January 18, 2010 – Capitol Hill Blue

FBI broke law to obtain phone records

January 18, 2010

The FBI violated the law in collecting thousands of U.S. telephone records during the Bush administration, The Washington Post reported Monday.

Citing internal memos and interviews, the Post said the FBI invoked nonexistent terrorism emergencies or persuaded phone companies to provide information as it illegally gathered more than 2,000 records between 2002 and 2006.

The bureau said in 2007 that it had improperly obtained some phone records, and the Justice Department inspector general is expected to release a report this month detailing the extent of the problem.

Onslaught

January 18, 2010

What price to pay for the clear and honest battlefield ?

This I am sad to say, as you know, will be the deciding battle for our republic.

Can we maintain it with both form and purpose?

Obama honors memory of Martin Luther King

January 18, 2010

President Barack Obama served plates of steaming hot lunches to the needy Monday, one of several ways the nation’s first black president paid tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. on the federal holiday honoring the slain civil rights leader.

Obama held a discussion at the White House with black elders and their grandchildren about the push for racial equality that King led until he was assassinated in 1968. In the evening, the president spoke at the Kennedy Center during a musical celebration of King’s legacy, urging the nation to recommit itself to fulfilling King’s dream.

Politics: SNAFU, TACFU and FUBAR

January 18, 2010

When Republicans tried their hardest to use Bill Clinton’s inability to keep his pants zipped as a way to oust him from office, Democrats raised

More Marines, U.N. peacekeepers headed to Haiti

January 18, 2010

Thousands of U.S. Marines were expected off the shore of this crumbled capital city Monday to help relief organizations get supplies to Haitian earthquake survivors who questioned foreigners, soldiers and God about aid yet to arrive.

The troop increase and an expected request to the U.N. for more peacekeepers were coming a day after sporadic violence and looting in Port-au-Prince underscored how an uptick in water and food deliveries still fell far short of overwhelming demand.

“We don’t need military aid. What we need is food and shelter,” one young man yelled at U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during his visit to the city Sunday. “We are dying,” a woman told him, explaining she and her five children didn’t have any food.

Voter turnout key to Massachusetts Senate race

January 18, 2010

Democrats and Republicans ramped up election eve get-out-the-vote efforts in their close battle for a Massachusetts Senate seat that could decide the fate of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul and the rest of his agenda at the opening of the 2010 midterm campaign season.

Obama needs newly embattled Martha Coakley to win Tuesday’s special election for the late Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat and deny Republicans the ability to block his initiatives with a 41st filibuster-sustaining GOP vote.

The president campaigned here Sunday with Coakley, who has seen the double-digit lead she had two weeks ago evaporate under a strong challenge by Republican state Sen. Scott Brown.

Republicans hope voter anger will win big in Mass.

January 18, 2010

Republican Scott Brown is surfing a wave of voter frustration with President Barack Obama that has helped propel the once low-profile Massachusetts state senator from long shot to contender in the race to fill the Senate seat left vacant by Edward Kennedy’s death.

Brown’s meteoric rise caught nearly everyone off-guard, particularly Democratic Party leaders who assumed their candidate, state Attorney General Martha Coakley, would have a cakewalk to the U.S. Capitol after winning a four-way primary in November.

They hadn’t counted on voters like Luis Rodriguez.

Dems may pull fast one on health care if Coakley loses

January 18, 2010

A panicky White House and Democratic allies scrambled Sunday for a plan to salvage their hard-fought health care package in case a Republican wins Tuesday’s Senate race in Massachusetts, which would enable the GOP to block further Senate action.

The likeliest scenario would require persuading House Democrats to accept a bill the Senate passed last month, despite their objections to several parts.

Aides consulted Sunday amid fears that Republican Scott Brown will defeat Democrat Martha Coakley in the special election to fill the late Edward M. Kennedy’s seat. A Brown win would give the GOP 41 Senate votes, enough to filibuster and block final passage of the House-Senate compromise on health care now being crafted.

Poll: Obama hasn’t done much on racial front

January 18, 2010

Fewer Americans believe the presidency of Barack Obama, the first African American elected to the White House, has helped advance race relations compared with a year ago, a Washington Post-ABC News poll suggests.

The poll, published on the U.S. holiday commemorating civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., found 41 percent now say Obama’s presidency has helped race relations, compared with 58 percent on the eve of Obama’s inauguration a year ago who said his presidency would help race relations.

The decline was the sharpest among African Americans, with 51 percent now saying Obama has helped advance race relations, compared with 75 percent who, last January, said they expected Obama’s presidency to help.