Thank you
to all our readers who submitted questions for the candidates at the New Leadership on Health Care 2008 Presidential Forum. Keep checking back to Think Progress to see highlights of the event.
UPDATE: Check out Blog for our Future and MyDD, both of whom liveblogged the forum.
UPDATE II: Taylor Marsh and Swampland have more.
Former Gonzales aide agrees to testify.
Kyle Sampson, the former aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who resigned last week, has agreed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year. “His appearance will mark the first congressional testimony by a Justice Department aide since the release of thousands of documents that show the firings were orchestrated, in part, by the White House.” “He was right at the center of things,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY said. “He has said publicly that what others have said is not how it happened. … He contradicts DOJ.”
Bush to keep Gitmo open to 2009.
“The U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay will likely remain open for the rest of George W. Bush’s presidency, because it will take time to conduct the legal proceedings of the detainees there, the White House said on Friday.”
From today’s press briefing:
Q: So, realistically, are you saying that Guantanamo Bay will not be shut down before the end of his presidency?
SNOW: I doubt it, no. I don’t think it will.
Obey Hits Back Against Washington Post’s Smearing of House Iraq Bill
Obey Hits Back Against Washington Post’s Smearing of House Iraq Bill
This afternoon, the House passed the U.S. Troops Readiness, Veterans’ Health and Iraq Accountability Act. The bill expands funding for veterans health care, requires the Iraqi government to meet certain benchmarks of progress, and calls for the strategic redeployment of all U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2008.
This morning, the Washington Post editorial board, who in 2003 called the Iraq War “an operation essential to American security,” smeared the House plan as “an unconditional retreat.”
Rep. Dave Obey (D-WI) responded on the House floor. “Let me submit to you the problem we have today is not that we didn’t listen enough to people like the Washington Post,” Obey said. “It’s that we listened too much.” Obey concluded, “And I would say one thing, those of us who voted against the war in the first place wouldn’t have nearly as hard a time getting us out of the war if people like The Washington Post … hadn’t supported going into that stupid war in the first place.”
Watch it:
See more of the House floor debate at The Gavel. Glenn Greenwald has more on the Washington Post editorial page here, and Horse’s Mouth has more on Obey’s speech here.
Transcript: Read the rest of this entry »
Bush promises to veto House Iraq bill.
“I will veto it if it comes to my desk,” Bush said, adding that he thinks the legislation has “no chance of becoming law.”
UPDATE: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reacts to the bill’s passage: “The American people have lost faith in the president’s conduct of this war. … The American people see the reality of the war, the president does not.”
House approves redeployment.
With a 218-212 vote, the House passed the U.S. Troops Readiness, Veterans’ Health and Iraq Accountability Act, which calls for the redeployment of troops out of Iraq by 2008.
Gates admits U.S. military not ready for new conflict.
“We would not be able to achieve our goals on the timelines that we’ve set for ourselves in terms of being successful in that other conflict,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said. “It would take a little longer and we would not be as precise. We would not have as many precision weapons. … It would be more of a blunt-force effort.”
Griles to plead guilty.
J. Steven Griles, the “former No. 2 official in the Interior Department,” today “will admit lying to the Senate about his relationship with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who succeeded in gaining the official’s intervention at the agency for his Indian tribal clients.” “He is the 10th person — and the second high-level Bush administration official — to face criminal charges in the continuing Justice Department investigation into Abramoff’s lobbying activities.”
BREAKING: First Republican calls for Gonzales to resign.
Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) has become the first Republican member of Congress to call for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to resign.
UPDATE: AP:
“I think the president should replace him,” Sununu said in an interview with The Associated Press. …
“We need to have a strong, credible attorney general that has the confidence of Congress and the American people,” said Sununu, who faces a tough re-election campaign next year. “Alberto Gonzales can’t fill that role.”
“I think the attorney general should be fired,” Sununu said.
FACT CHECK: U.S. Troops Don’t Have A ‘Strong Aversion’ To Homosexual Conduct
FACT CHECK: U.S. Troops Don’t Have A ‘Strong Aversion’ To Homosexual Conduct
In an interview earlier this week, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Peter Pace called homosexuality “immoral” and said he supports the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy because the military “should not condone immoral acts.” Days later, Pace said, “I should have focused more on my support of the policy and less on my personal moral views.”
Today, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) condoned Pace’s comments in an op-ed for the USA Today:
Against the backdrop, liberals in the USA are making another attempt to force open homosexuals into America’s military population. In a media question-and-answer session, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated his personal view that homosexuality was immoral.
Gen. Pace’s principles reflect the strong aversion of our Marines and soldiers to homosexual conduct. These moral principles also reflect the position of the predominantly conservative families who send their young men and women to serve in the U.S. military.
But the views among servicemembers differ from Hunter’s — and Pace’s — personal feelings. Last December, a Zogby Interactive poll of servicemembers who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan found 73 percent of those polled were “comfortable with lesbians and gays.” A 2004 poll found that a majority of junior enlisted servicemembers believed gays and lesbians should be allowed to serve openly in the military, up from 16 percent in 1992.
UPDATE: In an op-ed for the Washington Post entitled, “Bigotry That Hurts Our Military,” former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) calls for the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He voted for the policy in 1993. “This policy has become a serious detriment to the readiness of America’s forces,” Simpson writes, “as they attempt to accomplish what is arguably the most challenging mission in our long and cherished history.”
Bush Slashes Economic Aid For Latin America, Belying ‘We Care’ Message
Bush Slashes Economic Aid For Latin America, Belying ‘We Care’ Message
During his trip to Latin America, one of President Bush’s goals is to “challenge a widespread perception in Latin America of U.S. neglect,” and he has been telling the region’s chronic poor, “We care about your plight.” (In his speech to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Bush used the phrase “social justice” five times.) “It’s an attempt to try to show a softer, gentler Bush,” Armand Peschard-Sverdrup of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said.
While in Brazil, Bush brought this message to a Sao Paulo, Brazil community center that houses poor children:
President Bush has brought an unaccustomed message for Latin Americans on his weeklong swing through the region: I feel your pain. And he is taking it to some unaccustomed places — hotbeds of poverty and disaffection that he generally has missed on earlier trips.
“There are a lot of hurting people in the world, a lot of hurting people in Brazil,” Mr. Bush said as he toured a ramshackle community center in São Paulo Friday, a facility that cares for 3,000 children a week from the city’s vast slums. “And the people in the United States care.”
But as the Latin America