Cursor's Media Patrol - 12/28/05

"[T]he Times' decision-making is not the central story here," says the Village Voice's Sydney Schanberg. "The president's secret directive is... We've been lied to before. But this presidency has lifted these arts to new and scary heights." Earlier: 'Paranoia on the left and the right.'

Left I on the News parses an AP report that the CIA's inspector general is "investigating fewer than 10 cases where terror suspects may have been mistakenly swept away to foreign countries."

A U.N. official declares Iraq's parliamentary election "credible and transparent," while Knight Ridder finds that 'Many Iraqi soldiers see a civil war on the horizon,' as insurgents get 'back to business' and Chalabi takes over the oil ministry.

A Bloomberg columnist describes the recent scene on the Senate floor, in which a self-described "mean, miserable SOB," stymied on ANWR on the worst day of his life, sounded like "The Godfather" pleading, "When have I ever refused an accommodation?"

The Los Angeles Times reports that home mortgage lenders, seeking to undo consumer protections in state laws, are rallying behind a bill sponsored in the House by "Representative No. 1."

A WSWS report details the recruiting practices that result in Latin American mercenaries being paid as little as $5.75 an hour to guard Baghdad's Green Zone. Earlier: 'Asia's poor build U.S. bases in Iraq.'

Could the use of Latin Americans and Asians in Iraq explain the Pentagon's foot-dragging