Rove counseled colleagues on the importance of discrediting Joe Wilson. The Washington Post reports, “Rove talked with White House colleagues about the political importance of defending the prewar intelligence and countering Plame’s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.” Fitzgerald is expected to decide whether or not to indict Rove for making false statements as soon as this month.
President Bush said yesterday that he would like to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, but is waiting for a US Supreme Court ruling on whether the prisoners might face military tribunals. American Progress has a plan to create a special tribunal for international criminal suspects.
Career employees at the Department of Agriculture (USDA) were stunned last week to receive White House talking points on Iraq. The instructions asked the employees to include lines like “President Bush has a clear strategy for victory in Iraq” in every speech they give for the department. See the USDA’s talking points on Iraq here.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that any consideration of a nuclear attack against Iran would be “absolutely absurd,” echoing comments made by his former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw. But like Straw, Blair did not discount the idea that there is serious planning underway for a military strike.
Sudan allowed the U.N.’s top humanitarian official Jan Egeland to visit Darfur yesterday Sunday, “the first tangible result of a peace agreement reached Friday with the largest Darfur rebel group.” “I do fundamentally believe we have the best chance since early 2004 to see at least the beginning of the end of this hemorrhage of human life that is Darfur today,” Egeland said.
“Near poor” Americans feeling the pinch: “[I]n recent years, with the soaring costs of housing and medical care and a decline in low-end wages and benefits, tens of millions are living on even shakier ground than before, according to studies of what some scholars call the ‘near poor.’”
Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) and Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) “plan to extend [tax] breaks that mostly benefit the wealthy and Wall Street at the expense of reductions for middle-income households.”
According to a new Harvard study, more than half of all young people who sign virginity pledges break them within one year. The pledges have been touted by the religious right as “a major step toward reducing teen pregnancy and raising moral values.”
“Researchers organizing a federal panel on sexually transmitted diseases say the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention allowed” House subcommittee on drug policy chairman Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) to place two abstinence-only proponents on the panel, bypassing the scientific approval process.
And finally, in an informal poll to be aired on Dateline tonight, ABC reporters found that many members of Congress, including Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), could not sing the entire national anthem. One spokesperson spotted the film crew and sent out a warning to others: “Heads up. We have been informed that there is a news organization with a camera crew outside (between the Capitol and Longworth) asking members to recite or sing the national anthem.”
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