During her testimony yesterday, former Justice official Monica Goodling “repeatedly declined to estimate how many times she had considered political affiliations in career hiring decisions.” “I don’t think that I could have done it more than 50 times, but I don’t know,” she said. She “further admitted that she ‘occasionally‘ researched career applicants’ political affiliations and checked their political donations.”
Iraqi Health Ministry statistics show that sectarian killings “are rising again.” 321 unidentified corpses, “many dumped and showing signs of torture and execution,” have been found in Baghdad this month — the same number found in all of January, before the escalation was launched.
Congressional leaders say they dropped Iraq timeline legislation because “White House attacks that they were again on vacation” for Memorial Day while the troops were fighting on the ground “seemed more politically threatening to them” than anger “from the left by bowing to Mr. Bush.”
Three more military language specialists have been discharged for being gay, and the House Armed Services Committee wants the Pentagon “to explain how it can afford to let the valuable language specialists go.”
“Hoping to subdue a rising wave of resistance” within their ranks, House leaders “are set to put their long-stalled lobbying reform package to a vote today.”
Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) yesterday sent a letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates “seeking assurances that military leaders had drawn up ‘contingency’ plans so that American troops could pull out of Iraq without ‘unnecessary danger.’”
“The House approved legislation yesterday to upgrade and expand the nation’s network of health care and benefit outreach centers for military veterans,” one of seven veteran-related bills “that the House approved yesterday to provide millions more dollars in benefits.”
Watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has sued the White House, “alleging the administration refuses to comply with a public records request related to more than 5 million e-mails from administration officials that have gone missing.”
Environmental enforcement efforts by EPA and the Justice Department “have plummeted over the last five years, resulting in a 38 percent decline in criminal fines and a 25 percent drop in civil penalties, according to a new report.”
And finally: A conservative journalist falls in love with Mitt Romney’s wife. Newsmax’s Ronald Kessler writes, “Ann is warm and very natural. She has the look of an outdoors woman bred to be an equestrian, which she is — good carriage, rosy complexion, square jaw, and blond mane. When she is not flashing her truly unbelievable smile, she may lower her eyes demurely. … She lowers her eyes, thinking, and then looks up directly at her interviewer and dazzles him with that smile.”
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