The Iraq Study Group met with President Bush this morning to present its 79 recommendations, which include moving “most U.S. troops out of combat roles by early 2008.” Read excerpts of the ISG report HERE.
Incoming House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), who will set the schedule for the 110th Congress, has told members they “will have to work five days a week starting in January.” If the current Congress departs on Friday as planned, it will have been in session for just 241 days over two years, 13 days less than the “Do-Nothing Congress” of 1948.
The House yesterday “postponed a showdown vote on opening 8 million more acres in the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling” after supporters questioned whether they had enough votes.
FEMA “has recouped less than 1 percent of an estimated $1 billion in fraudulent or unjustified payments it distributed after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita,” a new report shows, bolstering criticism that the agency is “too stingy with people who have real needs, and…too willing to give taxpayer dollars to scam artists and cheats.”
Congress yesterday passed funds to preserve the notorious internment camps where Japanese-Americans were kept behind barbed wire during World War II. Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA), who was born in the Poston camp in Arizona in 1944, said “those who come after us will have a physical reminder of what they will never allow to happen again.”
The conflict in Darfur has spread to two neighboring countries and is now in ‘free fall’ with six million people facing the prospect of going without food or protection,” outgoing U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said.
Fifty-eight percent of Americans “say the situation for troops in Iraq is getting worse,” up from 45 percent in September, according to a new Harris poll. Seventy-one percent think President Bush is doing only a fair or poor job in Iraq.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), the incoming chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, “will ask Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and two Democratic state lawmakers” from California “to testify about why Congress should pass federal legislation modeled on California’s landmark law to combat global warming.”
And finally: Doonesbury, this isn’t. “Comedy Central has ordered ‘Lil’ Bush: Resident of the United States,’ a cartoon satire that re-imagines President Bush and key executives in his administration as elementary school misfits. The title character is surrounded by close pals like Lil’ Cheney, who grumbles unintelligibly, and Lil’ Condi, who pines for Lil’ Bush and does his homework for him.”
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