Here's the text of the Aug. 6, 2001 presidential daily briefing (via AP): The text of a declassified presidential daily intelligence briefing from Aug. 6, 2001 made public on Saturday by the White House. Portions marked “x” were blacked out before release. Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997 has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the U.S. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998... Read more

If you haven't already seen it, I recommend you check out the excellent and thorough analysis of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's appearance yesterday before the Sept. 11 commission from the Center for American Progress. The center offers detailed fact checks of both Rice's opening statement and of her full testimony. Despite the center's good work, I found the details of Rice's testimony less troubling than the general thrust of her three-hour appearance. She argued, essentially, that the attacks on... Read more

It's Seymour Hersh's birthday today, so let's take a look at his thorough, but depressing, assessment of the state of affairs in Afghanistan in this week's New Yorker, "The Other War: Why Bush's Afghanistan problem won't go away." Hersh cites Richard Clarke's summary of the current situation: As of today, Clarke said, "the U.S. has succeeded in stabilizing only two or three cities. The President of Afghanistan is just the mayor of Kabul." That perspective is also supported by retired... Read more

If you live in lower Delaware and you've ever purchased crushed clamshells for your garden or driveway, you may want to invest in a metal detector: Laurel poultry grower Bill Layton said he checked his driveway after reading a newspaper account Wednesday about vintage hand grenades found in a clamshell-paved driveway about seven miles away. He walked outside his Layton Road home shortly after 9 a.m. and noticed the top of a gray object embedded in the crushed clamshells covering... Read more

Today, Wednesday April 7, the magnolia soulangeana at the corner of Monroe and Jefferson streets here in Media, Pa., sprouted its white and pink flowers. Magnolia blossoms and baseball — spring is here. All magnolia trees are southern plants, but there are quite a few scattered throughout the Delaware Valley. I grew up in Dunellen, N.J., and spent quite a bit of time as a kid climbing the magnolia soulangeana in our backyard. Middlesex County, N.J., is a cruelly northern... Read more

Josh Marshall notes that the White House is now claiming the right to prevent the Sept. 11 commission from reading the full text of the speech that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was set to give on Sept. 11, 2001. This speech was to be delivered in public and broadcast on television. It's intended audience was the public, the people, the world. It was, in other words, a speech — not a classified memo, a PDB or a top-secret dossier.... Read more

Meanwhile in Delaware, more clamshells, more vintage ordnance: More vintage explosives have been recovered in a pile of clamshells being used to pave a driveway, state police said Tuesday. A Laurel area man called police Friday after he noticed a grenade among the clamshells he recently poured in his driveway. State police spokesman Cpl. Jeff Oldham said ordnance disposal teams were sent to a farm in the 32000 block of Gordy Road, one mile south of Laurel, and recovered a... Read more