Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) promised to press forward with an ambitious agenda “that includes an increase of $2.10 an hour in the minimum wage.” Her agenda for the first “100 hours” of Congress is filled with items that, “though opposed by Bush, should attract near-universal approval from Democrats and could even win some Republican votes.” Read about the agenda here.
Defense Secretary nominee Robert Gates “apparently holds a view on the highly sensitive subject of relations with Iran that hasn’t been embraced by all his new colleagues in the Bush administration.” In a report entitled “Iran: Time for a New Approach,” he and former NSA Zbigniew Brzezinski co-chaired a task force that argued for opening a dialogue with Iran.
A day after Michigan approved an initiative to ban affirmative action, University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman pledged to “consider every legal option available” to continue to fight for diversity on campus. Opponents of the proposition also “filed a federal lawsuit challenging the measure as unconstitutional.”
Incoming Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joe Biden (D-DE), said yesterday that John Bolton’s troubled nomination as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations is “going nowhere.” He added, “I never saw a real enthusiasm (for Bolton’s nomination) on the Republican side to begin with. There’s none on our side.”
A federal judge ruled the Center for Reproductive Rights could “subpoena more than three years of Plan B-related communications between the White House’s domestic-policy office” and FDA officials. The documents could “determine whether the White House interfered with the FDA’s handling of a request by manufacturer Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc. to allow sales without prescriptions.”
Iraqi government corruption could amount to $4 billion a year, over 10 percent of the national income, according to the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. Much of that money “frequently goes out to fund criminal militias or insurgents.”
Iraq’s parliament yesterday voted to extend the country’s state of emergency for 30 more days, “a recognition that Iraqi security forces and their U.S. allies are still far from bringing violence in check.”
“After tumbling from the pinnacle of the American evangelical movement amid allegations he snorted meth and cavorted with a male prostitute,” former National Association of Evangelicals president Ted Haggard will undergo a “rehabilitation process that could last three to five years.” “There will be advice, confrontation and rebuke from ‘godly men’ appointed to oversee” Haggard’s spiritual “restoration.”
And finally: Rummie resigns, Onion-style. The satirical news site The Onion caught the tail end of Rumsfeld’s resignation speech yesterday: “Years ago, I decided to bog this great nation down in an extended, grueling foreign occupation, and I’m happy to say that’s exactly what I’ve done. … Each of my actions – from undersupplying troops with body armor to focusing on capturing Saddam Hussein while Osama bin Laden remained free – has led America inexorably toward our current state of extreme crisis. Well, anyway, goodbye!”
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, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.