“For a man who came into office as the nation’s first M.B.A. president, Mr. Bush has sometimes seemed invisible during the housing and credit crunch,” writes The New York Times. Even Bush’s conservative allies say that the President “is being eclipsed and is in danger of looking out of touch.” As Congress scrambled to “produce a bill to help struggling homeowners,” Bush left for Eastern Europe.
“For at least 16 months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil didn’t apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism,” according to “a secret Justice Department legal memo dated Oct. 23, 2001.” The memo’s existence was disclosed “Tuesday in a footnote of a separate secret memo” about interrogation policy.
More than 1,000 people attended a rally Wednesday in support of a Oklahoma Rep. Sally Kern (R) , who was “widely criticized” for a saying homosexuality is “the biggest threat our nation has.” Kern said the rally affirms the rights of those “who want to stand up for the truth of God’s word.”
Recent surveys by the National Patient Advocate Foundation and the Kaiser Family Foundation found that “[p]eople with health insurance are having more trouble paying for prescription drugs as higher out-of-pocket costs for medications and a slowing economy strain family budgets.”
According to a recent Defense Department Inspector General report, “[t]he Army can’t be sure some of its body armor met safety standards” because “nearly half of the Army’s contractors did not perform the most basic test on the body armor before it was sent to our troops fighting overseas.”
Yesterday, a bipartisan group of seven senators proposed legislation that would “improve health care for female soldiers returning from duty in Iraq and require the Veteran Administration’s mental health staff to be trained to counsel victims of sexual assault.”
Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on Thursday for a million-strong demonstration against U.S. ‘occupation,’ a potentially destabilizing show of force after his followers battled U.S. and government troops. The demonstration would take place next Wednesday April 9, the fifth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad, when the U.S. commander in Iraq is also scheduled to brief Congress in Washington about progress in the war.”
Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne refused to testify yesterday to a Senate committee “seeking an explanation” on the delayed decision whether to “list polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.” Instead, he sent a letter to the committee and pledged to testify once his decision was made, “now three months late.”
Just before the March recess, “House Democrats thought they were close to getting a deal on an immigration package.” But according to Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) “a senior Republican came to him” to derail the bill, saying that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “didn’t want to deal with immigration this year.”
And finally: Edward Gabriel was the U.S. ambassador to Morocco from 1997 to 2001. Yesterday, an “in memoriam” ad ran in The Washington Post titled “Ed Gabriel: A Partner for Life.” Gabriel, however, is not dead. The ad was an April Fools’ Day prank by an old friend, J. Peter Segall. Gabriel fielded calls all day from people who thought he had passed away, including one woman who had cried for two hours after seeing the ad. Segall later admitted that his joke was “very stupid.”
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