Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Deat WSJ: Are YOU ever in the wrong place.


How odd -- in the last several minutes, I've had two separate site referrals from this URL, but when I click on that link, I get a blank page with only a header reading "The Wall Street Journal ONLINE".

Does anyone else see any actual content? I'm purely mystified why anything at WSJ would be pointing here.

7 comments:

Ed said...

I see the story (using Camino on OS X). Its Morning Brief that outline a bunch of the day's 'top stories'. I see no reference at all to your site.

Weird.

Ed said...

No wait. I found you. Heh. You are linked for your post called Bush to Congress: Bite Me.

Waaaay down at the bottom in the Blog Posts Related to this Article field.

CC said...

OK, that's amusing, but I wonder why nothing comes up using Firefox on Fedora 7. How strange.

Ed said...

Maybe try Konqueror?

That is odd, Camino and FF use the same engine.

Anonymous said...

I think it's the spam blocker or popup blocker, as there's an ad first, then you're redirected to the site.

Zorpheous said...

I'm using Firefox and I get this

Executive Privilege Battle
Could Take Widespread Toll
By ELANA BEISER
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE
July 10, 2007 7:17 a.m.

The Morning Brief, a look at the day's biggest news, is emailed to subscribers by 7 a.m. every business day. Sign up for the e-mail here.

In the escalating battle between Congress and the White House over the firing of U.S. prosecutors and the use of executive privilege, all parties have much to lose -- except perhaps President Bush himself.

Mr. Bush yesterday invoked executive privilege for the second time in two weeks, directing two former aides -- ex-White House Counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor -- to defy congressional subpoenas to testify as part of an investigation into the firings of U.S. attorneys, as the Associated Press reports. The move prods lawmakers toward their first contempt citations against administration officials since Ronald Reagan was president, the AP writes. It also places the two aides in the "awkward position" of choosing between defying the president and risking criminal contempt citations by Congress, the Washington Post notes.

In the past, such standoffs have been resolved before the full House or Senate has voted on referring a congressional contempt citation to a U.S. attorney, but a weeklong holiday for the Fourth of July didn't help cool tempers, the AP notes. The undiminished tension reflects a tougher stance by the administration in recent weeks toward multiple probes in Congress, which the White House is striving to portray as "more concerned with investigating than law making," the Wall Street Journal writes. As splits within the Democratic Party have hampered it from passing major legislation, Congress's approval ratings have fallen to their lowest point since the party seized control of Capitol Hill and even lower than Mr. Bush's ratings, the Journal notes. A prolonged fight could have a "clear political price" for the party, while a referral to court could allow Mr. Bush to ride out the issue until the end of his term, the paper says.

The White House has backed down on the issue of executive privilege before, the New York Times points out. And administration officials may bear in mind Congress's recent success with subpoenas, in light of the possibility that executive privilege will surface again in other investigations, the Journal writes. For example, Democratic Rep. John Conyers yesterday asked Mr. Bush to waive privilege claims and let White House aides testify about the decision to allow I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to avoid going to prison in the CIA leak case, the Washington Post reports. However, Peter Shane, an expert on executive privilege at Ohio State law school, tells the Los Angeles Times: "Given that no one in the White House is seeking re-election, it is unclear whether they will compromise short of receiving some extraordinary pressure from congressional Republicans who may be more concerned than the president" with the appearance of having something to hide.

For Congress to press ahead, it would need a majority vote of the judiciary committee issuing the subpoena, plus the full House or Senate, the L.A. Times reports, and the matter then would be referred to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. But "the current situation seems murkier," the L.A. Times writes, because it isn't clear exactly who Congress would want to hold in contempt. And, as the AP notes, the U.S. attorney who would decide whether to prosecute is a Bush appointee.

* * *

A Surplus Surplus in China
China's trade surplus surged to another record high in June, "surprising even the most bullish observers and signaling the country's economic growth in the second quarter likely stayed as red-hot as in the first quarter," Dow Jones Newswires reports. Surging exports pushed the surplus to $26.91 billion, bringing it to $112.53 billion for the first half of 2007, the agency says. More than half of the surplus was with the U.S., Bloomberg reports, citing Goldman Sachs economist Liang Hong as saying the size of the surplus is "unprecedented for China or any other major economy in the world."

The increased surplus can partly be attributed to merchants seeking to fill orders before July 1, when value-added tax rebates on a swathe of products were either reduced or scrapped, Reuters reports. Still, Reuters says the latest figures support a longer-term trend that could lead to increased pressure, particularly from Washington, by critics who say Beijing keeps its currency undervalued, giving its exporters an unfair advantage in global markets. And the liquidity caused by trade inflows will continue to counter Beijing's efforts to tighten policy and slow economic growth to a more sustainable pace, Dow Jones notes. As trade accounts for more than half of China's gross domestic product, several economists told Dow Jones they will reevaluate their forecasts for second-quarter GDP growth in light of today's figures.

down at the bottom there is a link

RELATED ARTICLES AND BLOGS
Related Content may require a subscription | Subscribe Now -- Get 2 Weeks FREE
Related Articles from the Online Journal
• Bush Invokes Executive Privilege
• A Matter of (White House) Privilege
• White House Refuses to Answer Subpoenas in Prosecutors' Case
Blog Posts About This Topic
• The PM Line time-blog.com
• Bush to Congress: Bite me. canadiancynic.blogspot.com

Note that last entry ;-)

Dave said...

I have the answer:

When you get the blank page with the WSJ header, click on the header.

Scroll down to "related items" then click "more related items".

A "Sphere" box will come up. Over on the right is a link to Canadian Cynic.
Bush to Congress: Bite Me.

It's a circuitous route, but there it is.