Day: July 13, 2006

High-ranking Republicans including former White House officials can be questioned in a civil suit over jamming Democratic party phone lines in a key U.S. Senate race, a New Hampshire judge ruled on Thursday.

The U.S. Senate on Thursday voted to prohibit the confiscation of legally owned guns during an emergency like last year’s Hurricane Katrina, marking another victory for the gun lobby.

The Iraq war could cost U.S. taxpayers between $202 billion and $406 billion more over the next 10 years, depending on how quickly U.S. force levels can be reduced, congressional budget experts said on Thursday.

When humorist Will Rogers appeared at the passport office as he prepared for a trip to Russia he was told that he couldn’t receive one until he produced a birth certificate. Having come into the world before the turn of the last century in what was then Indian Territory, he said he didn’t quite understand and was told by the pinch-faced bureaucrat that it was a document proving his birth.

A telling battle is brewing in Congress — the haves, the have-nots and the wanna-haves are squaring off.

July 4 is the most explicitly patriotic of American holidays. This year just before the holiday, the California state office charged to counter terrorism was revealed to be collecting information about political and anti-war demonstrations that were nonetheless legal.

Congressional Republicans attacked Democrats on Thursday for an Internet video featuring flag-draped coffins of U.S. casualties in Iraq, saying it “crossed the line” by exploiting troops and politicizing the war.

The Justice Department on Thursday opposed further delays in the bribery investigation of Rep. William Jefferson, saying the agency should be allowed to review documents seized in a search of the congressman’s office.

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband sued Vice President Dick Cheney, top White House aide Karl Rove and others on Thursday for their role in disclosing her classified CIA employment.