[The Houston Chronicle]
Is Bush starting a new Cold War to go with his "War on Terror?" Vladimir Putin says that Russia's test-firing of new missiles this week was a response to U.S. plans to build missile defense sites across Europe, and suggested Washington is pursuing an imperialist policy that has triggered a new arms race.

[International Herald Tribune]
Turns out, Bush is pro-Mad Cow Disease...wonder how he's profiting on THAT?

[Infowars.net]
Records obtained from the immigration courts under the Freedom of Information Act show that only 0.0015 percent of the total number of cases filed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security were terrorism related, despite the fact that the Bush administration has repeatedly asserted that it is the primary focus of the DHS.

[Wired]
A police officer may ask a citizen for identification and use the information garnered from the request, even if the officer has no reasonable cause to suspect that a crime has been committed, according to a ruling from the Sixth Circuit.

[Press Esc]
U.S. citizens who apply for a job will need prior approval from the Department of Homeland Security under the terms of an immigration bill that has been passed by the Senate.

[AlterNet]
The United States, today, suffers from a plethora of public ills. Most of them can be traced to the militarism and imperialism that have led to the near-collapse of our Constitutional system of checks and balances.

[The Washington Post]
The value of federal contracts awarded without competitive bidding has soared since Bush took office in 2000, according to a new study. Federal contracting grew from $203 billion in fiscal 2000 to $377 billion by fiscal 2005. During the same period, the value of federal contracts awarded without competitive bidding more than doubled, from $67 billion to $145 billion. At the same time, government oversight of contracting has weakened.

[Guardian Unlimited]
Tony Blair quits: I may have been wrong—that's your call. But I did what I thought was right for our country.

[AlterNet]
Without note in the U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq's parliament have for the first time rejected the continuing occupation of their country. 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal.

[National Geographic News]
Almost a year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers declared that it had restored New Orleans' levees and floodwalls to pre-Hurricane Katrina strength. But the system is actually riddled with flaws, and a storm even weaker than Katrina could breach the levees if it hit this year, say leading experts who have investigated the system.

[ars technica]
Bush administration proposes retroactive immunity for phone companies that cooperated with the government's wiretapping activities—even should they prove to have been illegal.

[The New York Times]
Hillary Clinton joins Robert Byrd of West Virginia in calling for a vote to repeal the authority Congress gave Bush in 2002 to invade Iraq. Fellow candidates Barak Obama, Bill Richardson, and Joe Biden appear to be onboard.

[Crooks and Liars]
Three Republican presidential candidates (Brownback, Tancredo and Huckabee) disqualify themselves during debate, admitting themselves to be intellectually inadequate [video].

[Zogby International]
A new survey shows that an overwhelming majority of 72% of American troops serving in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the next year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately.

[CNN]
Four years to the day after standing on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declaring "major combat operations" in Iraq were over, Bush on Tuesday vetoed a war-spending bill that called for the start of a withdrawal of American combat troops from the conflict.