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Serious Questions about the Obama Administration's Incompetence in the Wikileaks Fiasco — We all applaud the successful thwarting of the Christmas-Tree Bomber and hope our government continues to do all it can to keep us safe. However, the latest round of publications …
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The Daily Caller, The Gateway Pundit, Riehl World View, Salon, The Page, JOSHUAPUNDIT, Liberty Pundits Blog and Spiegel Online
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Sarah Palin blasts Obama administration for WikiLeaks ‘fiasco’ — Sarah Palin says the U.S. government's inability to stop the latest WikiLeaks release is all President Barack Obama's fault. — Sunday's document dump of classified State Department cables is the result of the …
Andy Greenberg / The Firewall:
An Interview With WikiLeaks' Julian Assange — Admire him or revile him, WikiLeaks' Julian Assange is the prophet of a coming age of involuntary transparency, the leader of an organization devoted to divulging the world's secrets using technology unimagined a generation ago.
Discussion:
Alastair Campbell and Guardian
New York Times:
Answers to Readers' Questions About State's Secrets — The New York Times is publishing State's Secrets, a series of articles about a trove of more than 250,000 American diplomatic cables that were originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing official secrets.
Pvictorwins / CBS New York:
King: WikiLeaks Release ‘Worse Than Military Attack’
King: WikiLeaks Release ‘Worse Than Military Attack’
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Firedoglake, The Hill, Politics Daily, CBS News, Bloomberg, The Reaction, Cubachi, neo-neocon, Ò", CNET News, Wake up America, The Gateway Pundit, TPMDC, The Confluence, ABC News, Telegraph, Raw Story, New York Times, BBC, Pirate's Cove, LewRockwell.com Blog and The Nation
Steve Benen / Washington Monthly:
WIKILEAKS HAMPERS U.S. DIPLOMACY.... American officials were bracing …
WIKILEAKS HAMPERS U.S. DIPLOMACY.... American officials were bracing …
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The Huffington Post, The Atlantic Online, Washington Post, The Foundry, The Firewall, NewsReal Blog, The Impolitic, msnbc.com and TBogg
Peter Baker / New York Times:
Obama Freezes Pay for Federal Workers — WASHINGTON — President Obama announced a two-year pay freeze for civilian federal workers on Monday as he sought to address concerns over sky-high deficit spending and appeal to Republican leaders to find a common approach to restoring the nation's economic and fiscal health.
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Firedoglake, Guardian, AmSpecBlog, The Plum Line, The White House, Washington Monthly, ECHIDNE of the snakes, Fox News, Left Coast Rebel, The Gateway Pundit, The Politico, Ben Smith's Blog, Daily Kos, Obsidian Wings, The Other McCain, Taylor Marsh, No More Mister Nice Blog, The Page, The New Republic, Wonkette, Shakesville, Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog!, ourfuture.org/blogs_chrono/* and Whiskey Fire
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The White House:
Fact Sheet: Cutting the Deficit by Freezing Federal Employee Pay — Because of the irresponsibility of the past decade, the President inherited a $1.3 trillion projected deficit upon taking office and an economic crisis that threatened to put the nation into a second Great Depression.
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Obama Flunks Economics with Pointless Federal Wage Freeze — (photo: amboo who?) — The Obama White House just announced details of a two-year federal wage freeze as a means to reduce federal spending and deficits. [David Dayen has more.] The move is obviously political and only symbolic …
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Daily Kos and Economist's View
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Obama's Federal Worker Pay Freeze Was Blasted By Democrats Months Ago
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The Atlantic Online
Ed Morrissey / Hot Air:
Obama to freeze federal worker pay, save $5 billion over two years
Obama to freeze federal worker pay, save $5 billion over two years
Discussion:
The White House, Associated Press and Hit & Run
Brian Beutler / TPMDC:
Everyone Hates Obama's Pay Freeze Plan... Except Republicans
Everyone Hates Obama's Pay Freeze Plan... Except Republicans
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The New Republic, Yglesias, The Monkey Cage and Daily Kos
Raymond Bonner / The Atlantic Online:
‘By Whatever Means Necessary’: Arab Leaders Want Iran Stopped — LONDON — Rather than prosecuting Julian Assange for what he calls his “outrageous, reckless, and despicable” action in leaking thousands of sensitive government cables, Joe Lieberman might want to consider praising the head of WikiLeaks.
