“Bring it on!” quipped a White House official yesterday when asked about Vice President Cheney’s recent re-emergence. A “dismayed” Republican remarked: “We’re trying to turn the page and he’s climbing out of the grave to haunt us.”
“The parents of slain Army Ranger and NFL star Pat Tillman voiced concerns” yesterday “that the general who played a role in mischaracterizing his death could be put in charge of military operations in Afghanistan.” “I do believe that guy participated in a falsified homicide investigation,” Pat Tillman Sr. told the AP. “It is imperative that Lt. General McChrystal be scrutinized carefully during the Senate hearings,” said Mary Tillman.
According to a “list drawn up by Afghan officials,” 95 children were “among the 140 people said to have died in a recent U.S.-Taliban battle in western Afghanistan.” Afghan authorities blame the deaths on U.S. air strikes, but the U.S. military disputes their claim.
The Obama administration reported yesterday that the financial condition of Medicare and Social Security has deteriorated, in part due to the recession. As a result, Medicare is expected to run out of funds by 2017, while the Social Security trust fund “will be exhausted in 2037.” Spending for both programs accounted for more than one-third of the federal budget last year.
As AIG CEO Edward Liddy faces Congress again today, new documents have emerged showing that “senior officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York received details about the bonuses more than five months before the firestorm erupted.” However, the New York Fed did not alert the Obama administration to the potential controversy until the end of February.
The New York State Assembly approved legislation last night that would make New York the sixth state to allow same-sex marriage with a pivotal vote on the measure now shifting to the State Senate. Gov. David Patterson (D) has offered strong support for the bill’s passage.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved Harold Koh’s nomination to become the State Department legal adviser yesterday by a vote of 12 to five. Koh’s nomination now goes to the full Senate, though the vote has not yet been scheduled.
Senate Democrats expect to lose the vote on the confirmation of David Hayes as Deputy Secretary of the Interior this morning, which would mark “the first time Congress votes to reject one of President Obama’s nominees.” Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT) is leading the GOP opposition to Hayes over Obama’s decision to cancel oil and gas leases in Utah.” “This is not about Hayes,” his spokesman admitted.
Though there is “widely reported expectation that President Barack Obama will be looking for a qualified woman” to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, a new Gallup poll found that “64 percent of Americans say it doesn’t matter to them whether Obama appoints a woman.” Another 26 percent said that it would be “a good idea, but not essential.”
And finally: Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff (R) yesterday had a “Twitter spasm,” and “inadvertently confirmed on Twitter…that he’ll challenge Sen. Bob Bennett (R-UT) in 2010.” Shurtleff “later sent a message saying he thought he was responding to one individual and quickly pulled down the messages, but not before they were widely distributed.” His original plan was to announce his candidacy on May 20. (View his Twitter messages here.)
Sign up here to receive our daily e-newsletter, The Progress Report.
Previous in TP Politics
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.