Top Items:
Klaus Marre / The Hill:
White House asks NYT to remove sub-headline from CIA tape story — The White House on Wednesday took the rare step of publicly asking The New York Times to change the sub-headline of a story on the destruction of CIA tapes showing the interrogations of suspected terrorists.
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Michael Calderone / The Politico:
NY Times changes CIA headline for WH — The New York Times has changed the subheadline in Wednesday's front-page story on the CIA's destruction of secret interrogation tapes, following a formal request by the White House. — The correction has already been made online …
Discussion:
Wonkette, Democrats.com, JURIST, The Gun Toting Liberal™, HorsesAss.Org, The Carpetbagger Report and TIME: Swampland
Dan Froomkin / Washington Post:
The Tell-Tale Stall — The best indicator of how seriously this White House is involved in a political scandal may be how emphatically it refuses to comment. — By that standard, the CIA's destruction of its torture tapes is shaping up to be a doozy of a White House story.
Washington Post:
Poll: Iowa's GOP Race is Battle Between Huckabee, Romney — The race for Iowa's Republican caucuses has narrowed to a two-person battle between former governors Mike Huckabee (Ark.) and Mitt Romney (Mass.), with Huckabee now perched atop the field, propelled by a big jump in support among religious women.
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Harold Meyerson / Washington Post:
Hard-liners for Jesus — As Christians across the world prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, it's a fitting moment to contemplate the mountain of moral, and mortal, hypocrisy that is our Christianized Republican Party. — There's nothing new, of course, about the Christianization of the GOP.
Byron York / The Corner:
What Huckabee Really Means — Mike Huckabee was on the “Today” show this morning.
What Huckabee Really Means — Mike Huckabee was on the “Today” show this morning.
Discussion:
Power Line
National Enquirer:
UPDATE: NATIONAL ENQUIRER WORLD EXCLUSIVE: JOHN EDWARDS LOVE CHILD SCANDAL! — Presidential candidate John Edwards is caught up in a love child scandal, a blockbuster ENQUIRER investigation has discovered. — The ENQUIRER has learned exclusively that Rielle Hunter, a woman linked to Edwards …
Marc Ambinder:
A Real Edwards Surge — Is John Edwards's surge a media-created phenomenon, a collective reaction formation to the media's desire to see a three-person race, or guilt for building up Barack Obama? Does the media really have that power? — Or are we seeing something more organic?
Discussion:
Salon
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MeMeMeMeMe / Little Green Footballs:
Fire in Cheney's Office Causes Leftists to Rant Uncontrollably — There was a fire in Dick Cheney's office this morning, and as usual the leftist blogosphere is brimming over with lunatic ranting. — At Think Progress, the Morlocks who inhabit their comments are sure this is a ploy to cover up the destroying of documents.
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CNN:
Fire hits building next door to White House — WASHINGTON (CNN) — Firefighters battled thick smoke and flames Wednesday inside the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building, next door to the White House, which houses the vice president's ceremonial offices.
Roger Simon / The Politico:
Fred Thompson: Lazy as charged — WAVERLY, Iowa — When is retail politics not retail politics? When candidates refuse to get off their big buses and go do it. — Fred Thompson rolled into this small town on the Cedar River in north-central Iowa on a giant brown bus Tuesday.
Jonathan Martin / The Politico:
Tancredo to get out? — Tom Tancredo has scheduled a press conference in Des Moines tomorrow afternoon to make a “major announcement regarding the campaign,” according to a media advisory his campaign sent out today. — Asked whether Tancredo intended to drop out of the race …
Discussion:
Pajamas Media, Comments from Left Field, Hot Air, The Stump, Salon, race42008.com and The Campaign Spot
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Adi Ignatius / Time:
Person of the Year: Vladimir Putin — A Tsar Is Born — No one is born with a stare like Vladimir Putin's. The Russian President's pale blue eyes are so cool, so devoid of emotion that the stare must have begun as an affect, the gesture of someone who understood that power might be achieved …
Discussion:
Associated Press, The Nation, Weekly Standard, PERRspectives Blog, AMERICAN DIGEST, Gates of Vienna, Captain's Quarters, The Sundries Shack, Wonkette, Truthdig, The Moderate Voice, Sweetness & Light, On Deadline, The Glittering Eye, The Sideshow, Macsmind, RealClearPolitics and Romenesko
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David M. Herszenhorn / New York Times:
Reid's Relationship With Bush Enters Deep Freeze — WASHINGTON — Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, has called President Bush a loser and a liar and has referred to him derisively as King George. Mr. Reid has also apologized — but only, he likes to point out, for the “loser” line.
Discussion:
The Hill, Los Angeles Times, Macsmind, Don Surber, MSNBC, Sister Toldjah and BrothersJudd Blog
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Ed Morrissey / Captain's Quarters:
Paul To Keep Supremacist Donation — Usually when a candidate receives a campaign donation from a disreputable donor, the money either gets returned or donated to a charity. Ron Paul wants to be a maverick, however, so he will keep the $500 from Stormfront founder Don Black.
Discussion:
THE LIBERAL JOURNAL
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John Podhoretz / Commentary:
“Mitt Romney...Helped Save My Daughter” — At first blush, this seems like a genuinely great campaign ad — the story of how Mitt Romney basically closed down his business, Bain Capital, in 1996 when the daughter of one of his partners went missing in New York City and Romney sent dozens …
Karen DeYoung / Washington Post:
All Iraqi Groups Blame U.S. Invasion for Discord, Study Shows — Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the U.S. military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of “occupying forces” as the key to national reconciliation …
Brent Budowsky / The Hill:
Torture Tapes are the Watergate of Our Times — As I write these words on the morning of Wednesday, Dec. 19, high- and low-level officials of the Bush administration involved in torture, and the destruction of the torture tapes, are consulting their criminal lawyers as The New York Times reports …
Anne Thompson / Campaign for America's Future:
RECORD-BREAKING: SENATE CONSERVATIVES — New Report Shows How Conservative Minority Rules by Filibuster, Preventing Up or Down Vote on a Record Number of Bills — WASHINGTON—The Republican Senate minority today filibustered an omnibus budget bill, setting a modern-day record for blocking …