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The Daily Dish, RubinReports, Wonk Room, Solomonia, Israellycool, Yourish.com, Guardian and The Volokh Conspiracy
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Andrew Sullivan / The Daily Dish:
The Starr Report Of American Foreign Policy? — Beinart yawns while reading Wikileaks' latest. A surprising number of writers have been taking this position: … I have not yet plumbed the depths of all these documents, but I agree with Peter that we have learned nothing new in terms …
Discussion:
Ben Smith's Blog and The Daily Beast
Erik Wasson / The Hill:
Liberal groups blast Obama pay-freeze proposal, release alternative plan — Representatives of three liberal advocacy groups on Monday blasted President Obama's proposed two-year freeze on federal civilian worker pay. — John Irons of the Economic Policy Institute, Tamara Draut of Demos …
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DownWithTyranny!, iOwnTheWorld.com and protein wisdom
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The Left and the Budget
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AmSpecBlog, Grasping Reality … and Alan Colmes' Liberaland
Borzou Daragahi / Los Angeles Times:
Blasts target Iranian nuclear scientists — One professor dies, another is injured on their morning commutes. The attacks prompt a stern warning by the head of IranÂ's atomic energy agency. — Reporting from Beirut — Two separate explosions killed a nuclear scientist and injured another …
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James Fallows / The Atlantic Online:
In Which I Become a Conservative — Ross Douthat, an Atlantic alumnus, contends in the NY Times that the recent controversy over “enhanced” TSA procedures illustrates the dominance of partisan reflex in today's politics. Liberals complained about excessive state power when Bush and Cheney were in charge …
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The League of Ordinary … and The Daily Dish
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Ross Douthat / New York Times:
The Partisan Mind — Imagine, for a moment, that George W. Bush …
The Partisan Mind — Imagine, for a moment, that George W. Bush …
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Eunomia, Salon, The League of Ordinary … and Brilliant at Breakfast
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What happens when Medicare controls costs too well — There's one school of thought that says Congress is incapable of controlling costs in Medicare, and then there's, well, this: … One of the dirty little secrets of the health-care system is that Medicare has done a much better job controlling costs …
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Marginal Revolution, The Daily Dish, Angry Bear, Yglesias, Grasping Reality … and Overcoming Bias
Lori Montgomery / Washington Post:
Democrats warm to tax-cut compromise — A faction of congressional Democrats is making a push to persuade President Obama to consider a compromise on tax policy that would leave only the nation's 315,000 richest households facing higher taxes in January. — Over the past few days …
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The Atlantic Online, Washington Monthly, National Review, RedState, About.com US Liberal Politics, The Hill and ABCNEWS
Paul Krugman / New York Times:
The Spanish Prisoner — The best thing about the Irish right now is that there are so few of them. By itself, Ireland can't do all that much damage to Europe's prospects. The same can be said of Greece and of Portugal, which is widely regarded as the next potential domino. — But then there's Spain.
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AMERICAblog News, A Fistful Of Euros, Yglesias, TalkLeft, Zandar Versus The Stupid, Daily Kos and Prairie Weather
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PRECEDENT AND PROLOGUE — Momentous Supreme Court cases tend to move quickly into the slipstream of the Court's history. In the first ten years after Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 decision that ended the doctrine of separate but equal in public education, the Justices cited the case more than twenty-five times.
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Lawyers, Guns & Money and Prairie Weather
CNN:
Justices turn aside another challenge over Obama's citizenship — Washington (CNN) — The Supreme Court has again cast aside an appeal that raised doubts about President Barack Obama's U.S. citizenship, a grass-roots legal issue that has gained little legal or political footing, but continues to persist in the courts.
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Crooks and Liars, Zandar Versus The Stupid and Juanita Jean's
Washington Post:
‘The criminalization of politics’ — THERE IS LITTLE DOUBT that former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) schemed to get around a Texas law prohibiting corporate contributions to political campaigns. Mr. DeLay's state political action committee accepted $190,000 in (legal) corporate contributions.
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National Review
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Smithsonian Christmas-Season Exhibit Features Ant-Covered Jesus, Naked Brothers Kissing, Genitalia, and Ellen DeGeneres Grabbing Her Breasts — WARNING: This story contains graphic photographs of items on display in an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery.
Associated Press:
APNewsBreak: NJ must pay $271M for killing tunnel — TRENTON, N.J. - New Jersey owes the federal government more than $271 million after canceling a rail tunnel connecting the state with New York, according to a debt notice obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
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Philly.com
Simon Tisdall / Guardian:
China ‘ready to abandon North Korea’ — Leaked dispatches show Beijing is frustrated with military actions of ‘spoiled child’ and increasingly favours reunified Korea — China has signalled its readiness to accept Korean reunification and is privately distancing itself from the North Korean regime …
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New York Times, New York Magazine, YID With LID, Hot Air, Washington Post, This Just In and CNN
Mark Kleiman / The Reality-Based Community:
Of WikiLeaks and the Pentagon Papers — In connection with the latest WikiLeaks flap, commenter Brett Bellmore asks rhetorically, “Do you think America would be better off if the Pentagon Papers hadn't been leaked?” — Yes! Hell, yes! Much better off. — The Pentagon Papers leak didn't end the Vietnam War.
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The Daily Dish, New Atlanticist and The Impolitic
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Picasso's electrician reveals artist's ‘treasure trove’ — The works include a portrait of the late artist's first wife, Olga — A retired electrician in southern France who worked for Pablo Picasso says he has hundreds of previously unknown works by the artist.
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This Just In, Top World Stories, Runnin' Scared, Marginal Revolution and Gawker
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WikiLeaked: John Kerry calls for Israel to cede Golan Heights and East Jerusalem — On a February trip to the Middle East, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA) told Qatari leaders that the Golan Heights should be returned to Syria, that a Palestinian capital …
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Crooks and Liars, Commentary, Weasel Zippers and National Review