From the Washington Post:

A day after scolding Russia for retreating on democracy, Vice President Cheney flew to oil-rich Kazakhstan yesterday and lavished praise on the autocratic leader of a former Soviet republic (Nursultan Nazarbayev) where opposition parties have been banned, newspapers shut down and advocacy groups intimidated.

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From the Washington Post:

On a recent day in April, when U.S. aid officials flew to Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital, with several journalists, they were greeted on the tarmac by a commando-style security team that instructed the visitors on what to do if their vehicles were shot at or bombed, issued everyone flak jackets and closely guarded their convoy at every step.

When the group arrived at a tiny cucumber and eggplant patch, heavily armed Afghan and foreign security guards surrounded it. Later they fanned out across empty poppy fields, and stood guard along a dusty cobblestone road being built by former poppy farmers who are paid $4 per day by USAID.

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From Dana Priest, Pulitzer prize winner at the Washington Post:

One senior European counterterrorism official, asked recently for his assessment of Goss’s leadership, responded by saying, “Who?”

Goss, then the Republican chairman of the House intelligence panel, was handpicked by the White House to purge what some in the administration viewed as a cabal of wily spies working to oppose administration policy in Iraq. “He came in to clean up without knowing what he was going to clean up,” one former intelligence official said.

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From the Washington Post:

Members of Congress privately predicted that Hayden, who once enjoyed tremendous support on the Hill, would face a contentious confirmation process over the Bush administration’s domestic spying program. Other sensitive issues, such as the existence of secret prisons abroad for terrorism suspects, also are likely to arise.

“The calculus is that would be true about anybody at this point. Given all the other stuff, like secret prisons, the confirmation is going to be tough for anybody,” a senior administration official said.

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From the Washington Post:

Brinkema replied with a smile, noting that Moussaoui had yelled “America, you lost! . . . I won!” after the jury delivered its verdict.

“Mr. Moussaoui, if you look around this courtroom today, every person in this room when this proceeding is over will leave this courtroom, and they are free to go anyplace they want,” she said before pronouncing the mandatory life sentence. “They can go outside, and they can feel the sun, they can smell fresh air . . . but when you leave this courtroom, you go back into custody. In terms of winners and losers, it is quite clear who won yesterday and who lost yesterday.”

“That was my choice!” Moussaoui interrupted.

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From The Moscow Times:

Over the last year, various religious leaders have called on their followers physically to attack gay people. It began when a group of activists declared their plans to organize a gay pride parade in Moscow in May 2006. Umar Idrisov, the chief Muslim authority in the Nizhny Novgorod region, said Muslims should stone gays if and when they march. Far from reprimanding Idrisov for calling for violence, Russia’s head mufti, Talgat Tadzhuddin, stated that all “normal people, both Muslims and Russian Orthodox,” are going to beat gay people if they come out to march. Patriarch Alexy II was not quite as crude, but he publicly thanked Mayor Yury Luzhkov for his blatantly illegal refusal to consider the organizers’ application for a parade permit. Last month, Metropolitan Kirill cited homosexuality as a chief evil value forced upon Russia by the West. The message was clear: Homosexuals don’t just lack the right to march, they don’t have the right to exist.

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