Despite strong opposition from conservative Republicans, the just-passed House version of next year’s intelligence spending bill includes at least $100 million worth of pork and a mandate that the intelligence community produce reports on global Read Full Article
Rudy Giuliani’s record as a pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage New York City mayor is well known, but his willingness to shelter illegal aliens from federal immigration laws in the Big Apple should also give conservatives pause.
Sen. Tom Coburn (R.-Okla.) is set to introduce three commonsense amendments to the Water Resources Development Act to prioritize federal spending.
A statement from his office said, "By taking up this bill before emergency funding has been provided to U.S. troops on the frontlines, Congress has failed to take care of national security needs before addressing its own parochial interests."
According to information from his website, his first amendment to WRDC will provide emergency funding for U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan without unnecessary pork barrel spending and without mandating surrender or retreat.
His second amendment will require that the needs of all Louisiana residents displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are met before spending money to design or construct a visitors center near Morgan City, Louisiana.
This third amendment to the bill will require that the residents of Sacramento be protected from the threat of floods before federal funds are spent to add sand to beaches in San Diego.
If you have a minute, you should call or email your senators to ask them to support Coburn's commonsense proposals.
All the way from Iraq two active duty military officers, backed by thousands of fellow soldiers, delivered a well-needed message to Congress: support their mission and stop calling for retreat.
To do this, Lt. Jason Nichols and Staff Sergeant Dav Read Full Article
Over the weekend, the second-highest ranking member of al Qaeda released a video that called Democrat-led initiatives to end the war in Iraq symbols of American defeat in Iraq.
In a 67-minute interview released on May 5, known terrorist Shaykh Ay Read Full Article
Today, Detroit City Council members will consider a proposal to make the Motor City a “sanctuary city” with a “don’t ask, don’t tell” mandate to prohibit police officers from asking about immigration status without c Read Full Article
Now that George Tenet has published a whole book that showcases his faults in managing national intelligence as Director of the CIA, I wonder when former President Bill Clinton will start taking some heat for appointing him to the post.
Tenet, who is the second longest serving DCI, served the agency from 1997-2004.
From what Tenet wrote on page 9 on Center of the Storm, it’s clear his appointment wasn’t as vetted as well as should have been:
Here’s what he said:
“Thinking back now, I find it odd now that there was no job interview. They knew me and what I stood for, of course, but no one asked me what I would do with the intelligence community should I get the job, what changes I might make, or how I intended to repair morale at a place that had experienced four DCI’s in the past five years—not to mention two others whose nominations had been withdrawn.”
I was happy to see that the Washington Post is giving some attention to the harrassment that female bloggers recieve online through degrading insults and in my experience at Ball State University, some vulgar photoshopping of my student identification photo.
Of course, this isn't to say because I'm a female I can be undeserving of criticism for my writing. But, when pornographic photoshopped images started appearing online of myself on a local college website because of my conservative writing I was outraged---especially when I found out a graduate student on campus, who had been teaching classes, was responsible.
I printed off hundreds of pages of this filth and took it to my university's student life center. "Sorry" they said. I told them a person drawing a university salary was responsible. "You can't prove he did this on campus, on a university computer though" they said.
Although the university wasn't willing to help me, the local police were. When I went to them, they took my concerns seriously and took action.
Now, when I have the chance to talk with young conservative ladies, like my meetings with Clare Boothe Luce, I caution female activists about the treatment they might recieve for speaking out on campups. This isn't to intimidate them, but to warn them and give them advice on how to stand these sort of attacks down.
I chose to write about it. Instead of letting them intimidate me, I turned up the heat. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin has taken a similar course of action.
For this piece, the Post talked to Malkin, whose has recieved enough nasty, personal attacks of this sort to fill an entire book, titled "Unhinged."
She told the Post, "'First, where have y'all been? For several years, the unhinged Internet underworld has been documented here,' she wrote, reposting a comment on her site that called for the torture, rape, murder' of her family."
She encouraged ladies "above all: "Keep blogging. Don't cut and run."
In a profile piece today in the WaPo, Hillary Clinton's key polling strategist claims the New York senator could win the 2008 presidential election by appealing to women, Latinos and low-income voters.
Mark J. Penn, Hillary's most trusted poll reader, has been hawking a presentation informally called the "Penn Power Point" to donors that he says demonstrates how Hillary will win the presidency.
"When you look at this thing nationally -- how is she going to win -- I think it's really important to look at what were the two groups that defected from the Democrats in 2004 to give it to Bush," Penn told the Post. "And those were women and Latino voters. And almost all the change in that election from 2000 was among those two groups, and those are her two strongest groups. And I think that's some of the reason you see her doing so well in places like Ohio and Florida -- because I think those are both states that she could take."
