-Sidney Blumenthal
Whoah. Blackwater helped an Iraqi minister, the only Iraqi cabinet official convicted of corruption, escape from a jail in the Green Zone.
"The nation's biggest telecommunications companies, working closely with the White House, have mounted a secretive lobbying campaign to get Congress to quickly approve a measure wiping out all private lawsuits against them for assisting the U.S. intelligence community's warrantless surveillance programs."
FRIDAY NEWS:
* Good read: "Why did it take so long to reach an accommodation with the Sunnis? And is Anbar really a good model for stabilizing the rest of Iraq?"
* Dana Milbank on Bush's unnoticed press conference. (Here's the transcript, but it's pretty slow.)
* "But how did a newspaper advertisement, of all things, become such a hot topic in the political discourse about the war?"
* Michael Kinsley on the (over)reaction to the MoveOn.org ad.
* Democratic fundraiser Hsu broke election laws, and was tied to, in fact, a Ponzi scheme. Yeesh.
* 'Cops in polygamous town stripped of badges.' Slate presents the polygamy primer.
* Why Dan Rather is suing CBS for $70 million.
* Endangered species: the hyphen.
* The BBC talks with Siouxsie Sioux.
The Explainer on getting permission to land on the moon.
Joel Achebach on velociraptor feathers and hobbit wrists.