Day: December 12, 2006

President Bush on Tuesday put off until early next month announcing a new approach to the Iraq war, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Bush should take whatever time necessary to decide his next steps.

The White House initially indicated that Bush would deliver the speech before Christmas.

While administration officials said Bush had largely decided on where he wants to go in terms of a new policy, he gave no public hint of his plan at a meeting with the country’s Sunni vice president.

Democrats taking control of Congress next month say they will try to ban for the remainder of fiscal 2007 the special-interest "pork" projects that got Republicans in so much trouble with voters in the November elections.

"We will place a moratorium on all earmarks until a reformed process is put in place," the incoming Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House appropriations panels, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia and Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin, said late on Monday.

The Bush administration condemned Iran on Tuesday for convening a conference of people who deny the Holocaust happened, calling the move "an affront to the entire civilized world."

The two-day event in Tehran was initiated by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The hard-line president has described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be wiped off the map.

President Bush, about to wrap up an intense effort to arrive at a new course for Iraq, now is likely to lay out his plan to the nation early next year instead of before Christmas, a senior White House official said Tuesday.

During his decade as the No. 2 Democrat in the U.S. House, David Bonior earned a reputation as a pit bull — the Democrat most likely to take on Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Bonior, 61, will probably soon take on another difficult task: leading former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards to the Democratic nomination for president.

Americans’ pessimism about events in Iraq appears to be deepening, a new poll found, despite preparations by US President George W. Bush to announce a major shift in strategy there.

The poll by USA Today and the Gallup polling organization found that fewer than one American in five has a "great deal" of trust in Bush to do the "right thing" in Iraq, as the US leader completes a round of consultations of government and independent experts on how to proceed.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday she won’t make a decision about running for president until after the first of the year.

During a visit to an aircraft maintenance facility at the former Griffiss Air Base, Clinton confirmed she is talking to people in New York and across the country about a possible run for president in 2008. It was the first time Clinton publicly confirmed what her aides and fellow Democrats have been saying about a possible presidential run.

Gridlock was good to Congress under the Republicans. With Democrat Bill Clinton in the White House, it produced such landmarks as the welfare reform act of 1996 and a string of budget surpluses.

But with a Republican president in the White House discipline began breaking down. The surpluses vanished, spending soared, traditional courtesies to the minority party were ignored and a series of ethics scandals culminated in the resignation of four Republican House members this year.

Just days after fellow Republicans in the Senate blasted him for lackluster leadership that they say helped cost the party control of that legislative body, outgoing Majority Leader Bill Frist says his decision to not seek the Presidency came because voters didn’t know him well enough.

Writes Richard Powelson of Scripps Howard News Service:

A torrent of words from presidential candidates is to be expected, but the latest crowd of White House wannabes has taken the old academic stricture "publish or perish" to heart.

At least eight of the prospective 2008 candidates have books scheduled for publication or that have recently been published.

Some of the books are even selling well.