Morning News Roundup (13 Mar)

• Defence Secretary John Reid has announced the numbers of UK forces in Iraq will be reduced by 800. The UK has 8,000 personnel taking part in Operation Telic in the south of the country. [BBC]
  
  
• This one has been on the blogosphere radar, but it's getting more traction: Sandra Day O'Connor has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the Republican party's rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary. In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University, reported by NPR (listen here) and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Ms. O'Connor took aim at Republican leaders whose repeated denunciations of the courts for alleged liberal bias could, she said, be contributing to a climate of violence against judges. [Guardian]
  
  
• The WaPo has a report that notes the BushCo administration is starting to focus more on regime change as a solution for the nuclear-ambitious Iran:
  

  In private meetings, Bush and his advisers have been more explicit. Members of the Hoover Institution's board of overseers who met with Bush, Vice President Cheney and national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley two weeks ago emerged with the impression that the administration has shifted to a more robust policy aimed at the Iranian government.
  [...]
  The focus on Iran inside the administration lately has been striking. Bush, according to aides, has been spending more time on the issue, and advisers have invited 30 to 40 specialists for consultations in recent months. In the past week, the State Department created an Iran desk. Last year, only two people in the department worked full time on Iran; now there will be 10.

• Some thoughts on Russ Feingold's proposed censure of President Bush from Salon's War Room:
  

  While Feingold's resolution may be a disappointment for progressives still hoping against hope for impeachment proceedings against Bush, it's still probably too much for the Senate to stomach. When Bill Frist first learned of the resolution Sunday, the Senate majority leader -- fresh off his victory in a Republican straw poll in Tennessee and apparently forgetting his own party's recent showdown with Bush over the Dubai Ports World deal -- all but accused Feingold of aiding and abetting America's enemies. [...] "I was hoping deep inside that the leadership in Iran and other people who have the U.S. not in their best interest are not listening because of the terrible signal it sends."
  
  The response from Democratic Sen. Carl Levin was less vitriolic but maybe more bizarre. Levin said that while he believes Bush was "wrong" to engage in warrantless spying, he thinks Feingold's resolution is premature. "I would rather wait until the investigation is completed, which has now been started by the intelligence committee, before I go beyond that." Sounds pretty reasonable to us -- if, in fact, the Senate Intelligence Committee had agreed to conduct a real investigation into the warrantless spying program. It has not.

• The NY Daily News reports:
  

  George Clooney has a message for Democratic office-holders who voted for the war in Iraq, only to claim later that they'd been misled by President Bush: "F— you!"
  
  The movie star's argument — directed at the likes of presidential wannabes Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry and John Edwards — is actually more nuanced than that. But not by much.

  Check out his post over at the Huffington Post.
  
  
• Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai says people worried about the environment should rely less on government and more on themselves to protect the planet's limited resources. Maathai, a Kenyan environmentalist who won the Nobel prize in 2004, said people who recycle and plant trees have a bigger influence on the planet's health than elected leaders. [ENN]