Tag: Open Thread

The Morning News is an Open Thread

1 NH voters come out in large numbers

By CALVIN WOODWARD and PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writers

18 minutes ago

This is an Open Thread: Welcome to Dixville Notch

Headlines For Tuesday: Their last bids for the first primary: Violent Crime Down In First Half of 2007: New Leaders Of Sunnis Make Gains In Influence: German rail operator attacked over track fees for ‘Holocaust train’

Justices Weigh Injection Issue for Death Row

With conservative justices questioning their motives and liberal justices questioning their evidence, opponents of the American manner of capital punishment made little headway Monday in their effort to persuade the Supreme Court that the Constitution requires states to change the way they carry out executions by lethal injection.

Donald B. Verrilli Jr., the lawyer for two inmates on Kentucky’s death row who are facing execution by the commonly used three-chemical protocol, conceded that theoretically his clients would have no case if the first drug, a barbiturate used for anesthesia, could be guaranteed to work perfectly by inducing deep unconsciousness.

This is an Open Thread: For The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy

Headlines For Monday: Voter ID Laws Are Set to Face a Crucial Test: GOP Doubts, Fears ‘Post-Partisan’ Obama :Stories China’s media could not write: Party’s over: Ibiza calls time on after-hours raves

Defying U.S. Plan, Prison Expands in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON – As the Bush administration struggles for a way to close the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, a similar effort to scale down a larger and more secretive American detention center in Afghanistan has been troubled by political, legal and security problems, officials say.

The American detention center, established at the Bagram military base as a temporary screening site after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, is now teeming with some 630 prisoners – more than twice the 275 being held at Guantánamo.

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

1 Bomber kills 11 at Iraqi army festival

By BRADLEY BROOKS, Associated Press Writer

9 minutes ago

This is an Open Thread: Throw Caution to the Wind

Headlines For January 5: Underdog Clinton Goes After Obama: How the U.S. seeks to avert nuclear terror: France finds its own Anne Frank as young Jewish woman’s war diary hits the shelves: The smog Olympics

For sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets

A WHISTLEBLOWER has made a series of extraordinary claims about how corrupt government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to steal nuclear weapons secrets.

Sibel Edmonds, a 37-year-old former Turkish language translator for the FBI, listened into hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office.

She approached The Sunday Times last month after reading about an Al-Qaeda terrorist who had revealed his role in training some of the 9/11 hijackers while he was in Turkey.

U.S. Considers New Covert Push Within Pakistan

This article is by Steven Lee Myers, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt.

WASHINGTON – President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The debate is a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government, several senior administration officials said.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of President Bush’s top national security advisers met Friday at the White House to discuss the proposal, which is part of a broad reassessment of American strategy after the assassination 10 days ago of the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

This is an Open Thread: That will never be closed

Headlines For Saturday January 5: Justices to Consider Death Penalty Issue: Ex-Bush official sued over terrorism memos: 46,000 Iraqis Have Left Syria: Opposition Seeks New Vote as Violence Ebbs in Kenya: Naples rubbish crisis turns nasty

Daring to Believe, Blacks Savor Obama Victory



For Sadou Brown in a Los Angeles suburb, the decisive victory of Senator Barack Obama in Iowa was a moment to show his 14-year-old son what is possible.

For Mike Duncan in Maryland, it was a sign that Americans were moving beyond rigid thinking about race.

For Milton Washington in Harlem, it looked like the beginning of something he never thought that he would see. “It was like, ‘Oh, my God, we’re on the cusp of something big about to happen,’ ” Mr. Washington said.

This is an Open Thread: Where everything is spun to the left

Headlines For Friday January 4: U.S. Curtailing Bids to Expand Medicaid Rolls: Video of Sleeping Guards Shakes Nuclear Industry: Five killed in Turkish car bomb attack: Science bows to theology as the Pope dismantles Vatican observatory

Obama Takes Iowa in a Big Turnout as Clinton Falters; Huckabee Victor

DES MOINES – Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, a first-term Democratic senator trying to become the nation’s first African-American president, rolled to victory in the Iowa caucuses on Thursday night, lifted by a record turnout of voters who embraced his promise of change.

The victory by Mr. Obama, 46, amounted to a startling setback for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, 60, of New York, who just months ago presented herself as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. The result left uncertain the prospects for John Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, who had staked his second bid for the White House on winning Iowa.

This is an Open Thread: You can caucus here pain free

Headlines For Thursday January 3: Justice Dept. Sets Criminal Inquiry Into C.I.A. Tapes: Last Pitches Before the First Vote: Iran’s Ayatollah: No smear campaigning: Malaysia’s health minister quits over sex video scandal

Kenya Topples Into Post-Election Chaos

KIAMBAA, Kenya – Daniel Kibigo said he was there, hiding in the burned cornfields nearby, as the mob gleefully stuffed mattresses in front of the church’s doors and set them on fire.

He watched women try to claw their way out of the church windows as if they were drowning as the building burned all the way down, with up to 50 people inside.

“We couldn’t do anything; there were too many,” he said of the crowd that descended on the church in the paroxysm of ethnic violence that has gripped Kenya since its deeply flawed elections last week.

This is an Open Thread: Please Relax

There’s More To Come

USA

Caucuses Bring Power Only to Some in Iowa

DES MOINES – Jason Huffman has lived in Iowa his whole life. Lately he has been watching presidential debates on the Internet, discussing what he sees with friends and relatives. But when fellow Iowans choose among presidential candidates on Thursday night, he will not be able to vote, because he is serving with the National Guard in western Afghanistan.

This is an Open Thread: Come as you are As you were

Headlines For Monday December 31: Obama Tries New Tactics To Get Out Vote in Iowa: Iran’s inner and outer circles of influence and power: Scores dead in Kenya poll clashes: Moscow loses sweet slice of history

USA

After a Son’s Death, a Shared Mission in Politics

In an instant, a world in which everything seemed right suddenly seemed all wrong. John and Elizabeth Edwards’s 16-year-old son, Wade, their first-born, was dead, with nothing to blame but the gust of wind that had flipped his car off a wide-open road.

As the couple walked down the aisle of the church for his funeral, they braced each other, friends recalled, as if they could not stand alone.

In the bleak months that followed, the Edwardses looked for ways to keep Wade’s name alive, taking comfort even in seeing it printed on credit-card offers that arrived in the mail. Determined to honor their son publicly and fill their life with meaning, they created a learning center named after him. They chose to have more children. And they decided Mr. Edwards would enter politics, a path that took him first to the United States Senate and now to his second run for the presidency.

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

Why would I kid?

1 R.I.P. to Court TV, hello to truTV

By DAVID BAUDER, AP Television Writer

1 hour, 1 minute ago

Cynical?  Moi?  I welcome our new insect overlords.

You might think the news below the fold is more tru.

Heh.