A new Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 70 percent of Americans disapprove of President Bush’s handling of the economy, an all-time high for that poll. “Bush’s overall rating stands at 33 percent, a percentage point above his all-time low in Post-ABC polling.”
“At 39 months in the doghouse,” President Bush has surpassed Harry Truman’s record as “the postwar president to linger longest without majority public approval. Bush hasn’t received majority approval for his work in office in ABC News/Washington Post polls since Jan. 16, 2005 — three years and three months ago. The previous record was Truman’s during his last 38 months in office.”
Democrats charge that controversial lawyer Steven Bradbury is illegally running the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel because has been acting head of the office for three years without Senate approval. Under a 1998 law, “a nominee can serve as an acting head of an office for only 210 days after a nomination is returned to the president for a second time,” which happened to Bradbury on Sept. 29, 2006.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld “is working on a memoir to be published by Penguin Group (USA) in 2010” and will donate proceeds to a non-for-profit foundation he founded. “His memoir will be released by Sentinel, a conservative imprint of Penguin.” “This will be a story that will span my lifetime,” Rumsfeld said.
Refugees International reports today that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government has “failed to support millions” of “internally displaced persons who are instead being aided by militias.” The study found that, “with many displaced Iraqis living in poverty,” Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia group has become Iraq’s “largest ‘humanitarian’ organization.’”Eighty-three percent of Arabs have “an unfavorable view of the United States and 70 percent had no confidence in the superpower,” according to a poll of six Arab countries, which also found that only “6 percent believed the US troop buildup in Iraq in the last year has worked.”
“Some of the country’s most prominent Jewish liberals are forming a political action committee and lobbying group aimed at dislodging what they consider the excessive hold of neoconservatives and evangelical Christians on U.S. policy toward Israel.” The group “will fill a void” as a counterweight to the right-leaning American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
“Home foreclosure filings surged 57 percent in the 12 month-period ended in March and bank repossessions soared 129 percent from a year ago,” according to real estate data firm RealtyTrac. “For the month of March, foreclosure filings, default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions rose 5 percent.”
And finally: On a section of John McCain’s campaign website site called “Cindy’s Recipes,” you can find seven recipes attributed to Cindy McCain, each with the heading “McCain Family Recipe.” The Huffington Post reports that at least three of the recipes are “word-for-word copies of recipes on the Food Network site.”
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