An organization that monitors religious groups has asked the Internal Revenue Service to investigate whether the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family broke the law by trying to sway presidential election voters.
Congressional Democrats hit President Bush on Wednesday for his Iraq policies and planned Social Security overhaul, hoping a vigorous response to his State of the Union speech will fuel a turnabout from their election setbacks last fall.
The devil was in the missing details Wednesday night when President Bush showcased his Social Security plan and claimed advances on jobs and against terrorism that don’t tell the full story.
The State of the Union speech, with its standing ovations and boisterous back-to-school spirit, is one of the capital’s great annual rituals. And for one night it is a happy time. The hard realities will come soon enough.
Federal agencies are using secrecy rules developed after the 9/11 attacks to hide embarrassing or controversial reports and data that the federal government once routinely made public.
Michael Chertoff, President Bush’s nominee to head the Department of Homeland Security, denied Wednesday that he gave U.S. intelligence agencies the green light to torture terrorism suspects or that he sanctioned the mistreatment of hundreds of Muslim Arabs detained in the post-9/11 immigration crackdown.
President Bush urged lawmakers to “move ahead with courage and honesty” on the dicey issue of Social Security during his State of the Union address Wednesday night, asserting that dramatic change is necessary to steer the government-run retirement system away from bankruptcy.
MoveOn.org launched a false TV ad in the districts of several House members, claiming through images and words that President Bush plans to cut Social Security benefits nearly in half. Showing white-haired workers lifting boxes, mopping floors, shoveling and laundering, the ad says “it won’t be long before America introduces the working retirement.”
President Bush and Vice President Cheney have told
audiences that Social Security faces an $11 trillion shortfall if nothing
is done to fix the current system. But they fail to mention that this is
over the course of the “infinite future.” Over the next 75 years — still
practically a lifetime — the shortfall is projected to be $3.7 trillion.