The Week - While the Washington Post's Dana Milbank calls for a moratorium on stories about the "over-covered" Palin, other journalists dismiss his ban as partisanship
[Mon, 24 Jan 2011 11:20:00 GMT]
Read more »

The Christian Science Monitor - Americans have become addicted to superlatives. We seem to need our regular “hyperbole fixes” as if to validate our own existence. This national syndrome becomes most egregious during the run-up to the “Super Bowl,” a football game that more often than not turns out to be the “ho-hum” bowl.
[Mon, 24 Jan 2011 14:58:55 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire - More Sources May Encourage Competition:If news organizations have their own in-house WikiLeaks operations, would they be as inclined to cooperate? I’m not sure. Al Jazeera has shared the Palestine Papers with the Guardian, and it may be that mass document leaks are so complex that no single organization will ever want to shoulder the burden alone. It is also possible that this kind of coöperation is temporary, a reflection of the newness and initial discomfort that comes with working on a scale that is exceptional, and that a newsroom that is better geared for large database leaks will be less inclined to share them. I don’t know.
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:52:35 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire -
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 15:11:05 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire - The legitimacy of the death penalty in the U.S. is regularly debated. But now, at least 35 states that already administer capital punishment may no longer be able to do so. Hospira, the only American manufacturer of the drug sodium thiopental, has decided to halt production of the anaesthetic commonly used in lethal injections. The decision comes after Hospira's attempt to produce the drug at its facility outside Milan was thwarted by Italian officials who demanded the drug not be used for executions.
[Mon, 24 Jan 2011 19:27:36 GMT]
Read more »

The Week - Nuclear negotiations between Iran and Western powers flamed out in two short days. Is the time for talking over?
[Mon, 24 Jan 2011 15:40:00 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire - Awaiting Obama's State of the Union address, the wonkier of Twitter-users latched onto the hashtag #ThingsNeverSaidAtSOTU.CNN's Mark Preston gets right to the heart of it .bbpBox29905471519330304 {background:url(http://a0.twimg.com/profile_background_images/27739622/CNN_Twitter_Background_05.2009.gif) #9AE4E8;padding:20px;} p.bbpTweet{background:#fff;padding:10px 12px 10px 12px;margin:0;min-height:48px;color:#000;font-size:18px !important;line-height:22px;-moz-border-radius:5px;-webkit-border-radius:5px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata{display:block;width:100%;clear:both;margin-top:8px;padding-top:12px;height:40px;border-top:1px solid #fff;border-top:1px solid #e6e6e6} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author{line-height:19px} p.bbpTweet span.metadata span.author img{float:left;margin:0 7px 0 0px;width:38px;height:38px} p.bbpTweet a:hover{text-decoration:underline}p.bbpTweet span.timestamp{font-size:12px;display:block} Brevity is a virtue. #ThingsNeverSaidAtASOTUless than a minute ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®Mark PrestonPrestonCNN
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:33:19 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire - In March, the U.S. Postal Service will begin closing up to 2,000 post offices--many in rural or small suburban areas--to cut costs as plummeting mail volume fuels financial losses, the Wall Street Journal reports.
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:30:06 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire - Did Verizon just pull a fast one on us? On Tuesday, the country's largest wireless provider elated customers with news that it would offer an unlimited data plan for the iPhone for $30 per month. It was a nice way of one-upping rival AT&T, which recently halted its unlimited plan for all new users. But hold on: later on Tuesday Verizon representatives said the offer was merely temporary and they would adopt a tiered pricing system like AT&T in the "not too distant future." Should prospective Verizon customers be grateful or is this a classic bait-and-switch?
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:21:13 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire - "Even as Perry requested the Recovery Act money, he railed against it," Luhby writes. "On the very same day he asked for the funds, he set up a petition titled 'No Government Bailouts.'" It called on Americans to express their anger at irresponsible spending.
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:06:58 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire -
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 21:35:35 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire -
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 20:45:46 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire - Bill O'Reilly has a habit of giving the Voldemort (i.e. "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named") treatment to his former MSNBC arch-rival Keith Olbermann. And, true to form, even after the last episode of Countdown aired, the Fox host refused to utter the name "Olbermann" aloud, preferring instead to deem him "hateful commentator," "one of their guys," and "it doesn't matter who the guy is." Bernie Goldberg, O'Reilly's guest, chimed in with his own colorful description of Olbermann: "So let's start out by putting this in perspective. Saying that ... this person who left MSNBC had the highest ratings [at the network], that's all true but that's like saying he was the tallest midget in the room." Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 20:12:17 GMT]
Read more »