Penn also said that his data confirms that Hillary performs better than other Democrats among low-income voters, "especially members of a family of four making less than $75,000 a year."
The New York Times published an article yesterday about a couple who vowed only to consume products that were made within 100 miles of their home.
The couple wrote book about their culinary experiment entitled "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle."
I will neither be purchasing the book or replicating their experiment based on this line I took from the piece:
The authors held so strictly to their plan that when they eventually found locally grown wheat they took it even though it was filled with mouse droppings. Mr. MacKinnon painstakingly separated the droppings from the wheat with the edge of a credit card.
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) has a nasty habit of name-calling, which reared its ugly head again when the Nevada senator tried to deflect charges from the White House about his position on the war.
While trying to deflect charges from the Vice President Dick Cheney about his inconsistent position on the war, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with someone who has a 9% approval ratings.”
According to a recent Harris Interactive survey, published by WSJ online today, Reid would be wise not to use polls to dictate whom one should listen to.
In this poll, Cheney has more positive ratings than Reid.
Of the 1,001 American adults were polled online between April 20-23 only 22% believed Reid was "doing excellent or pretty good." 25% believed Cheney was performing "excellent or pretty good."
Vice President Dick Cheney singled out comments made by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) in a recent foreign policy speech as “uninformed and misleading” increasing tensions on Capitol Hill over President Bush’s expec Read Full Article
This morning I was able to talk to former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R.-Tex.), now chairman of FreedomWorks, about the Democrats’ expected attempt to override the veto that President Bush has promised Congress on Iraq spending bill.
Under Armey’s leadership, Congress successfully overrode two of President Bill Clinton’s vetoes.
I asked him what advice he had for Republicans now in managing the Democrats plans to try to override this veto. I’ll have more in a full story on this tomorrow. Read the transcript below:
I was wondering if you had any advice to give Republicans on how to handle the Democrats veto override attempt-
FORMER MAJORITY LEADER DICK ARMEY: The President has already gotten a letter with enough Republican signatures that say the President’s veto will be sustained. The President has got two points to make on this. One, that he’s not going to tolerate the kind of free-spending earmarks and extraneous things attached to the supplemental. And, two that he is not going to accept Democrats dictating the terms of how he’ll conduct the war. So, I’m sure he’ll make the veto and I’m sure it will be sustainable.
ABC: Do you expect that his veto will be helpful to Republicans or that the Democrats will be able to use it to their advantage?
ARMEY: I think the Democrats are strategically very wrong on insisting on taking ownership of the war. I don’t understand what they are thinking about this. The only thing I can think is that they are being so hard driven by their extreme left wing base that they can’t help themselves, but I think they are making a big mistake.
ABC: Senator Reid said in a speech yesterday that his base expected a lot of dramatic action on Iraq in January, but this is still the President’s war. Do you expect them to do anything to take ownership of the outcome in Iraq?
ARMEY: Harry Reid? Basically, it’s like the Democrats want to take ownership of it and he’s disavowing that and I think he’s trying to tell the base “Lay off, you guys are running us into a blind alley. You guys are going to get us in trouble.” I’d put that down as a plea. I think he understands where it is going and probably sees it more clearly than Nancy Pelosi does. He’s a little less of the base than Nancy is. She’s from a different part of the world and she has a different perspective. I’m sure his Democrats in Nevada, I’m sure are a little different than her Democrats in San Francisco.
ABC: No doubt.
ARMEY: So, he’s trying to get them to ease up a little bit. And, also I think it’s very pointed of him to say this is still the President’s war. He understands the danger of it. That they are in.
ABC: Do you think it’s wise for the Democrats to use more legislative time for the veto override, which they know they can’t get?
ARMEY: No, but I look forward to them doing it.
ABC: One last question. Sen. Carl Levin said on a conference call that he knew they didn’t have the votes for an override, but thought it would be helpful in helping Democrats gain momentum. That’s how he put it. And, maybe getting some Republicans to join them. Do you think that will be successful?
ARMEY: No, I don’t. My only view there is that there are handful of Republicans, mostly from the Northeast that want to disassociate from this war and they will disassociate from whomever they perceive as owning the war. If Carl Levin and his party own the war, they will be very happy to disassociate from them.
Go to google. Search for "text of Iraq supplemental" without the quotations marks. Is that a legit headline for a THOMAS database?
The first link is titled, "Iraq supplemental continue to fund a hopeless situation" and will direct you to THOMAS. Anyone want to email Google and ask them to clean it up?
The harshest criticism for U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in an April 19 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee over the firings of eight U.S. Attorneys didn’t come from Democrats on the committee, but rather Republicans frustrated wi Read Full Article
During Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee Sen. Tom Coburn (R.-Okla.) called for the AG's resignation and slammed his performance.
