Top Items:
New York Times:
A War We Just Might Win — VIEWED from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility.
Discussion:
Think Progress, The Newshoggers, Election Central, Times of London, Lawyers, Guns and Money, Power Line, Althouse, Townhall.com, The Atlantic Online, Angry Bear, Winds of Change.NET, NewsBusters.org, A Chequer-Board of Nights …, Right Wing Nut House, The Belmont Club, Liberty Street, Eschaton, The Carpetbagger Report, Political Punch, Villainous Company, WTF Is It Now??, rubber hose, Hot Air, TigerHawk, Commentary, No More Mister Nice Blog, BBC, Wake up America, Thomas P.M. Barnett, TIME: Swampland, Taylor Marsh, USS Neverdock, BLACKFIVE, The Strata-Sphere, Informed Comment, National Review, Connecting.the.Dots, Donklephant, The Sundries Shack, Balloon Juice, JustOneMinute, Gateway Pundit, Weekly Standard, Neptunus Lex, Clayton Cramer's BLOG, Captain's Quarters, Flopping Aces, WILLisms.com, Jules Crittenden, Right Wing News, UrbanGrounds, Blue Crab Boulevard, Betsy's Page, QandO, PrairiePundit, Dr. Sanity, Macsmind, Dean's World, Transterrestrial Musings, Comments From Left Field, The Moderate Voice, TIME, The Young Turks and Sister Toldjah
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Glenn Greenwald / Salon:
The really smart, serious, credible Iraq experts O'Hanlon and Pollack — (updated below) — What is the most vivid and compelling evidence of how broken our political system is? It is that the exact same people who urged us into the war in Iraq, were wrong in everything they said …
Joe Klein / TIME: Swampland:
What's Missing in this Column? — I agree with many, but not all, of the conclusions Ken Pollack and Michael O'Hanlon reach in this NY Times column, but you really can't write a piece about the wae in Iraq and devote only two sentences to the political situation, which is disastrous and …
George Pascoe-Watson / The Sun:
PM hails Bush's leadership — Tee cosy ... Brown & Bush in Camp David golf buggy — GORDON Brown last night praised George Bush for leading the global war on terror — saying the world owed America a huge debt. — The Prime Minister vowed to take Winston Churchill's lead and make Britain's ties with America even stronger.
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Mervyn Rothstein / New York Times:
Ingmar Bergman, Famed Director, Dies at 89 — Ingmar Bergman, the "poet with the camera" who is considered one of the greatest directors in motion picture history, died today on the small island of Faro where he lived on the Baltic coast of Sweden, Astrid Soderbergh Widding, president of The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, said.
Discussion:
Roger L. Simon, Pajamas Media, David E's Fablog, Reason Magazine, Connecting.the.Dots and Marginal Revolution
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Porkbusters:
weak tea indeed: democratic leaders water down ethics & earmark reform bill — Porkbusters obtained the latest version of the "Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007'', and as expected, the Democratic leadership has worked some funny business to dilute some of the Act's key provisions.
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Tapscott's Copy Desk:
Reid and Pelosi are gutting earmark reform — Some of my Senate sources have gotten a copy of the 107 page "ethics and earmark reform" bill crafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. — What they are finding in it confirms what I've suspected for months …
Mike Allen / The Politico:
Fred's funds raise fear of flop — Fred Thompson plans to announce Tuesday that his committee to test the waters for a Republican presidential campaign raised slightly more than $3 million in June, substantially less than some backers had hoped, according to Republican sources.
Discussion:
Comments From Left Field, The Carpetbagger Report, PoliBlog (TM), ComMITTed to Romney! and Daily Kos
The Atlantic Online:
The Meta-Go-Round — Sam Boyd notes the media's bizarre flip-flops and double-reversals on the subject of the Obama-Clinton debate spat. The pathology he's identifying is the exact one James Fallows focuses on in the piece I plugged this morning — a pathological aversion to talk about the substance of things.
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Reuters:
Taliban: Male hostage shot dead — KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) — Taliban kidnappers shot dead a male South Korean hostage on Monday, a spokesman said, accusing the Afghan government of not listening to rebel demands. — "We shot dead a male captive because the government did not listen to our demands …
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Michael J. Totten:
Baghdad Raid Night — BAGHDAD - "We want to use you as bait," Sergeant Eduardo Ojeda from Los Angeles, California, told me before I embedded with his unit on what was shaping up to be a night raid. — "Excellent," I said. "That's why I'm here." — This is what passes for black Army humor in Baghdad.
ABCNEWS:
Surveillance Cameras Win Broad Support — Majority of Americans Favor Extra Safety Factor of Cameras — Crime-fighting beats privacy in public places: Americans, by nearly a 3-to-1 margin, support the increased use of surveillance cameras — a measure decried by some civil libertarians …
Opinion Journal:
The Real Wiretapping Scandal — Our Terrorist Surveillance Program isn't as effective it was a few months ago. Where's the outrage? — Last Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing—at which Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was insulted by senators and ridiculed by spectators—was Washington political theater at its lowest.
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Paul Krugman / New York Times:
[TS] Op-Ed Columnist: An Immoral Philosophy — What kind of philosophy says that it's O.K. to subsidize insurance companies, but not to provide health care to children?
Rob Hotakainen / McClatchy Washington Bureau:
Congress eyes pay raise for itself — WASHINGTON — After raising the minimum wage by 70 cents an hour this week, many members of Congress are ready to give themselves a pay increase of roughly $4,400 per year. — That would take their annual salaries to nearly $170,000.
Discussion:
The Swamp
New York Post:
NERVY JUDITH RATTLED HILLARY — JUDITH Giuliani is an opportunistic, puppy-killing homewrecker who has a full-time hairstylist and needs an extra seat on planes for "Baby Louis," her Louis Vuitton handbag - at least according to a hatchet job on the former mayor's wife in the September issue of Vanity Fair.
Discussion:
DownWithTyranny!, Taylor Marsh, TIME, Charleston Daily Mail, National Review and Inside Long Island Politics
Dan Balz / Washington Post:
A True Political Partner — John Edwards's Wife Has Helped Shape His Presidential Bid and Often Shares Its Spotlight — Aboard a small chartered jet, Elizabeth Edwards — lawyer, mother, author, cancer patient, candidate's wife — was flying recently from New Hampshire to Iowa.