Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) became the fourth member of Congress to call on Sen. Larry Craig to resign. “While additional concerns are being raised, Senator Craig already demonstrated that he is unfit to serve in the U.S. Congress when he pled guilty,” Souder said in a statement. “I believe that he needs to step down.”
Next week, the Pentagon’s inspector general will head to Iraq to investigate how weapons given to Iraqi security forces by the American military have been found “by the authorities in Turkey after being used in violent crimes in that country.” Offical estimates of the amount of weapons found in Turkey vary from dozens to hundreds.
White House officials are considering five names that “have kind of emerged” as possible candidates to take over the beleaguered Justice Department: former Solicitor General Ted Olson, former Deputy Attorney General George Terwilliger, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson, and Solicitor General Paul Clement.
$1 billion: The amount the Defense Department is paying private contractors in more than 30 separate contracts to collect and analyze intelligence for the four military services and its own Defense Intelligence Agency.
The Washington Times reports “more Americans see war as winnable,” citing a UPI/Zogby poll that shows 54 percent of Americans believe the war is not lost. 66 percent of Democrats said the mission has failed already, compared with 9 percent of Republicans who shared that view. About 49 percent of voters said the troop surge was not working.
“UNAIDS, the global standard-bearer in the fight against HIV, has come under stinging attack in two new books accusing it of allowing politics to trump science in its efforts to combat the disease.” One book “accuses UNAIDS of intentionally inflating its estimates of how many people have HIV in order to dramatise the epidemic and win more money from donors.”
“At least 96 interstate highway bridges rated ‘structurally deficient’ by government inspectors in 1982 had the same rating last year, suggesting they weren’t fixed or had lapsed and again require repair. … Those spans carry 3.8 million cars and trucks every day.”
Under strong pressure from lawmakers and lawmakers and “several large aid organizations,” the Bush administration has “decided to sharply scale back its plan to screen U.S. foreign aid contractors around the globe for potential terrorism connections.” Groups called the screening “onerousand unwarranted.”
The LAT profiles Iraq war vet and founder of VoteVets, Jon Soltz. “Soltz has helped transform the war debate in Washington by channeling the raw anger and frustration of many Iraq vets into a political campaign both sophisticated and visceral.”
And finally: The American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) has enlisted the help of Weird Al Yankovich to bring attention to tort reform. ATRA has posted his song, “I’ll Sue Ya,” on its website, urging that it be “adopted as a theme song by America’s personal injury lawyers.” “It’s been awhile since I’ve personally kept up with Weird Al’s work, but it’s nice to know he hasn’t lost his genius,” the ATRA director of communications said.
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