Roundup of Other News

Dean, Gephardt Campaign Aides Getting Into Scuffles In Iowa

Hardball’s Matthews sounds off on Dean, Bush, Cheney and 'The Great Debate'

Supports Dean, Cheney's in charge and the next election will be the debate.

Fox Responds to The Daily Memo Claim by Attacking the Messenger

From MICHAEL McFADDEN: If there's anything that still shocks about the Roger Ailes News Network, it's their dreadful consistency. Bill O'Reilly could have written Sharri Berg's response to Charles Reina, consisting as it does of the usual substance-free bilge: conjecture about Reina's motives, a lengthy (painstakingly transcribed) smear from an anonymous colleague and even a cringe-inducing dollop of Fox's faux populism ('No grunts here!') Careful readers will note, however, that she didn't dispute Reina's most explosive claim, which is that a right-wing bias is mandatory and comes by way of a daily memo. Thanks Sharri, that's all the verification I need.

New poll: Wesley Clark leads in SC

EL - Kerry may be next to drop out. Forced to rely on a misleading poll in Iowa that only surveyed delagates from four years or more ago and now 8th, just above Kucinich, in South Carolina which he had strong hopes for.

The USA accounts for 43% of world military expenditure

By the way, I am Atrios!

Another Atrios picked up this: More on Civility

The day a mainstream columnist writes a column like this for a major paper, we can talk:

Bush's speech was one no minimally decent politician could have delivered. It was entirely dishonest, cheap, low. It was utterly hollow. It was bereft of policy, of solutions, of constructive ideas, very nearly of facts--bereft of anything other than taunts and jibes and embarrassingly obvious lies. It was breathtakingly hypocritical, a naked political assault delivered in smarmy tones of moral condescension from a man pretending to be superior to mere politics. It was wretched. It was vile. It was contemptible. But I understate.

from Big Media Matthew Yglesias

This followed Atrios' Norms of Civility.

Finally, In a blow to Neo-Cons and Likudists, Israeli Army Chief Warns Sharon 'on the verge of a catastrophe'

Israel's army chief has exposed deep divisions between the military and Ariel Sharon by branding the government's hardline treatment of Palestinian civilians counter-productive and saying that the policy intensifies hatred and strengthens the "terror organisations".

The statements - which a close associate characterised to the Israeli press as warning that the country was "on the verge of a catastrophe" - will also reinforce a growing perception among the public that Mr Sharon is unable to deliver the peace with security he promised when he came to office nearly three years ago.

The criticism is made all the more searing because Gen Ya'alon is not known for being soft on the Palestinians. As deputy chief of staff, he called the latest conflict the second stage of Israel's independence war.