo, The Moderate Voice and The American Street
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Justin Rood Reports / The Blotter:
Cheney Power Grab: Says White House Rules Don't Apply to Him — Justin Rood Reports: — Vice President Dick Cheney has asserted his office is not a part of the executive branch of the U.S. government, and therefore not bound by a presidential order governing the protection of classified information …
Discussion:
Scholars and Rogues, The Democratic Daily, PoliBlog (TM), Truthdig, The Agonist, AMERICAblog and TIME: Swampland
Scott Shane / New York Times:
Cheney in Dispute on Oversight of His Office — For four years, Vice President Dick Cheney has resisted routine oversight of his office's handling of classified information, and when the office in charge of overseeing classification in the executive branch objected, the vice president's office suggested …
Marcus Mabry / Newsweek:
Poll: Bush hits lowest approval rating of presidency — President Bush registers the lowest approval rating of his presidency—making him the least popular president since Nixon—in the new NEWSWEEK Poll. — Iraq isn't the only issue dragging Bush's approval ratings down
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Andrew Sullivan / The Atlantic Online:
Freefall — The president's approval ratings just scored a staggering 26 percent in the Newsweek poll. 23 percent approve of the handling of Iraq. A broader look at a range of polls is no more comforting. Pollster.com's average is now below 30 percent for the first time.
Associated Press:
White House near decision to close Guantanamo — WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration is nearing a decision to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and move the terror suspects there to military prisons elsewhere, The Associated Press has learned.
Discussion:
Comments From Left Field, The American Mind, Balkinization, Hot Air, Mercury Rising and My Two Sense
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Mark Benjamin / Salon:
The CIA's torture teachers — Psychologists helped the CIA exploit a secret military program to develop brutal interrogation tactics — likely with the approval of the Bush White House. — A detainee is escorted by military police at Camp 4 of the maximum security prison Camp Delta …
Discussion:
The Next Hurrah
MSNBC:
White House denies Gitmo report — No meeting Friday to discuss closing detention center, spokesman says — WASHINGTON - The White House on Thursday denied a report that top administration officials were expected to meet Friday to discuss closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility …
Discussion:
D-Day
David Stout / New York Times:
Senate Approves Stricter Fuel Standards for Autos — The Senate voted this evening to raise fuel-economy requirements for cars and sport utility vehicles, demanding that they get 35 miles per gallon by 2020. — The lawmakers first announced their agreement on raising the standards …
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Paul Kane / Washington Post:
Ashcroft Tells of Surveillance Disputes — House Panel Hears Of Battle Within Administration — Former attorney general John D. Ashcroft told the House intelligence committee yesterday about disputes in the Bush administration over aspects of its domestic surveillance program …
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George Borjas / The Borjas Blog:
An Inconvenient Truth That Somehow Didn't Make The CEA Report — As I mentioned in a previous post, the CEA seems to have concluded that if one allows for complementarities between immigrants and natives who have the same education and work experience, the long-run gains from immigration …
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Charles Babington / Associated Press:
McConnell Wavering on Immigration Bill — AP Photo WX102, WX101 — WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate's Republican leader says he is unsure whether he will vote for the immigration bill President Bush strongly supports, underscoring the measure's precarious status.
Discussion:
CQ.com, The Influence Peddler, Captain's Quarters, National Review, ParaPundit, michellemalkin.com and Hot Air
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Ulrike Putz / Spiegel Online:
A Visit to Fatah's Torture Chamber — A building formerly occupied by Fatah's intelligence service in Gaza was long notorious for torture and execution. Now Hamas is in control — and is letting former inmates visit the chamber of horrors. — The cells are small, perhaps six feet by six feet …
Discussion:
Blue Crab Boulevard, Little Green Footballs, A Blog For All, Jihad Watch, Israpundit and New York Times
Fred Kaplan / Slate:
The Man Who Knows Too Little — WHAT RUDY GIULIANI'S GREEDY DECISION TO QUIT THE IRAQ STUDY GROUP REVEALS ABOUT HIS CANDIDACY. — If you don't read Newsday, you might not know (I didn't until this week) that Rudy Giuliani was an original member of the Iraq Study Group …
IRIN • humanitarian news and analysis …:
IRAQ: Hundreds flee homes as Turkish forces battle Kurdish fighters — Hundreds of Iraqi Kurds have been forced to flee their homes after up to 30,000 Turkish soldiers massed on the Iraqi-Turkish border and launched attacks against Kurdish fighters, Iraqi border police say.
Discussion:
The Road to Surfdom
Washington Post:
CIA to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry — Assassination Attempts Among Abuses Detailed — The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses — the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century …
Max Blumenthal:
The Film Take Back America Took Back — As a result of the attention surrounding my film about the 2007 Conservative Political Action Conference-it was a YouTube hit-the liberal Campaign for America's Future asked me to produce a similar video about their annual conference, Take Back America (TBA), held in Washington.
Jane Perlez / New York Times:
Muslims' Veils Test Limits of Britain's Tolerance — Increasingly, Muslim women in Britain take their children to school and run errands covered head to toe in flowing black gowns that allow only a slit for their eyes. On a Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park, groups of black-clad Muslim women relaxed …