Morning News Roundup (07 Apr)

• Another "oh shit" moment in Iraq: At least 51 people have been killed and 158 injured in an apparent triple suicide bomb attack on a key Shia mosque in Baghdad. The blasts happened as worshippers were leaving the Buratha mosque in the north of the city after Friday prayers. The attack came a day after a car bomb killed at least 10 people near the sacred Shia Imam Ali shrine in Najaf. [BBC]
  
  
• Looks like Secretary of State Rice's recent strategy of bullying diplomacy hasn't played well in Baghdad. A top adviser to Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari said her visit with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had backfired, prolonging a deadlock over a new government and strengthening Mr. Jaafari's resolve to keep his post. "They complicated the thing, and now it's more difficult to solve," said Mahmoud Osman, an independent member of the Kurdistan Alliance, speaking Wednesday about Ms. Rice and Mr. Straw. "They shouldn't have come, and they shouldn't have interfered." [NYTimes]
  
  Looks like another tactical blunder (for more on blunders and blunderbusses, check out Tom Friedman's "Condi and Rummy" column, posted below).
  
  
• So, warrantless wiretapping (possibly) isn't just for foreigners any more. In response to a question from Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) during an appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorny General Alberto Gonzales suggested that the administration could decide it was legal to listen in on a domestic call without supervision if it were related to al-Qaeda. "I'm not going to rule it out," Gonzales said. [WaPo]
  
  
• Legal experts said President Bush had the unquestionable authority to approve the disclosure of secret CIA information to reporters but added the leak was highly unusual and amounted to using sensitive intelligence data for political gain. [Seattle Times]
  
  
• Iran has prepared a high-level delegation to hold wide-ranging talks with the US, but the Bush administration is resisting the agenda suggested by Tehran, which encompasses regional security and the nuclear issue. The White House insisted on Thursday that its own offer of talks with Iran, extended several months ago by Zalmay Khalilzad, the US ambassador to Baghdad, was limited to the subject of Iraq. [Financial Times]
  
  
• Key players in the Bush administration think a military confrontation with Iran is unavoidable, leading to stepped up military planning for such a prospect. Some of these observers stressed that military strikes against Iran are not imminent and speculated that the escalated war chatter could be a deliberate ploy to ratchet up diplomatic pressure on Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions. Still, they made clear, the tone in Washington has changed drastically. [Forward, hat tip to ThinkProgress]
  
  
• Funny what happens when you get creative and innovative: Toyota is poised to overtake ailing General Motors this year as the world's largest automaker in terms of units sold. "The early development of the Prius put Toyota at least two years ahead of the Big Three in one of the fastest-growing car segments," said Noriyuki Matsushima, managing director at Nikko Citigroup Ltd. in Tokyo. "Toyota has succeeded in reinventing the idea of automaking and corporate efficiency in a manner that has everybody else in the industry playing catch-up." [WaPo]
  
  
• Going where few have been permitted to to, Harry Taylor broke through the usual fawning questions at a President Bush gabfest yesterday to offer a dissenting opinion:
  

  I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself...

  Both Crooks and Liars and ThinkProgress have the video (with the full transcript at TP)
  
  
• Just in time for the movie's opening in about six weeks: A London court has ruled that Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown did not breach the copyright of an earlier book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail written by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. Brown did use the previous book to write certain parts of his thriller, the judge decided, but did not substantially copy their work. [BBC]