In 2003, top administration officials rejected “a list of five candidates to lead the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel” offered by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, and installed “a loyalist” who would continue the President’s “coercive interrogation techniques and broadly interpret executive power.” Ashcroft is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee today.
Former Vice President Al Gore is set to give a major energy policy speech today, in which he will challenge “the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within 10 years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace.”
“Despite spending $230m an hour on health care, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed country. And while it has the second-highest income per head in the world, the United States ranks 42nd in terms of life expectancy,” a new report by Oxfam American, the Conrad Hilton Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation finds.
Late Wednesday, the Department of the Interior “made 2.6 million acres of potentially oil-rich territory in northern Alaska available for energy exploration,” while deferring “for a decade any decision to open 600,000 acres of land…that is the summer home of thousands of migrating caribou and millions of waterfowl.”
Pentagon leaders announced yesterday that a surge in forces in Afghanistan will occur “sooner rather than later.” The moves are expected to happen within weeks, as officials prepare to lower troop levels in Iraq.
On the trail today: Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) is in Chicago, and has no scheduled public events. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) will host a town hall meeting in Kansas City, MO at 12:30.
Yesterday, the Senate voted 80 to 16 to approve legislation that would “triple funding to fight AIDS and other diseases around the globe, rejecting efforts to pare down the bill’s $50 billion price tag.” The House approved a similar bill in April.
Citing the Defense of Marriage act, “which prohibits the federal government from recognizing as a marriage the union of anyone but a man and a woman,” and ignoring the fact that “gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts and California,” the U.S. Census Bureau will count all “same-sex partners in both states who list themselves as spouses will be recorded as ‘unmarried partners.’”
And Finally: MSNBC’s Morning Joe host, Joe Scarborough, complained again yesterday about the “Cheeto eaters…blogging in their basements” who have recently attacked Joe Lieberman for his hawkish stance on Iran. It’s unclear where Scarborough gets the impression that bloggers spend their days munching on Cheetos, but he may be speaking from experience, as he himself blogs intermittently for the Huffington Post.
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section.
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