A vote on Attorney General nominee Mike Mukasey “could be delayed until he provides written answers to questions raised Thursday” by Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT). In yesterday’s hearings, Mukasey refused to denounce torture and expressed support for expanded executive authority.
The Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday voted 13-2 to approve a bill tightening rules on government wiretapping. The legislation would also contains a “highly controversial” grant of legal immunity for telecoms, a provision demanded by the White House.
A new report from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction states that U.S. attempts at political reconciliation, economic growth, and building an effective police force in Iraq “have failed to show significant progress in nearly every one of the nation’s provincial regions and the capital.”
House aide Greg Lankler, who has been subpoenaed in the corruption investigation of Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA), has promised to “fight” the order. Prosecutors in Los Angeles are investigating Lewis’s steering of valuable earmarks for lobbyist Bill Lowery’s clients.
“The majority of treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder that are used to treat hundreds of thousands of veterans lack rigorous scientific evidence that they are effective,” according to a report issued yesterday by the National Academies.
In “one of the most concrete signs of the effect of a warming climate on government operations, the Coast Guard is planning its first operating base there as a way of dealing with the cruise ships and the tankers that are already beginning to ply Arctic waters.”
136: Number of people who were killed by a suicide bomber in Karachi, Pakistan, yesterday. Thousands turned out for the return of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
Oil prices have soared to “another record high,” hitting $90.07.
And finally: Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) won second place in the annual D.C.’s Funniest Celebrity contest, beating out Wonkette founder Ana Marie Cox and Grover Norquist. Specter joked that Bob Dole once told him, “Arlen, you know [Viagra] costs $10 a pill?” “Bob, how in the hell would I know about that?,” Specter replied. “And then Elizabeth said to him in anger…’Bob, you can afford $40 a year!’” Watch it here.
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