Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) breaks with the White House and calls for a full congressional inquiry into Bush’s spy program. | story The dam hasn’t just cracked--it’s gushing.
The progressive European enclave has set a 15-year limit on its switch to renewable energy. | story Hey, they won’t even have to get on a plane to collect their Nobel Prize!
Bush attends the services of Coretta Scott King while simultaneously pressing on with a warrantless spying program. | story Forty years ago, the FBI used illegal wiretaps in an attempt to blackmail King’s husband. | Truthdig files Plus a change…
Look past the cartoons, writes Christian Parenti of The Nation. The violence in Afghanistan stems from grievances over four years of occupation by U.S. and NATO troops and ineffectual foreign aid schemes. | story
Sullivan, whose N.Y. Times Magazine essay on the connection between Islam and 9/11 was perhaps the best ever mainstream treatment on the subject, now takes on the Islamic cartoon controversy. | essay Also, a German journalist talks about his mixed feelings about running the cartoons in his paper. | Op-Ed
The entire editorial staff of The New York Press, an alternative weekly, quits in the wake of the paper’s decision not to run the controversial Muhammad cartoons. | story
The departure “comes at a time when the agency is bleeding top talent, robbing the CIA of institutional memory and damaging morale among case officers and analysts.” | story
That’s the Republican chair of the Judiciary Committee reacting to the attorney general’s attempts to explain how spying without warrants is, in fact, legal. Check out the AG’s explanation of why Bush earlier said that spying without warrants is, in fact, illegal: “The President is not a lawyer.”
The Tehran city council-owned newspaper says it is testing the West’s arguments about freedom of expression. | story Meanwhile, Four Afghans are killed in cartoon-related protests near the U.S. base in Bagram--the first time violence has been directed against America in the controversy. | story
Investigators eavesdropping on Americans in overseas calls have dismissed nearly all of them as suspects, according to the Washington Post. This is huge, because “a search cannot be judged ‘reasonable’ if it is based on evidence that experience shows to be unreliable.” Meanwhile, feisty Russ Feingold, a Democratic senator, takes the attorney general to the cleaners for lying to him a year ago about Bush’s surveillance activities. Gonzales shoots back, “I was telling the truth then. I’m telling the truth now.” | story
As Attorney General Alberto Gonzales prepares for Monday’s hearings, we should keep in mind the president’s 2004 statement about warrantless wiretaps: “Anytime you hear the United States government talking about a wiretap, it requires--a wiretap requires a court order.” (Hat tip: crooksandliars.com) | video
That is the provocative claim illustrated by this video, which compares the president’s current rhetorical skills with his speaking prowess in 1994. This video has been around since 2004, but it’s new to us. video | the story behind the video
Newly released documents from the Ford administration show that it, too, tried to eavesdrop without warrants. | story And in an “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” moment, then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush “complained that some major communications companies were unwilling to install government wiretaps without a judge’s approval,” according to the article.
Wanna know what it takes to replace one of the all-time most corrupt members of Congress? Hint: It helps to wear a red sweater during your job interview. And, oh yeah, reform? Well, this guy ranks in the top 10 of all members of Congress in accepting lobbyist junkets.
“What for me is love, unfortunately, is punishable by death,” says a remarkably brave Iraqi medical student, speaking on the record and using his real name.
The president may be urging algebra and chemistry on high-schoolers, but his administration can’t run away from the chilling effect it has had on scientific inquiry. For example, a young presidential appointee at NASA ordered Web designers to append the word “theory” after every mention of the Big Bang (scroll half-way down the article). Wanna know what it takes to become a NASA spokesman? Well, it doesn’t hurt to write columns linking Saddam to Al Qaeda, or insisting that Rumsfeld had nothing to do with the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandals.
As violence spreads across the world, Editor & Publisher has the best take yet on why most U.S. news outlets won’t re-publish the satirical images. | story ABC is one of the very few to do so. | video (there’s a commercial) Update: Check out the way Truthdig’s Mr. Fish depicted Jesus in a cartoon. Is it offensive, an exercise in free speech, or both?
The secretary of defense likens the Venezuelan president to the German dictator, saying: “He’s a person who was elected legally—just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally.” | story
Remember when that genius Paul Wolfowitz told Congress that Iraqi oil would more than cover the cost of the occupation? Oops, we need $120 billion more just to get through this year. And Bush made this guy the head of the World Bank? | story
Chevron in the White House
