[BBC News]
The left-wing candidate in Mexico's disputed election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and his backers are occupying the capital's main square and avenues. Obrador has called on his adherents to paralyze Mexico City until every vote was recounted.

[Yahoo! News]
U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration.

[New York Times]
2006 Congressional Election Guide map of the U.S.

[The Independent]
The UN warned Israel with at least 10 separate telephone calls during six hours that repeated aerial and artillery attacks had already landed at or dangerously close to their post in Khiam, south Lebanon, before the bombing that killed four of its observers there on Tuesday.

[comment is free]
War amongst the people is the new paradigm of war, defined by General Sir Rupert Smith in his book The Utility of Force as "the reality in which the people in the streets and houses and fields—all the people, anywhere —are the battlefield. Military engagements can take place anywhere, with civilians around, against civilians, in defence of civilians. Civilians are the targets, objectives to be won, as much as an opposing force." Industrial war is dead, and we the people need to be defended from war amongst the people.

[Rolling Stone]
Iran: The Next War. In recent weeks, the attacks by Hezbollah on Israel have given neoconservatives in the Bush administration the pretext they were seeking to launch what former House Speaker Newt Gingrich calls "World War III."

[New York Times]
Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 ultimately may come to be seen as one of the most profligate actions in the history of American foreign policy, writes Thomas E. Ricks, senior Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post in his new book, Fiasco. Ricks’s narrative is based on hundreds of interviews and more than 37,000 pages of documents, and many of the book’s most scorching assessments of the White House and Pentagon’s conduct of the war come from members of the uniformed military and official military reports.

[The Belfast Telegraph Digital]
Graphic illustrating which countries support a ceasefire in Lebanon and which do not.

[Yahoo! News]
The House, no longer content to merely support Bush's dismantling of Constitutional checks and balances from the sidelines, decides to actively launch its own assault on the judicial branch.

[Reuters]
Bush uses the first veto of his term to block legislation expanding embryonic stem cell research, putting him at odds with top scientists, most Americans and some in his own Republican Party.

[AlterNet]
Larry C. Johnson: Let's see if I have this right. The Arab "terrorists" attack military units, destroy at least one tank, and are therefore terrorists. Israel retaliates by launching aerial, naval, and artillery bombardments of civilian areas and they are engaging in self-defense. If we are unable to recognize the hypocrisy of this construct then we ourselves are so enveloped by propaganda and emotion that, like the Israelis, Hezbollah, and Hamas, we can't think rationally.

[multiple]
Timelines provide some background on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

[Think Progress]
During a press conference today at the G8 summit in Russia, President Bush told President Vladimir Putin that Americans want Russia to develop a free press and free religion “like Iraq.” To laughter and applause, Putin responded: We certainly would not want to have same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, quite honestly.

[CNN]
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to impose limited sanctions on North Korea for its recent missile tests and demanded that the reclusive communist nation suspend its ballistic missile program. North Korea immediately rejected the resolution and vowed to continue missile launches.

[multiple]
Israel launches attacks on Lebanon and its civilians, including the Beirut airport, in retaliation for Hezbollah kidnappings.

Russia, France, Britain and Italy criticize Israel for its disproportionate use of force.

[New York Times]
Culture of massive waste without oversight at the Pentagon becoming far worse than in the past.

[New York Times]
Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to Bush: The U.S. Congress simply should not have to play Twenty Questions to get the information that it deserves under our Constitution.

[News.com]
The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance and force makers of networking gear to build in backdoors for eavesdropping.

[WSJ Opinion Journal]
In 2005, according to new data from the National Highway Safety Administration, the rate of injuries per mile traveled was lower than at any time since the Interstate Highway System was built 50 years ago. The fatality rate was the second lowest ever, just a tick higher than in 2004. As a public policy matter, this steady decline is a vindication of the repeal of the 55 miles per hour federal speed limit law in 1995.

[Washington Monthly]
A damning analysis of conservatism in the United States: A conservative in America, in short, is someone who advocates ends that cannot be realized through means that can never be justified, at least not on the terrain of conservatism itself...If government is necessary, bad government, at least for conservatives, is inevitable, and conservatives have been exceptionally good at showing just how bad it can be. Hence the truth revealed by the Bush years: Bad government--indeed, bloated, inefficient, corrupt, and unfair government--is the only kind of conservative government there is.

[New York Times]
Election officials in Mexico have declared that they cannot immediately determine a winner in the tightest presidential race in the country's history. Minutes later, the two front runners each declared victory, setting in motion an electoral crisis.

[UPI]
Israel has threatened to assassinate the Palestinian prime minister if Hamas militants do not release a captured Israeli soldier unharmed. Which is the terrorist nation, again? Maybe it's time to update that "Axis of Evil"...

Update: Israeli aircraft sent missiles tearing through the office of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.