SPB News for Wednesday

FL GOP Chair Resigns -- And Slams Right-Wing Critics

Canada To Use Full-Body Scanners For U.S. Flights

Graham (Again) Censured By SC GOP

Gibbs: U.S. Won't Tranfer More Gitmo Detainees To Yemen

New Jersey Senate Will Vote On Gay Marriage Thursday

Dutch Police: X-Mas Bomber Acted Alone

D.C. Party Planner Carlos Allen ID'd By WaPo As Third Party Crasher ... Denies He Attended Party ... Seems To Know Michaele Salahi

Jenny Sanford's Memoir To Be Released In Feb

Fannie, Freddie now a 'public utility'

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) says lenders now a 'public utility' after bailout.

Appeals court ruling limits Guantanamo detainees' rights, gives president wide detention power A federal appeals court ruling Tuesday could make it harder for Guantanamo detainees to challenge their confinement and endorsed the government's broad power to hold people seized in the fight against al-Qaida and the Taliban. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the continued detention of a former cook for Taliban forces who said he never fired a shot in battle. Ghaleb Nassar Al Bihani, a citizen of Yemen who was captured in Afghanistan, has been held at the U.S. naval base in Cuba since 2002.

Germany knows nothing of alleged CIA murder plot The German government said on Monday it knew nothing about a magazine report that the CIA had planned a secret operation to kill a German-Syrian in Hamburg linked to the September 11 attacks on U.S. targets. The U.S. magazine Vanity Fair had reported that the CIA had in 2004 sent a team from the private security firm Blackwater, now Xe, to Hamburg to kill Mamoun Darkazanli, who was investigated for years by German authorities on suspicion of links to al Qaeda. January's edition of the magazine cited a source familiar with the program as saying the mission had been kept secret from the German government.

Bomber who hit CIA base was triple agent: militants A suicide bomber who killed eight people at a CIA base in Afghanistan was an Al-Qaeda triple agent who duped Western intelligence services for months before turning on his handlers, jihadist websites boasted on Tuesday. The Jordanian intelligence services, believing the bomber to be their double agent, brought him to eastern Afghanistan with the mission of finding Al-Qaeda number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the websites and Western intelligence agents cited by US media said. But instead he blew himself up at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost province near the Pakistani border, killing seven CIA agents and his Jordanian handler, a top intelligence officer and member of the royal family.

KBR Awarded Construction Contract for U.S. Federal Building and Courthouse KBR today announced that its Building Group, has been awarded a $46.96 million contract by the U.S. General Services Administration to provide construction management services for a new United States Federal Building and Courthouse in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The building, designed to achieve LEED® Silver certification, replaces an outdated existing facility.

Thurmond the Younger Aiming for Congress?
Controversial Sen. Strom Thurmond died in 2003, but Congress may not be a Thurmond-free zone for much longer if Strom’s youngest son, Paul Thurmond, ends up following through on some preliminary noises he’s making about a possible run for outgoing South Carolina Rep. Henry Brown’s House seat.

Wells Fargo, Citigroup Repay TARP Money - Wells Fargo & Co. said it repaid the $25 billion in public money it received through the Troubled Asset Relief Program last year. In addition, Citigroup ...