Top Items:
Mel Watkins / New York Times:
Richard Pryor, Iconoclastic Comedian, Dies at 65 — Richard Pryor, the iconoclastic standup comedian who transcended barriers of race and brought a biting, irreverent humor into America's living rooms, movie houses, clubs and concert halls, died Saturday. He was 65.
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Lawyers, Guns and Money
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Digby / Hullabaloo:
R.I.P. R.P. — If you would like to have a surreal experience akin to the effects of downing ten shots of cheap tequila, tune in to FoxNews as they eulogize Richard Pryor. Apparently he invented dirty words. (It's going to come as a helluva surprise to Lenny Bruce — not to mention Redd Foxx.)
MSNBC:
Comedian Richard Pryor dies at 65 — Actor and comic known for caustic wit suffers apparent heart attack — LOS ANGELES - Richard Pryor, the groundbreaking comedian whose profanely personal insights into race relations and modern life made him one of Hollywood's biggest black stars, died of a heart attack Saturday.
Jeremiah Marquez / Associated Press:
Pioneering Comedian Richard Pryor Dies — LOS ANGELES - Richard Pryor startled audiences with his foul-mouthed routines, but his universal and frequently personal insights propelled him into one of Hollywood's biggest stars. The pioneering comedian, whose audacious style influenced generations …
Jeremiah Marquez / Associated Press:Pathbreaking Comedian Richard Pryor Dies
Discussion:
The Moderate Voice, Big Brass Blog, Pam's House Blend, baldilocks, The Heretik, Donklephant and skippy the bush kangaroo
Sky News:
Explosion At Fuel Depot — Some 36 people have been injured - two of them seriously - in a huge explosion at a fuel depot. The blast was so powerful it rocked houses up to 40 miles away. — "Tongues of flames" are soaring hundreds of feet into the sky and an acrid cloud of smoke …
Discussion:
The American Mind
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BBC:
Massive explosions hit fuel depot — Three large explosions have rocked a fuel depot near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire shooting flames hundreds of feet into the sky. — Police say there are 36 casualties, with four people seriously hurt. — The first blast happened at 0603 GMT …
Washington Post:
Gentle Senator, Presidential Hopeful Empowered U.S. Antiwar Movement — Eugene J. McCarthy, 89, the scholarly and erudite Minnesota senator whose pursuit of the presidency in 1968 galvanized popular opposition to the war in Vietnam and helped drive Lyndon B. Johnson from the White House …
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Francis X. Clines / New York Times:Eugene J. McCarthy, Senate Dove Who Jolted '68 Race, Dies at 89
Discussion:
Houston's Clear Thinkers
10news.com:
Family Upset Over Marine's Body Arriving As Freight — Marine Bodies Sent To Families On Commercial Airliners — SAN DIEGO — There's controversy over how the military is transporting the bodies of service members killed overseas, 10News reported. — A local family said fallen soldiers …
Discussion:
Liberty Street, Donklephant, Democratic Veteran, SoCalPundit, IntoxiNation-News … and The All Spin Zone
Anne E. Kornblut / New York Times:
He Says Yes to Legalized Torture — AS the debate over torture intensified earlier this month, Charles Krauthammer hit a nerve. — In a Dec. 5 cover essay in The Weekly Standard, the conservative magazine, Mr. Krauthammer argued that torture is not only defensible in certain very limited circumstances …
Discussion:
NewsBusters.org
Charles J. Hanley / Associated Press:
Clinton Says Bush Is 'Flat Wrong' on Kyoto — MONTREAL - Delegates from around the world worked into the final hours of a U.N. climate conference on Friday to produce a plan for deeper cuts after 2012 in greenhouse-gas emissions, buoyed by a last-minute message of support from former President Clinton.
Discussion:
The American Mind
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Timothy Egan / New York Times:
Credit Card Offers Stacking Up at Homes of the Newly Bankrupt — TACOMA, Wash., Dec. 9 - As one of more than two million Americans who rushed to a courthouse this year to file for bankruptcy before a tough new law took effect, Laura Fogle is glad for her chance at a fresh start.
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New York Times:
Politics, Iraqi Style: Slick TV Ads, Text Messaging and Gunfire — BAGHDAD, Iraq, Dec. 10 - After putting up 100,000 posters across Iraq to promote his political party, Hamid Kifai discovered this week that they had all been torn down, even the ones on the front of his own campaign headquarters in the south.
Los Angeles Times:
French Told CIA of Bogus Intelligence — The foreign spy service warned the U.S. various times before the war that there was no proof Iraq sought uranium from Niger, ex-officials say. — PARIS — More than a year before President Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq …
Mark Ehrman / Los Angeles Times:
Meet the Truth Squad — For a liberal blogger, no political fib should go unviewed — For political junkies, must-see TV once meant sitting through hours of "Crossfire," "Hannity & Colmes" and "Meet the Press," hoping for the occasional gem. Nowadays, to catch Robert Novak turning the air blue on …
Times of London:
Different freedoms, or why religion and politics should never mix — THE election of David Cameron as leader of the Conservative Party has quickened the pulse of British politics, and though I believe profoundly that religion and politics should never mix, there are times when it is important …
