ThinkFast: June 9, 2009

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan led another protest against President Bush near his Dallas home yesterday. “George Bush and his administration are mass murderers,” she told the crowd, using a loudspeaker. “People say, ‘Cindy, get over it.’ Well, there are still two wars raging. I don’t have an option of getting over it. … We have to keep it up so things like this don’t happen again.”

The Justice Department announced that U.S. authorities have brought the first Gitmo detainee to the United States. The detainee, Ahmed Ghailani, is expected to appear in a federal court in New York later today. “Ghailani is being held accountable for his alleged role in the bombing of U.S. Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the murder of 224 people,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a press release.

“Senate Republicans are blocking a vote on the nomination of Robert Groves to be the Census Bureau’s director, leaving the agency without a leader less than a year before the 2010 nationwide head count.” The Wall Street Journal notes that Republicans’ reasons for blocking the nomination are “unclear.”

CIA Director Leon Panetta urged a federal judge yesterday not to release certain Bush-era documents that detail the videotaped interrogations of CIA detainees at secret prisons. “Panetta defended the classification of records describing the contents of the 92 videotapes, their destruction by the CIA in 2005 and what he called ‘sensitive operational information’ about the interrogations.”

FireDogLake’s Jane Hamsher reports that, “according to sources on the Hill,” the Lieberman-Graham amendment had been stripped from the supplemental funding currently in conference committee. The amendment would have allowed the Obama administration to suppress any “photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained” after 9/11 by U.S. forces.

All House Democrats will meet today to discuss and present a health care plan “that would require most Americans to have health insurance or pay a penalty, mandate that employers cover their workers, and create an online ‘exchange’ where consumers can shop for insurance.” It would also feature a public insurance option, and would bar insurers from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

Some government agencies “appear to be charging ahead of others” in spending their economic stimulus funding. HHS has “paid out more than $18.7 billion of the $29.5 billion in stimulus money it has available,” while the Education Department has “spent $4.9 billion of the $38.8 billion it has available.” But “of the $15 billion” that the Transportation Department has available, “only $151.7 million has been paid out.”

With just two weeks to go in its session, the New York State Senate was thrown into “chaos” yesterday, as two “dissident Democrats,” “bucked their party’s leaders” and effectively handed control of the chamber over to Republicans. The move “throws into question a host of high-profile legislation,” including the legalization of same-sex marriage and ethics reform.

Col. George Amland, the deputy commander of the Marine brigade in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, said Obama’s decision to surge U.S. troops into southern Afghanistan will be a major “game changer” in the largely Taliban-controlled region.

And finally: Matt Yglesias writes that “new media [is] transforming Congress in strange and disturbing ways.” Specifically, it’s allowing lawmakers to don NBA jerseys and argue about basketball. Watch it here.

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