“I double-checked with my sources regarding who attended Wilkes’s parties, and all of them repeated what they had said before: over the years, at least six former and current members of Congress were said to have been at events sponsored by Wilkes, and their names have apparently been provided to investigators in the Cunningham case.”
ThinkFast: May 9, 2006
The U.S. Army’s new interrogation manual will ban waterboarding, “the controversial practice of submerging a prisoner’s head in water in an effort to make him talk.” Waterboarding was one of the interrogation techniques reportedly sanctioned by an Aug. 2002 Justice Department memo.
With the May 15 deadline to enroll in the new Medicare prescription drug program fast approaching, USA Today reports the program “is being used least by those who could benefit most: poor, often minority Medicare beneficiaries.” Only 24 percent of such beneficiaries have been approved or have enrolled.
Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the U.S. commander in charge of day-to-day military operations in Iraq, believes American troops in Iraq have been their “own worst enemy,” unintentionally creating new insurgents by treating the Iraqi people in a heavy-handed or insensitive manner.
The Senate adopts Sen. Lamar Alexander’s (R-TN) resolution, agreeing that “The Star-Spangled Banner” and other “statements of national unity” should be sung in English. The resolution has no binding effect.
Last March, President Bush signed a bill to raise the national debt ceiling to a record $9 trillion. Apparently, that wasn’t enough. “A $2.7 trillion budget plan pending before the House would raise the federal debt ceiling to nearly $10 trillion,” the fifth such increase under Bush. Read more
