:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 9.10.2007 ::
:: "IT'S ALL PART OF LIFES RICH PAGEANT" :::: 9.09.2007 ::
Murmurs of a Reckoning
By Andrew Rice, Slate
This promises to be a week of milestone events—Gen. David Petraeus' testimony to Congress on Monday, and the sixth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on Tuesday—and the Sunday front pages are weighted for the occasions. The New York Times leads with a 4,000-word examination of the American troop "surge" in Iraq, finding modest signs of progress that nonetheless fall far short of the goals President Bush stated when he announced the troop buildup seven months ago. The Washington Post counters with its own 3,700-word surge story, focusing on divisions within the military over strategy, but devotes much of its front page to a picture-laden investigation of the "new al-Qaeda," describing how the terrorist organization has regrouped and reorganized since its near-destruction in the fall of 2001. The Los Angeles Times leads with a story about the ramifications of all these Chinese product recalls—in short, higher prices—but also fronts a profile of Gen. Petraeus.
The NYT's and WP's lead stories on Iraq are both all-hands-on-deck affairs—six reporters share a byline on the Post's story, while a whopping 18 contributed to the Times'—and the differences between the pieces say a lot about the respective papers' personalities.
Read more here.
posted by me
:: 10:55:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "Analysis: Court nixes Patriot Act subpoena" ::
A UPI report
A federal judge in New York has ruled that a provision of the Patriot Act allowing the FBI to issue secret subpoenas to Internet service providers and other communications companies is unconstitutional, and has ordered the bureau to cease using them.
The decision was welcomed by American Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Anthony Romero, who said he was "thrilled" at what he called "yet another setback for the Bush administration's strategy in the war on terror."
Unless overturned on appeal, the ruling will end one of the FBI's most widely used investigative tools -- and the one that is subject to the least stringent court oversight.
Read more here.
A L S O
Judge Gags Patriot Act Provision
Huffington Post
Judge Strikes Down Part of Patriot Act
Slashdot
posted by me
:: 8:42:00 PM [+] ::
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