Dana Priest of the Washington Post for beat reporting — mostly for her coverage of intelligence matters and for the scoop on the secret CIA detention facilities; James Risen and Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times for national reporting — and they, of course, broke the story on warrantless wiretaps. . .

Defense strategist Harlan Ullman writes a regular “Owls and Eagles” column for the Washington Times, and I frequently learn a great deal from it. I have come by an early draft of what will appear in his column tomorrow — titled tentatively “It is Bush’s War, Not Rumsfeld’s”.

Just when you thought it really, really couldn’t get any worse, news has hit the stands that the White House is counting artificially created golf ponds as wetlands. Apparently, Interior Secretary Gale Norton has stated that America has stopped losing wetlands.

Retired Marine Lt. General Michael DeLong published a significant retort to the growing league of generals calling for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to resign. The piece titled “A General Misunderstanding” ran in the New York Times over the weekend as well as the International Herald Tribune today. DeLong writes: As the No.

The New York Times has run three letters today in response to Michael Lind’s and my recent op-ed, “How to Lose the Brain Race.” My friend Dean Baker, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research and a new blogger at “Beat the Press“, sent one of the three published responses.

I’ve received some flack from TWN readers about part of last night’s gathering with Legal Advisor to the Secretary of State John Bellinger being on the record — and part off.

I have been a bit crazed today assembling a dinner discussion that will take place tonight with John Bellinger, Legal Adviser to the Secretary of State.

When I moved to Washington in the fall of 1994, I got to know the then Ambassador from Turkmenistan to the United States. Turkmenistan had been part of the former Soviet Union, and after it became its own country and set up its Embassy in Washington, few paid much attention to Turkmenistan or its Ambassador….

(American flag flying at La Marcha in Washington, DC; photo credit: Alexander Steffler) I’m still trying to get my head around the concept of an “Open Thread” which some who comment on this blog have encouraged me to provide on occasion.

Michael Lind and I have an article in the New York Times this morning challenging Senator Dianne Feinstein’s and the U.S. Congress’s tilt on immigration policies, particularly her wrong-headed position in creating yet a higher hurdle than already exists for foreign students entering the United States.