Top Items:
William Kristol / Weekly Standard:
Text of Cheney's AEI Speech — THE WEEKLY STANDARD has obtained an advance copy of VP Cheney's remarks as prepared for delivery later this morning at the American Enterprise Institute. I've read it quickly. I think fair-minded people will find it very well-argued and powerful.
Discussion:
The Huffington Post, JustOneMinute, TPMDC, The Daily Dish, Politics Daily, New York Magazine, Hot Air, Newshoggers.com, The Foundry, The Plum Line and TPMMuckraker
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NY Daily News:
FBI arrest four in alleged plot to bomb Bronx synagogues, shoot down plane — The FBI busted a homegrown terror cell late Wednesday night as the men sneaked around a Jewish temple in Riverdale planting what they thought were packages of C-4 explosives, sources told the Daily News.
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New York Post, Buck Naked Politics, MSNBC, Stop The ACLU, The Mahablog, Atlas Shrugs, Talking Points Memo, Yourish.com, No More Mister Nice Blog, Weekly Standard, The Jawa Report, Scared Monkeys, Gates of Vienna, At-Largely, Jihad Watch, Confederate Yankee, Jules Crittenden, protein wisdom, Don Surber, Fausta's Blog, Townhall.com, Little Green Footballs, Macsmind, JammieWearingFool and Riehl World View
Sheryl Gay Stolberg / New York Times:
Obama Is Said to Consider Preventive Detention Plan — WASHINGTON — President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects …
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The Politico, The Swamp, Ben Smith's Blog, Los Angeles Times, CBS News, TPMDC, Sunlight Foundation, Washington Post, Hot Air, DailyHowler.com, D-Day, Boston Globe, The Hill, USA Today, Wake up America, The Washington Independent, The Note, MSNBC, The Atlantic Politics Channel, The Rhetorican, Real Clear Politics, Corrente and Right Wing News
New York Times:
Text: Obama's Speech on National Security — Following is a text of President Obama's prepared speech on Thursday on national security issues. — These are extraordinary times for our country. We are confronting an historic economic crisis. We are fighting two wars.
New York Times:
4 Accused of Bombing Plot at Bronx Synagogues — Four men were arrested Wednesday night in what the authorities said was a plot to bomb two synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down military planes at an Air National Guard base in Newburgh, N.Y. — The men, all of whom live in Newburgh …
Mike Allen / The Politico:
Obama: U.S. went ‘off course’ on terror — President Barack Obama declared defiantly Thursday that the U.S. “went off course” in fighting terrorism over the past eight years, and said his policies will “better protect” the country against al Qaeda. — In a major address at the National Archives …
Paul Steinhauser / CNN:
Poll: Favorable opinions of Cheney rise — CNN Deputy Political Director — WASHINGTON (CNN) — As Dick Cheney prepares to give a major speech on the battle against terrorism, a new national poll suggests that favorable opinions of the former vice president are on the rise.
Discussion:
Think Progress, Matthew Yglesias, The Moderate Voice, Brutally Honest, Taylor Marsh and Say Anything
Howard Fineman / Newsweek:
Ignore the party, Rush, Newt and Cheney are the muscle — Right now there are two RNCs here in Washington, side by side. The contrast is instructive. — One, the Republican National Committee, is a clueless self-parody. The other, the (R)ush-(N)ewt-(C)heney tag team …
Discussion:
The Opinionator, The Fix, Washington Times, Bloomberg, DownWithTyranny!, CNN and Swampland
Josh Marshall / Talking Points Memo:
Don't Forget the Mockery — Vice President Cheney's crew is putting out advances this morning on today's speech at AEI, offering ‘praise’ for Obama when he deserves an answer when he leads the country in the wrong direction. Clearly there's going to be a lot of mano a mano razzmatazz that the media tries to gin up around this.
