An analysis of nuances in Gen. Baluyevsky's article makes it clear enough that Russia is changing its military policy before our eyes.-UPI/SpaceWar

Congress will soon hold hearings on the National Security Agency's domestic spying program, secretly authorized by President Bush in 2002. But that program is just the tip of the iceberg.-CISAC News

Thinks the federal government is too intrusive? You ain't seen nothing yet. An FCC mandate will require that all hardware and software have a wiretap backdoor that allows the government to tap into all your communications.-Prison Planet

In another shining example of modern day corporate fascism, it was announced recently that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root had been awarded a $385 million dollar contract by Homeland Security to construct detention and processing facilities in the event of a national emergency.-Prison Planet

President Bush set energy self-sufficiency goals Tuesday night that would still leave the country vulnerable to unstable oil sources. He also declared he is helping more people get health care, despite a rising number of uninsured.-AP

An e-mail threat that prompted the evacuation of more than a dozen Brandeis University buildings on January 18 led to an unusual standoff in a public library in Newton, Mass., a few miles from the Brandeis campus.-Chronicle.com

As Americans take a stand for their liberties, the bullies are already plotting how to redirect our emotions toward very bad or halfhearted solutions that may, in the end, make things much worse, with greater loss of liberty. In other words, the rhetoric may well be there, the solutions won’t -Tom DeWeese/NewsWithViews

Whether Latin America is Rumsfeld's host to "relatively little" terrorism activity or is a hotbed that constitutes yet again a soft underbelly of threats to the United States, the USS Virginia deployed to the Caribbean and south Atlantic waters between August and November in support of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), the Miami-based warfighting command that covers Central America south of Mexico and all of South America -William M. Arkin/Washington Post

On the surface, the NSA move seems to be a management and cost cutting measure, part of a post-9/11 decentralization.In truth, NSA is aligning its growing domestic eavesdropping operations -- what the administration calls "terrorist warning" in its current PR campaign -- with military homeland defense organizations, as well as the CIA's new domestic operations Colorado -William M. Arkin/Washington Post

"In public life as in kindergarten, the all-important word is no." It's clear that the expansion of secret (and not so secret) "war-time" powers proved a heady, addictive experience for top officials of this administration. (Where's Nancy Reagan and her "just say no" program when we need them most?) Thomas Powers, author of Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to al-Qaeda, explores the meaning of the recent NSA spying scandal -TomDispatch.com

Alan Greenspan last night marked the end of his eighteen and a half-year stint at the helm of the Federal Reserve with an increase in interest rates designed to prevent higher inflation in the world's largest economy.In a move wholly expected on Wall Street, America's central bank voted at its 14th consecutive meeting to push up the cost of borrowing, with the quarter-point increase taking the benchmark Fed funds rate to 4.5% -Guardian UK

The White House had touted Tuesday night's speech as a domestic address, but at its core it was a national security address with a global audience.President Bush's State of the Union address on Tuesday, prepared for delivery, as released by the White House

A group of distinguished experts and scholars, including Robert M. Bowman, James H. Fetzer, Wayne Madsen, John McMurtry, Morgan Reynolds, and Andreas von Buelow, have concluded that senior government officials have covered up crucial facts about what really happened on 9/11.They have joined with others in common cause as members of "Scholars for 9/11 Truth" (S9/11T), because they are convinced, based on their own research, that the administration has been deceiving the nation about critical events in New York and Washington, D.C. -Global Research CA

Two major revelations this past week show how far the administration of US President George W Bush has already shifted its policy toward realignment with Sunni forces to balance the influence of pro-Iranian Shi'ites in Iraq.These new moves suggest that the administration may have redefined its interests in Iraq to downgrade the importance of the fight against insurgency there in light of the larger conflict with Iran -Gareth Porter/Asia Times

Large majorities of Iraqis believe that the United States has no intention of ever withdrawing all its military forces from their country and that Washington's reconstruction efforts have been incompetent at best, according to a survey released here on Tuesday Jim Lobe/Asia Times