Morning News Roundup (10 Feb)

Hoo boy, all sorts of good stuff this morning...

• At the top of the NYTimes, this story about the White House receiving reports of the levees breaking in New Orleans on the night before the WH and Homeland Security chief Chertoff acknowledged learning about them. And who informed the White House--none other than that Nordstrom-wearin', Arabian horse-lovin' stooge, Michael "Brownie" Brown. Looks like BushCo decided not to meet his blackmail demands. And from Salon's War Room:
  

  The White House now acknowledges that it received such a message around midnight on Aug. 29. The next morning, George W. Bush flew to San Diego, where he used a backdrop of naval ships to sell the war in Iraq by likening it to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt.
  [...]
  Brown will testify today that he should have known better. As he said in an interview with the Times, "There is no question in my mind that at the highest levels of the White House they understood how grave the situation was."

• Over at the WaPo, an ex-CIA official (and former leading counterterrorism analyst) accuses BushCo (in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine) of cherry-picking intelligence that served their desire to get something started in Iraq:
  

  "It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized," Pillar wrote.

• Back at the NYTimes, a summary of the report by Murray Waas yesterday (in the National Journal) that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was only following orders from Dick, testifying he was "authorized by his 'superiors' to disclose classified information to reporters about Iraq's weapons capability in June and July 2003."
  
  
• Believe it or not, the cartoon craze is still running high, with Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi saying a huge chasm has opened between the West and Islam, fuelled by Muslim frustrations over Western foreign policy (BBC). I'll have more on the cartoons later, with some commentary by Juan Cole from Salon.
  
  
• Why does this not surprise: "Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert engineered a backroom legislative maneuver to protect pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits" (Gannett/Tennessean).
  
  
• Bird flu continues to spread, now in two different states in Nigeria (WaPo).
  
  
• The late 20th century was the warmest period of time on earth in 1,200 years (BBC)
  
  
• Finally, I thank the heavens I married Mrs. F just about daily, but I'm even more thankful I'm not stuck in a dating wasteland: Seattle ranked 10th worst city for dating (King5 TV; hat tip to Pike Place Politics)