An EPA press release this week declared: “The Bush Administration has an unparalleled financial, international and domestic commitment to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.” Meanwhile, British climate scientists have released figures showing the United States “emitted more greenhouse gases in 2004 than at any time in history, confirming its status as the world’s biggest polluter.”
Rep. Chris Cannon (R-UT) has proposed an amendment to the Higher Education Act that would allow private Christian colleges to legally reject students merely because of their sexual orientation.
“Despite more than four years of legislation, executive orders and presidential directives,” a Government Accountability Office report finds that the Bush administration has “yet to comprehensively improve sharing of counterterrorism information.”
A new consumer report finds that in California, “corporate markups and profiteering are responsible for spring [gas] price spikes, not rising crude costs or the national switchover to higher-cost ethanol, as the oil industry claims.”
35%: President Bush’s approval rating, which “slipped for the third consecutive month and remains near the lowest mark of his presidency, according to a new Harris Interactive poll.”
Intel on the internets. “The new Open Source Center (OSC) at CIA headquarters recently stepped up data collection and analysis based on bloggers worldwide.” OSC Director Douglas Naquin: “A lot of blogs now have become very big on the Internet, and we’re getting a lot of rich information on blogs that are telling us a lot… people [are] putting information on there that doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
Though U.S.-funded power and sanitation plants sit unfinished or unutilized, there’s “one U.S. construction effort in Iraq that’s right on schedule“: the $592 million U.S. embassy, which will be the size of about 80 football fields.
In 2005, the median executive compensation package among the nation’s 100 largest companies soared 25% to $17.9 million, dwarfing the 3.1% average gain by typical U.S. workers.
“The brand-name drug industry is aggressively working to keep blockbuster drugs widely used by the elderly from being sold in cheaper generic versions when their patents expire.” The roadblocks could cost seniors and the Medicare system $23 billion in potential savings. Meanwhile, Pfizer beat forecasts and earned over $4 billion in profits last quarter.
Why immigration reform isn’t enough: “Acknowledging immigration’s impact on low-skilled workers is not a call to close U.S. borders. … Rather, it is recognition that, as with aspects of trade, we need to offset the harm that tends to concentrate on those who are already most vulnerable to economic change.”
And finally: 欢迎访问星巴克ä¸å›½ç½‘ç« (Or, if you prefer, “Welcome to Starbucks.”): “If I were not serving in this office, I would certainly prefer to go into one of the coffee shops run by Starbucks,” said Chinese President Hu Jintao yesterday during his visit in Seattle.
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section.
Previous in TP Politics
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.