Coburn asked Gonzales, "Why should you not be judged by the same standards that you judged these U.S. Attorneys?"
Gonzales told Coburn that "We all make mistakes," but Coburn said that wasn't good enough."
"I believe there are consequences" Coburn said. "And I believe this has been handled in a very incompetent manner."
He characterized Gonzales performance as "atrocious."
"I believe you ought to suffer the consequences that these others have suffered," Coburn said. "And I believe the best way to put this behind us is with your resignation."
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ mishandling of the 18-minute March 13 press conference he held at the Department of Justice to discuss his role in the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys was the subject of harsh criticism from Republicans at his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning.
In his opening statement Sen. Jeff Sessions (R.-Ala.), who served as a U.S. Attorney for twelve years told Gonzales that he had “incorrectly minimized your involvement in this matter” in the conference.
“It has hurt the Department and raised questions I wish had not been raised,” Sessions said.
Gonzales admitted that he “should have been more precise when discussing this matter.” He said the resignations were “flawed” but “nothing improper occurred.”
“There is nothing improper in making a change for poor management, policy difference, or questionable judgment, or simply to have another qualified individual serve,” he explained.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R.-Pa.) didn’t buy it. In his first question and answer session Specter prodded, “I know you’re familiar with the record because you’ve been preparing for this hearing.” This led to a testy exchange.
Gonzales smiled and replied, “I prepare for every hearing, senator.”
“Did you prepare for your press conferences?” Specter retorted. “I’m asking you if you were prepared.”
“Were you prepared when you said you weren’t involved in any deliberations?” Specter reiterated.
Gonzales said, “I’ve already conceded I misspoke at the press conference.”
John Edward's campaign released a statement that said:
"I could not disagree more strongly with today's Supreme Court decision. The ban upheld by the Court is an ill-considered and sweeping prohibition that does not even take account for serious threats to the health of individual women. This hard right turn is a stark reminder of why Democrats cannot afford to lose the 2008 election. Too much is at stake -- starting with, as the Court made all too clear today, a woman's right to choose."
For a list of other pols reactions to the Supreme Court ruling that upheld the ban on partial birth abortion, check out USA Today's site here.
Hillary wants everyone to know she is supported by the gay community. Her campaign gave a list of gay professional support to the Washington Blade to prove she's backed by a strong contigent gay-rights activists.
Names, in alphabetical order, include:
• Christopher Barley, New York City general internist
• Mary Breslauer, principal at Communications Solutions, co-host of HRC’s XM radio show “The Agenda”
• Ilene Chaiken, creator and executive producer of television series “The L Word”
• Bruce Cohen, film and television producer
• Tom Duane, New York state senator
• Steve Elmendorf, president of Elmendorf Strategies
• Ethan Geto, partner at Geto & de Milly
• Emily Giske, Democratic National Committee member
• Deborah Glick, New York state Assembly member
• Chad Griffin, political consultant
• Rebecca Haag, executive director of AIDS Action
• Fred Hochberg, dean at Milano The New School for Management and Urban Policy
• Roberta Kaplan, attorney at Paul Weiss
• Billy Jean King, sports legend and social activist
• Neel Lattimore, director of strategic communications at Children’s Defense Fund
• Rachel Lavine, New York state committee member
• Danny O’Donnell, New York state Assembly member
• Christine Quinn, speaker of the New York City Council
• Hilary Rosen, founding partner at Berman Rosen Strategies, former head of RIAA
• Peter Rosenstein, president of PDR Associates and Washington-based gay rights activist
• Mirian Saez, Democratic National Committee member
• Jeff Soref, former chair of the Democratic National Committee LGBT caucus
• Jill Stauffer, board of directors at HRC
• Sally Susman, executive vice president for global communications at Estee Lauder Companies
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R.) can’t break double-digits in the polls in his campaign for the 2008 Republican nomination for President, but has somehow set the pace for GOP fundraising. What gives?
Bill Clinton thinks former pop-songstress Britney Spears might be misunderstood.
After the stress of being labeled a "bad mommy" for transporting her child in the front seat of a car sans seatbelt or carseat, being captured by the media exiting vehicles sans underwear and then bashing a van with an umbrella sans any hair, the former President had some sympathetic words for Britney.
At a campaign stop for his wife Hillary Clinton he told listeners to lay off Britney. He said, "A lot of people have trouble when they're in their 20s and they're instantly famous, and they have all these pressures going on. She should be allowed to go through it by herself."
Flanked by two former Army retired generals Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) blasted President Bush for “clinging to a failed escalation strategy” in Iraq and “failing our troops and our country.”
