In one of his first public interviews since going into exile, a Syrian strongman discusses Ariel Sharon, the assassination of Rafik Hariri and Bashar Assad’s tight control over Damascus.-Newsweek

Concerns rise about fraud, stolen information with outsourcing.-Christian Science Monitor

The bottom line is this: your bank accounts are insured unless there is a banking crisis. Then, you must hope for the best.-Gary North

The Social Security Trust Fund is an accounting trick. There is no money in the fund. It is filled with government bonds, issued specially to government agencies. The money was spent by the government as soon as it rolled in. These bonds are not marketable to the general public. There is no market for these bonds. They represent an accounting trick.-Gary North

Peru has recalled its ambassador from Venezuela and accused the country of meddling in its affairs after President Hugo Chavez praised an ex-army nationalist candidate running for president in Peru's April elections.-Reuters

President Bush on Wednesday bypassed the Senate to install former Navy Secretary Gordon R. England as deputy secretary of defense, and used a similar maneuver to name a new Pentagon spokesman, campaign finance regulators and Amtrak directors.-Capitol Hill Blue

New information provided to WMR expands on our initial reports about the Bush administration using NSA to spy on politicians, including phone conversations between then-Secretary of State Colin Powell and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson concerning diplomatic back channels to North Korea's UN ambassador…McCain did not need that microphone -- NSA could hear him just fine.-Wayne Madsen

China indicated on Thursday it could begin to diversify its rapidly growing foreign exchange reserves away from the US dollar and government bonds – a potential shift with significant implications for global financial and commodity markets.-Financial Times

In my last column, I questioned the legality of the Administration's secret domestic spying program. Since then, President Bush has been out on the hustings arguing that the program was perfectly legal.Ordering the warrantless wiretapping of Americans contravenes the constitutional separation of powers by flouting the exclusive legal regime for intelligence-related wiretapping that was established by Congress in the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA), in order to protect the privacy of American citizens and respect the concern about government surveillance reflected in the Fourth Amendment -Edward Lazarus/FindLaw

The President, according to Charley Savage of the Boston Globe, issued a "signing statement" -- "an official document in which a president lays out his interpretation of a new law" -- in which he "quietly reserved the right to bypass the [McCain] law under his powers as commander in chief." Nick Turse shines a new light on the Bush administration's cult of presidential power by showing just how far back its adherents would roll our constitutional and legal system -- back to the Middle Ages and the rule of kings -TomDispatch

A series of internal documents from the U.S. Secret Service obtained by the McCutain Daily Gazette provide details of a project involving the transfer of thousands of telephone and bank records to a government database with the help of U.S. telephone and financial company executives.The detailed field notes were prepared by a special agent who once headed the Electronic Crimes Branch of the Secret Service, where the agent was responsible for case coordination of all telecommunications and computer network investigations conducted by Secret Service field offices -J.D. Cash and retired Lt. Col. Roger Charles/McCurtain Daily Gazette

President Bush yesterday made a raft of controversial recess appointments, including Julie L. Myers to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau at the Department of Homeland Security, in a maneuver circumventing the need for approval by the Senate.Myers, a niece of former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Richard B. Myers and the wife of the chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, had been criticized by Republicans and Democrats who charged that she lacked experience in immigration matters -Washington Post