President George W. Bush, caught in a growing web of lifes about his domestic spying program, clung to his claim of “limited” eavesdropping activities Sunday admit revelations that top Justice Department Officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft, refused to sign off on the snooping on Americans by the National Security Agency.
The top CIA counterterrorism officer who tracked Osama bin Laden through the mountains of Afghanistan says the United States could have captured the terrorist leader if President George W. Bush and the American military had devoted the necessary resources to the hunt and capture.
We often find ourselves in the middle of a firestorm. We subscribe to
legendary journalist Finley Peter Dunne’s belief that it is the role of
a journalist to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
I’ve been doing that since age 11 when I sold my first story and
pictures to The Farmville Herald in racially-torn Prince Edward County,
Virginia, and got the crap beat out of me by my classmates because I
portrayed them – correctly – as a bunch of young bigots.
Feathers are flying anew over so-called “bird flu.” Researchers
have reported that four Vietnamese patients suffering from it and
treated with an antiviral drug have died. Perhaps two received it too
late, but the others had resistance to the medicine. The drug? Roche’s
Tamiflu, which the media have anointed with almost mythical properties.
President George W. Bush tried Saturday to dismiss a difficult year plagued by
instability in Iraq and political scandal in Washington by claiming
progress toward democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan and a strong U.S.
economy.
A “charity” with close ties to Rep. Tom DeLay was funded largely
by corporations associated with former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, the
Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing tax records and quoting
former associates of the group.
In his first year-end assessment of the federal judiciary, Chief
Justice John Roberts urged Congress to increase judicial pay to help
keep good judges on the bench and to recruit new ones.