Top Items:
New York Times:
Clintons Move to Tamp Down Criticism From Blacks About Recent Comments — WASHINGTON — The Clinton campaign moved Friday to try to quell a potentially damaging reaction to recent comments by Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton that have drawn criticism from African-Americans …
Discussion:
TalkLeft, Ben Smith's Blogs, The Swamp, Booman Tribune, The Politico, TIME: Swampland, Political Machine, American Street, News Hounds, Outside The Beltway, Jules Crittenden, ScrappleFace, Connecting.the.Dots, Macsmind, TPM Election Central, The Gun Toting Liberal™, Bookworm Room, Althouse and Irish Trojan in Tennessee
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Dan Balz / Washington Post:
Edwards Will Face a Moment of Truth After South Carolina Primary — John Edwards is the forgotten man in the race for the Democratic nomination, but he's not an inconsequential candidate. — Edwards, the angry populist of Iowa who may become a Southern-fried Democrat as the South Carolina primary unfolds …
Discussion:
Firedoglake, The Caucus, The Sideshow, Blue Crab Boulevard, Prairie Weather and The Huffington Post
Ryan Lizza / New Yorker:
MINORITY REPORTS — After New Hampshire, a hint of racial politics. … The brief interregnum between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary may be remembered as a time when it appeared that the magical qualities ascribed to Barack Obama included an ability to suspend all the ordinary rules of politics.
Sam Roberts / New York Times:
Obama Giving Clinton a Race in Her Backyard — With Senator Barack Obama vowing to challenge Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on her home turf, the Democratic presidential primary in New York on Feb. 5 is shaping up as the state's most competitive since 1992, when Bill Clinton took up a rival's mantra …
Discussion:
The Moderate Voice, New York Daily News Blogs, Captain's Quarters, Stumper and Prairie Weather
Kenneth P. Vogel / The Politico:
Newt: Hillary shows courage, integrity — Newt Gingrich's on-again, off-again adulation of Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to be back on. — The leader of the 1994 Republican revolution — who as House speaker in the mid 1990s clashed fiercely with then-first lady Clinton and her husband …
Qassim Abdul-Zahra / Associated Press:
Iraq to reinstate Saddam party followers — BAGHDAD - Iraq's parliament passed a benchmark law Saturday allowing lower-ranking former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to reclaim government jobs, the first major piece of U.S.-backed legislation it has adopted.
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Ed Morrissey / Captain's Quarters:
De-Baathification Reform Law Passes In Iraqi Parliament — Note: I'm leaving this post on top for the morning; newer posts are below. — Those who claim that the surge strategy in Iraq has paid no dividends because it hasn't met Congressional benchmarks may wish to skip to the next post.
Navy Times:
‘Filipino Monkey’ may be behind radio threats, ship drivers say — The threatening radio transmission heard at the end of a video showing harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a locally famous heckler known among ship drivers as the “Filipino Monkey.”
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Steve Friess / New York Times:
Teachers Sue to Block Hotel Workers' Union Vote in Nevada Caucus — LAS VEGAS — Nevada's state teachers union and six Las Vegas area residents filed a lawsuit late Friday that could make it harder for many members of the state's huge hotel workers union to vote in the hotly contested Jan. 19 Democratic caucus in Nevada.
Big Tent Democrat / TalkLeft:
Ben Nelson To Endorse Obama — Now this is a predictable development as Ben Nelson is the king of bipartisanship, voting with Republicans more than any other Democrat: … Again, the national implications for me are not positive for Obama, they are negative.
Discussion:
KETV Omaha's Channel 7
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Rudyg / Stumper:
Blumenthal On the Boil — Sidney Blumenthal plays hardball. A longtime confidante and adviser to the Clintons, he has zealously defended them through any number of scandal investigations. Along the way, Blumenthal has shown an affinity for the sharp counterattack.
Paul Vitello / New York Times:
A Combative Thompson Sways Voters — MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — John and Ann Berenberk dutifully watched the umpteenth Republican presidential debate on television on Thursday night and had an epiphany. It was about the candidate they had previously referred to as the tall, silent one. Fred D. Thompson.
Discussion:
michellemalkin.com, CBS News, QandO, Wake up America, Hot Air, Riehl World View, Fred File and PoliGazette
Ed Morrissey / Captain's Quarters:
Joe Won't Be The Veep Pick For McCain — Unlike in the 2004 campaign, when a still-angry McCain allowed rumors of a second-slot deal with John Kerry to percolate just a little before denying them, the McCain campaign wants to scotch rumors of a similar deal with Senator Joe Lieberman.
George W. Bush / Newsweek:
Sorry, Barack, You've lost Iraq. — Bush's efforts to negotiate a long-term U.S-Iraq pact may remove troops as an '08 election issue for Obama, Clinton. — Camp Arifjan in the desert kingdom of Kuwait, America's depot to the Iraq war, feels about as far away as you can get from South Carolina …
Discussion:
Gateway Pundit
Vanderleun / AMERICAN DIGEST:
Cutting Through the Katrina Krapola — “You've got a mouth full of gimme, a hand full of much obliged." — Bessie Smith, Gulf Coast Blues — I don't know about you but I have had it with the legions of hustlers, grifters, drunks, junkies, pathics and drooling layabouts that keep waddling …
David Hardy / Of Arms and the Law:
Government files amicus — on DC's side! — Quick read: Gov't says, yes, it's an individual right. BUT we join with DC in asking Court to reverse the DC Circuit, because it applied strict scrutiny to the DC law. It should only have applied an intermediate standard.
Jeralyn / TalkLeft:
Federal Appeals Court Dismisses Released Detainees' Lawsuit — The D.C. Court of Appeals today upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit for damages filed by four Britons who had been detained at Guantanamo. Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal Al-Harith had sued Donald Rumsfeld …
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