The Senate meted out a severe blow to President George W. Bush Thursday, blocking a landmark immigration reform seen as one of his last, best hopes for a legacy-boosting second term victory.
In a stunning defeat for the bid to grant a path to citizenship for 12 million illegal immigrants, Senators voted 53 to 46 against keeping the bill alive, likely ending congressional action on the divisive issue before 2009.
President Bush, in a constitutional showdown with Congress, claimed executive privilege Thursday and rejected demands for White House documents and testimony about the firing of U.S. attorneys.
His decision was denounced as “Nixonian stonewalling” by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Bush rejected subpoenas for documents from former presidential counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor. The White House made clear neither one would testify next month, as directed by the subpoenas.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday narrowly defeated a Democratic amendment to deny funds to operate Vice President Dick Cheney’s office next year in a feud over his handling of classified documents.
By a vote of 217-209, the House defeated legislation designed to rebuke Cheney for refusing, over objections by the National Archives, to comply with an executive order that set government-wide procedures for safeguarding classified national security information.
Ann Coulter is the Paris Hilton of politics, the blonde bimbo liberals love to hate but also one that TV loves to promote because putting her on the air drives up ratings and public debate.
Outrageous? Damn right she is. That’s her stock in trade, her modus operandi, her act. Like Hilton, she’s a self-promoting media machine that feeds on a public appetite for excess.
There have been many debates over whether or not Coulter actually believes the hate she spews. The same questions circle around other right-wing demagogues: Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Mike Savage, et. al.
Her fans claim Coulter is the right-wing’s sex symbol, a leggy blonde who favors short skirts and low-cut blouses but others wonder if her bile is fueled by anorexia. Her hard features remind us more of the skank we too often woke up next to after a hard night of drinking. A closer examination reveals she has been rode hard and put up wet a few times too many.
The Senate subpoenaed the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office Wednesday, demanding documents and elevating the confrontation with President Bush over the administration’s warrant-free eavesdropping on Americans.
Separately, the Senate Judiciary Committee also is summoning Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to discuss the program and an array of other matters that have cost a half-dozen top Justice Department officials their jobs, committee chairman Patrick Leahy announced.
Leahy, D-Vt., raised questions about previous testimony by one of Bush’s appeals court nominees and said he wouldn’t let such matters pass.
While the CIA is lauded for releasing 700 pages documenting some of its most egregious 1950-1970 abuses, critics say the US spy agency remains secretive about its current controversial activities, critics said.
“We don’t know everything that’s going on today. But it seems to me there’s already enough evidence to conclude that things are not so different today,” said David Barrett, political scientist at Villanova University, author of a 2005 book on the CIA and Congress in the 1940s and 1950s, speaking to the New York Times.
President Bush is sending his top aide on national security affairs to Capitol Hill on Thursday to confront what has become a tough crowd on the Iraq war.
A majority of senators believe troops should start coming home within the next few months. A new House investigation concluded this week that the Iraqis have little control over an ailing security force. And House Republicans are calling to revive the independent Iraq Study Group to give the nation options.
Fred Thompson, a likely Republican presidential candidate, on Tuesday defended his work as a Washington lobbyist, telling The Associated Press that lobbying is an important part of life because “government’s got their hands in everything.”
The actor and former U.S. senator from Tennessee added, “Nobody yet has pointed out any of my clients that didn’t deserve representation.”
Thompson, who likes to cast himself as a political outsider, earned more than $1 million lobbying the federal government for more than 20 years. He lobbied for a savings-and-loan deregulation bill that helped hasten the industry’s collapse and a failed nuclear energy project that cost taxpayers more than a billion dollars.
For the first time since taking control of Congress, gun-control Democrats are taking on the National Rifle Association. The NRA seems to be nipping the effort in the bud.
At issue is whether Congress should loosen restrictions on local law enforcement agencies’ ability to gain access to gun-purchasing data to trace the movement of illegal guns around the nation.
Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards on Wednesday encouraged his supporters to donate to his campaign in response to “hateful” comments from conservative author Ann Coulter.
Edwards made his first comments to The Associated Press in response to Coulter’s suggestion that she wished he would be “killed in a terrorist assassination plot.” His campaign cited her remarks in two e-mails and a telephone text message to supporters for donations, with the fundraising deadline on Saturday.