firstamendmentcenter.org: news Voting against the bill were Republicans Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Orrin Hatch of Utah. Sens. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., and Tim Johnson, D-S.D., did not vote. The bill in question: S.1, the ethics and lobbying bill.
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NPR : White House Retreats on Divisive Issues He'll have to make a compelling case for them next week, when he delivers his State of the Union address Tuesday to the first Democratic Congress in more than a decade. Oh boy! I wonder if Adam Felber will have a new drinking game for this year's SOTU address?? [tags]NPR, Adam Felber, SOTU, Drinking Game[/tags]
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BBC NEWS | Americas | Republican Ney sentenced to jail Before the Abramoff scandal erupted, Ney was perhaps best known internationally for his role in renaming French fries "freedom fries" in the Congressional cafeteria due to US anger at Pariss refusal to support the invasion of Iraq. Ney's going to prison, the first Congresscritter convicted in connection with the Abramoff scandal. No word on what kind of prison job he'll take once inside Club Fed, but I'm hoping he'll be working the prison grill line.
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Barbara Boxer should apologize for nothing | TPMCafe How did I find out that Sen. Barbara Boxer is this week's right-wingnut pundit punching bag over her challenge to Condoleeza Rice's Iraq testimony? Because the scrolling underline on FOXNews in the health club yesterday was "BOXER ATTACKS RICE." As TPM notes, Boxer was attempting to imply that neither she nor Secretary Rice had "skin in the game" in the Iraq war, but the Right bloviation machine is trumpeting it as an attack on a noble, accomplished, hard-working "single childless woman." Make no mistake, the same people would be attacking her if…
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NPR : Judges Tyranny of Tolerance Book Spurs Complaints A veteran St. Louis judge is causing a political stir by publishing a liberal-bashing book. The first chapter of Circuit Judge Robert H. Dierker, Jr.s book, The Tyranny of Tolerance: A Sitting Judge Breaks the Code of Silence to Expose the Liberal Judicial Assault, has been widely read in legal circles, after being distributed by email. When a judge reads a selection from his own book on the air and rants about "the liberal agenda" and throws around words like "femi-fascist," you know it's half-past beer o'clock. Judge Dierker complains that…
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White House Postponing Loss of Iraq, Biden Says – washingtonpost.com Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. D-Del., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will "be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof," in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam. "I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost," Biden said. "They…
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NPR : Ellison to Use Thomas Jeffersons Quran in Ceremony Newly elected Rep. Keith Ellison announced last month that he planned to take the oath of office with his hand on the Quran. The decision by the Minnesota Democrat, the first Muslim elected to Congress, drew criticism. But now Ellison says he plans to use a copy of the Quran once owned by Thomas Jefferson. Michele Norris talks with Mark Dimunation, chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division of the Library of Congress, who helped Ellison locate Jeffersons Quran. You know what? This is all right. All right.…
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Stroger loses private elevator | Chicago Tribune Politics as usual at the Cook County board; "Baby President" Todd (son of the previous long-term incumbent) lost his "private" elevator, because everybody was pointing and laughing too much.
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NPR : Notes on the Real Gerald Ford Just now on MSNBC's coverage of President Ford's funeral, an old Washington pol was trotting out the "Nixon and Ford had a deeper friendship than previously thought" meme. According to DeFranco on NPR this morning, it's utter bunk. Nixon used to say to anyone in hearing that Ford was stupid, while Ford was much, much smarter than anyone gave him credit for. Apparenlty, he's the only President who was able to conduct his own budget briefing, a complicated affair usually left to experts. Bet Bush leaves it to people with higher math skills.…
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Ford attacks Bush over Iraq invasion in message from beyond the grave | Iraq | Guardian Unlimited President George Bush, accustomed to criticism from Republicans of his fathers generation, suffered a rebuke from beyond the grave from the late president Gerald Ford yesterday in published comments calling the war on Iraq a mistake. In an interview with the Washington Posts Bob Woodward, granted on condition that it be published only after Mr Fords death, the late president said he strongly disagreed with Mr Bushs stated justification for the war – that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. He also…