Middle East update: Hezbollah fired the largest number of rockets – about 200 — in a single day at Israel. For the first time in nearly a week, Israel struck Beirut and resumed those attacks today. The Lebanese Prime Minister said that more than 900 people, mostly civilians, have been killed and 3,000 wounded since the violence began. 56 Israelis have died — 37 soldiers as well as 19 civilians — due to Hezbollah rocket attacks.
An LAT imes/Bloomberg poll found discontent with President Bush’s leadership on a variety of key fronts, “including the war in Iraq, with 60% disapproval, and the economy, with 59% disapproval.”
“Growing seawater acidity threatens to wipe out coral, fish and other crucial species worldwide.” That finding is the last in a five-part LA Times series entitled “Altered Oceans,” detailing a variety of dangers facing the open seas.
“The military’s top uniformed lawyers…criticized key provisions of a proposed new U.S. plan for special military courts, affirming that they did not see eye to eye with the senior Bush administration political appointees who developed the plan and presented it to them last week.”
Candidates at a forum held in Colorado recently by James Dobson’s Focus on the Family talked about opening Iraq to the word of Jesus. Bentley Rayburn, a retired Air Force major general, said establishing a democracy in Iraq would send a message. “That will open up hope within these countries for the gospel of Jesus Christ to change hearts,” he said.
In a letter this week, Reps. Howard Berman (D-CA) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) accused a top State Department official of providing “highly misleading if not intentionally deceptive” testimony on the proposed US-India nuclear deal. The lawmakers charged that the “State Department intentionally kept Congress in the dark about two Indian firms that sold missile parts to Iran.”
10 days: the length of President Bush’s vacation, the “shortest summer break of his presidency.” “Last summer, he was not seen as being on top of the job,” says Merle Black, a political scientist at Emory University. “He doesn’t want to be seen taking a whole month off right now. It doesn’t look good.”
“Amid this country’s strong economic expansion, many Americans simply aren’t feeling the benefits,” Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said recently. “Their increases in wages are being eaten up by high energy prices and rising healthcare costs, among others.” His comments are “a sign that the income inequality may rise higher on the US policy agenda in the years ahead.”
And finally: the Senate is grappling with an urgent matter: the senators-only elevators at the Capitol are being overrun by the unelected. “[S]enators sometimes share their moving sanctums with staff members, lobbyists and T-shirt-clad tourists who apparently missed (or ignored or cannot read) the senators-only signs.” “No, no, no, c’mon, c’mon,” Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) complained recently, after 10 or so reporters trailed Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) onto a senators-only elevator. Santorum complained that “some of the rest of us” need to get on board, too.
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section.
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