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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 …
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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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Viveca Novak / Time:
What Viveca Novak Told Fitzgerald — It was in the midst of another Washington scandal, almost a decade ago, that I got to know Bob Luskin. He represented Mark Middleton, a minor figure in the Democratic campaign-finance scandals of 1996. Luskin kept Middleton out of the spotlight and never told me much.
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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 …
Condoleezza Rice / Washington Post:
The Promise of Democratic Peace — Why Promoting Freedom Is the Only Realistic Path to Security — Soon after arriving at the State Department earlier this year, I hung a portrait of Dean Acheson in my office. Over half a century ago, as America sought to create the world anew …
Discussion:
Hit and Run
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, MoxieGrrrl.com, Democratic Veteran, SoCalPundit, Mathew Gross, IntoxiNation-News … and The All Spin Zone
Kanan Makiya / New York Times:
Present at the Disintegration — WASHINGTON and Baghdad will be tempted, with the adoption of a new Constitution and the election on Thursday for a four-year government, to declare victory in Iraq. In one sense, they are right to do so. The emerging Iraqi polity undoubtedly represents …
Kevin Drum / The Washington Monthly:
SECRET LAWS....John Gilmore is suing the government because he doesn't think he should be required to show ID before boarding a commercial flight. I think this is stupid and he deserves to be thrown out of court. — At least, that's what I'd think if it weren't for this: … WTF?
Discussion:
Wampum
New York Times:
Death of an American City — We are about to lose New Orleans. Whether it is a conscious plan to let the city rot until no one is willing to move back or honest paralysis over difficult questions, the moment is upon us when a major American city will die, leaving nothing but a few shells for tourists to visit like a museum.
Washington Post:
In Iraq, Bush Pushed For Deadline Democracy — Timeline Yields Constitutional Order, Not Peace — Whenever he was asked in public last winter about the prospect of delaying Iraq's first election since the fall of Saddam Hussein, President Bush flatly dismissed it.
Michael Crowley / New York Times:
Conservative Blogs are More Effective — When the liberal activist Matt Stoller was running a blog for the Democrat Jon Corzine's 2005 campaign for governor, he saw the power of the conservative blogosphere firsthand. Shortly before the election, a conservative Web site claimed …
Newsweek:
Bush in the Bubble — He has a tight circle of trust, and he likes it that way. But members of both parties are urging Bush to reach beyond the White House walls. How he governs-and how his M.O. stacks up historically. — Dec. 19, 2005 issue - Jack Murtha still can't figure out why the father and son treated him so differently.
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.
Times of London:
Israel readies forces for strike on nuclear Iran — Uzi Mahnaimi, Tel Aviv, and Sarah Baxter, Washington — ISRAEL'S armed forces have been ordered by Ariel Sharon, the prime minister, to be ready by the end of March for possible strikes on secret uranium enrichment sites in Iran, military sources have revealed.
Discussion:
Unclaimed Territory
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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Jane Galt / Asymmetrical Information:
What should you do with your money? — In the comments to this post, Laura of 11D says ". . . you should hire yourself out to universities to give lectures to upcoming graduates. My fellow students were completely clueless. Oddly, they almost took pride in their financial ignorance."
Discussion:
Viking Pundit
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