The Nation - The Nation -- Glenn Beck must have thought he had an easy mark when he targeted Frances Fox Piven.
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 20:05:30 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire - Protests have broken out in Lebanon following the parliament's nomination of a new prime minister backed by Hezbollah. Najib Miqati, a billionaire and former prime minister, will replace Lebanon's U.S.-backed leader Saad Hariri. The rise of a Hezbollah-backed candidate marks the "generation-long ascent of the Shiite Muslim movement from shadowy militant group to the country’s pre-eminent political and military force," reports The New York Times. Should the U.S., who considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization, be worried?A Sign of America's Declining Influence, writes Anthony Shadid at The New York Times: "Hezbollah’s success served as a stark measure of the shifting constellation of power in this part of the Middle East, where the influence of the United States and its Arab allies — Egypt and Saudi Arabia — is seen by politicians and diplomats as receding, while Iran and Syria have become more assertive."Sets Lebanon on a Collision Course, writes Nicholas Blanford at Time: The emergence of a government led by allies of Iran and Syria would almost certainly set Lebanon on a collision course with the U.S. and its key allies, particularly over the fate of a U.N.-sponsored tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of Rafiq Hariri, a former Lebanese Prime Minister. Hizballah, in the expectation that some of its members will be indicted by the tribunal, two weeks ago withdrew from the present government led by Hariri's son, Prime Minister Saad Hariri, forcing its collapse. Hariri had defied Hizballah's demand that his government cease cooperation with the tribunal.
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 19:59:59 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire - President Obama will call for the U.S. to reduce its record budget deficits during tonight's State of the Union, The Washington Post's Lori Montgomery reports, but he won't endorse his deficit commission's recommendation to raise the retirement age and reduce Social Security benefits to combat the rising national debt.
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:12:00 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire - During her one-day visit to Guanajuato Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Mexican president Felipe Calderon and other government leaders for their "courageous" efforts in battling cartel violence. The positive tone of the visit stood in sharp contrast to Clinton's September characterization of Mexican drug cartels as an "insurgency," and a series of diplomatic cables leaked last month in which American officials expressed frustration over the Mexican government's lack of progress in the war on drugs. Does Clinton's visit mark the beginning of a new phase in U.S.-Mexico relations? A sampling of opinions from around the Web:
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 18:01:23 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire - It All Comes Down To Judicial Etiquette concludes The Atlantic's Garrett Eps, remarking on the "certain sloppiness of action has lately crept over the federal bench." On Justice Roberts attending this years' SOTU proceedings, he writes:No one doubts that he has deep philosophical differences with the Obama Administration, as well he might.
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:56:05 GMT]
Read more »

The Atlantic Wire -
[Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:55:56 GMT]
Read more »

The Nation - The Nation -- With the Citizens United ruling one year ago, Chief Justice Roberts and the Koch Brothers’ allies on the Supreme Court made an already lousy US campaign finance system much worse. In the 2010 midterms, we saw the floodgates open to unlimited corporate funding of candidates, and the facts on issues—as well as the voices of ordinary Americans—were often drowned out by record-breaking covert and corporate money. Bill Moyers got it right when he said this Big special interest money “is a dagger directed at the heart of our democracy.”
[Mon, 24 Jan 2011 22:41:45 GMT]
Read more »