Chris Cillizza / The Fix:
Obama vs Cheney: A (Polling) Mismatch from the Start — The dueling speeches by President Obama and former vice president Dick Cheney are being cast as a showdown over national security but the tit for tat is a mismatch from the start. — Why? — Here are the last four personal favorability ratings …
Jules Crittenden:
Split-Screen Irony Alert
Split-Screen Irony Alert
Discussion:
The Daily Dish, Washington Monthly, The Swamp, Don Surber, Crooks and Liars and The Plum Line
Caitlin Taylor / The Note:
Cheney Speech: Obama ‘Deserves an Answer’
Cheney Speech: Obama ‘Deserves an Answer’
Discussion:
The Swamp, Ben Smith's Blog, First Draft, Talking Points Memo and AfterDowningStreet.org
Bill Sammon / Fox News:
Obama ‘Distracted’ by Biden's ‘Indiscipline,’ Book Asserts — The president is so “distracted by his vice president's indiscipline” that he has been forced to rebuke privately Vice President Biden, according to a new book by Richard Wolffe. — FOXNews.com
Directorblue / Doug Ross:
Sacramento Bee publishes vicious screed bashing taxpayers, gets caught, then scrubs with milquetoast replacement — Early this morning, the failing Sacramento Bee published a “vicious screed” that pilloried taxpayers for refusing to feed California's insatiable state government.
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Myglesias / Matthew Yglesias:
Obama's Pronunciations — I don't have a problem with the fact that Barack Obama says “Pah-kee-stahn” when referring to the country to the west of India. Nor do I have a problem with the fact that Obama says “Afghanistan” in the customary American manner.
Discussion:
Think Progress
William Kristol / Weekly Standard:
Cheney vs. Obama: A Mismatch — I've read both speeches. — Obama's is the speech of a young senator who was once a part-time law professor—platitudinous and preachy, vague and pseudo-thoughtful in an abstract kind of way. This sentence was revealing: “On the other hand …
Erika Lovley / The Politico:
Congressman: We're going to Disney — Rep. Alan Grayson was standing in the middle of Disney World when it hit him: What Americans really need is a week of paid vacation. — So on Thursday, the Florida Democrat will introduce the Paid Vacation Act — legislation that would be the first …
Jennifer Steinhauer / New York Times:
California, Out of Money, Reels as Voters Rebuff Leaders — LOS ANGELES — Direct democracy has once again upended California — enough so that the state may finally consider another way by overhauling its Constitution for the first time in 130 years. — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger returned home …
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Andrew Malcolm / Top of the Ticket:
Crisis 18% salary slash for California officials isn't 100% what it seems
Crisis 18% salary slash for California officials isn't 100% what it seems
Discussion:
Little Green Footballs
Caitlin Taylor / The Note:
House GOP to Force Vote on Pelosi — ABC News' Rick Klein, Jonathan Karl, and Dean Norland report: — House Republicans today plan to force their colleagues to vote on whether to launch an investigation of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's allegation that the CIA misled her …
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Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:
Porter Goss Won't Say Whether He And Pelosi Were Told About Use Of Torture — Porter Goss, the former GOP Congressman who was in the room with Nancy Pelosi during their 2002 CIA briefing on interrogations, is declining through a spokesperson to say whether the two of them were told that enhanced interrogation techniques had been used.
Karl Rove / Wall Street Journal:
Flip-Flops and Governance — Our president isn't quite as advertised. — Printer — Friendly — Barack Obama inherited a set of national-security policies that he rejected during the campaign but now embraces as president. This is a stunning and welcome about-face.
Myglesias / Matthew Yglesias:
Geopolitics and Democracy — True, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela was democratically elected. But you can discern his authoritarian tendencies in the fact that he had the constitution changed to allow him to run for a second term, and currently he's working on changing the constitution again to allow for a third term.
Glenn Greenwald / Salon:
Obama's civil liberties speech — (updated below) — Obama's speech this morning, like most Obama speeches, made pretty points in rhetorically effective ways about the Constitution, our values, transparency, oversight, the state secrets privilege, and the rule of law.
Discussion:
The Daily Dish
Pew Research Center:
Independents Take Center Stage in Obama Era — Trends in Political Values and Core Attitudes: 1987-2009 — Centrism has emerged as a dominant factor in public opinion as the Obama era begins. The political values and core attitudes that the Pew Research Center has monitored since 1987 show little overall ideological movement.