Category: News

Presidential Blair 'must change' style of leadership. SINCE taking office, Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, has prided himself in his informal style of meetings at No 10 – swapping agendas and minutes for cups of tea and biscuits. However, Lord Butler indicated yesterday that the highly personalised style… [The Scotsman]

Flawed, overstated, misleading. TONY Blair's case for war with Iraq was torn apart by Lord Butler yesterday, as his report into pre-war intelligence found that the Prime Minister's Iraq dossier stretched the truth to its “outer limits”. [The Scotsman]

Joe Trippi's Blog and Book. Joe Trippi has a blog and a new book: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. I'm going to read it. Winner-takes-all politics tend to obscure important inflection points. Howard Dean did not win the nomination. But his campaign and Joe Trippi's use of the Internet was the start of something… Continue reading Joe Trippi's Blog and Book

I-93 loses 3d lane to convention. Transportation planners, worried about gridlock during the Democratic National Convention, plan new restrictions on Interstate 93 as part of an effort to persuade drivers to use Route 128 instead. [Boston Globe — Front Page]

WSJ. Surging demand (particularly from China) has hit the world's oil production capacity limits. This makes oil prices more volatile and responsive to GG attacks. “It's a tight window of vulnerability” in the third quarter, says Ann-Louise Hittle, an analyst in Boston for Wood Mackenzie. Oil producers outside OPEC typically produce at maximum capacity, leaving… Continue reading WSJ

Those Who Ignore History Are Doomed to Hear About It. Rashid Khalidi says the war in Iraq was doomed from the start by a failure to understand the colonial history of the Middle East. By IVO H. DAALDER. [The New York Times > Books]

Republican-Led House Defeats Effort to Curb Patriot Act. The effort to defy President Bush and bridle the anti-terrorism law's powers lost by 210-210, with a majority needed to prevail. By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS. [The New York Times > Home Page]

Searches underway on buses to Hub. Local and federal officials began the first inspections of Boston-bound bus riders' bags in Londonderry, N.H., yesterday, as bus lines face stepped-up security measures to coincide with the Democratic National Convention in Boston. [Boston Globe — Front Page]

BW. Mark Zandi on the US economy. Today's data suggest that the President won't be able to tell voters the economy has recovered all the jobs lost on his watch. There's no chance. In June, private-sector jobs were 109.8 million. The peak was February of 2001, at 111.6 million. So we're 1.83 million away. There's… Continue reading BW

One thing missed by the political pundits. Edwards was genuinely liked in the primaries. His negatives were almost non-existant. Go back and have a look at the sentiment numbers. It is going to cost the Republicans lots of money to tar this man with high negatives. Further, trial lawyers will line up at the door… Continue reading One thing missed by the political pundits. Edwards was genuinely liked
in the primaries. His negatives were almost non-existant. Go back and
have a look at the sentiment numbers. It is going to cost the
Republicans lots of money to tar this man with high negatives. Further,
trial lawyers will line up at the door to pour money into the Dem's
coffers with one of their own on the ticket. Economically, this is a
disaster for the Republican campaign. [John Robb's Weblog