The Skinny: Iraq Around The Clock
The Skinny is Hillary Profita's take on the top news of the day and the best of the Internet.
Yee haw. The Senate is headed "toward a showdown," reads the Washington Post's front page today. And you know what that means. Well, in this case it means that "[r]esolutions are flying like snowflakes around here," as Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., described it.
It's all about the myriad of resolutions that would oppose (or won't, or will just doubt) the Bush administration's move to increase troops to Iraq.
As Democrats' resolution gained support among some Republicans, the GOP initially decided that they would introduce another resolution that "would allow the party's senators to express doubts about the plan without stating their outright opposition."
Instead, there are at least five different drafts from GOP members up for grabs.
Discussions over them during a weekly policy lunch among Republicans even led to "raucous debate," (the Miller TimeFormer New York Times reporter Judy Miller told a jury yesterday that Scooter Libby "told her in a confidential conversation on June 23, 2003, that the wife of a prominent critic of the Iraq war worked at the CIA," writes the Post's front page.
That recollection doesn't jibe with Libby's story, (he thought he first heard it a few weeks later from a different journalist) which is a bit of a problem because that is "the assertion at the core of the charges against him," writes the Post.
If you are particularly interested in the demeanor of those in the courtroom, the New York Times article is really the way to go.
Miller "was calm and soft-voiced," during questioning by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who ended his questioning "briskly." Her cross examination from Libby defense lawyer William Jeffress Jr. was "caustic," and her "composure slowly withered" as she "began to sigh frequently and grow testy in her responses."
As for Libby: "he sat almost motionless in his chair about 20 feet away and stared at her."
For those who would watch this trial on C-SPAN, 'tis a tragedy.
Stonehenge: Probably Not An Observatory
Since my only memory of Stonehenge is from "National Lampoon's European Vacation," I'm not too excited by this piece of news, but it does appear on the front pages of three major papers, so here goes: Archaeologists have found a "large, prehistoric settlement 2 miles from Stonehenge," which suggests that the landmark was not a Stone Age observatory, but an "ancient memorial," writes USA Today.
While Stonehenge is "one of the most famous archeological sites in the world," archaeologists "know surprisingly little about the people who built it and lived in the region," says the L.A. Times. So this is kind of a big deal.
The community that archaeologists have discovered under the ground near Stonehenge "are the first of their kind from that late Stone Age period in Britain," writes the Post. And excavators said the material "constitute[s] an archaeological treasure."
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