Iraq’s Prime Minister had ordered the country’s health ministry to “stop providing mortality figures to the United Nations, jeopardizing a key source of information on the number of civilian war dead in Iraq.”
President Bush recess-appointed former coal industry executive Richard Stickler to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration. The Senate had twice refused to confirm him “because of his troubling mine safety record — the mines he managed from 1989 to 1996 incurred injury rates double the national average.”
“Moving quickly to implement” the new Military Commissions Act, the Bush administration “has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.”
In 1995, just three days into her tenure as Secretary of the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department, Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) removed a routine working file alleging that her husband had engaged in inappropriate contact with a minor. The file, uncovered only recently, reports that Wilson’s husband touched a then-16 year old boy “in a manner that was not welcome.” Wilson sat on the Congressional Page Board and currently serves on the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children’s caucus.
The Government Accountability Office yesterday released a report stating that government-funded abstinence education materials must also contain “medically accurate information on condom effectiveness.” In the past, the Bush administration has insisted that its materials did not need to discuss condoms.
The Bush administration took “another step yesterday toward building a new stockpile of up to 2,200 deployed nuclear weapons that would last well into the 21st century.” The administration announced it will begin the process of repairing and replacing nuclear production facilities as part of an attempt to replace the aging Cold War stockpile of nuclear warheads with a smaller, more reliable arsenal.
In the middle of “National Character Counts Week,” President Bush yesterday went to Pennsylvania to campaign for Rep. Don Sherwood (R-PA), who is being sued for repeatedly beating a woman with whom he had an affair. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank notes that “Bush was careful to avoid the usual lines about family and conservative values.”
“The number of ‘dead zones’ in the world’s oceans may have increased by a third in just two years, threatening fish stocks and the people who depend on them,” the U.N. says. The number has previously doubled every decade since the 1960s.
And finally: California Treasurer and gubernatorial candidate Phil Angelides (D) had an unorthodox campaign appearance on the Adam Corolla radio show. Prior to his segment, a “72-year-old woman named Sarah made out with a 20-year-old man” trying to get event tickets. Angelides’ daughter, who was with him, “received a hearty leering” while someone “suggested smearing mayonnaise on her.” Angelides also “made a pitch for some Playboy Mansion tickets for a staff member.”
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