At a “First Amendment awards dinner,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) said yesterday “the country will be forced to reexamine freedom of speech to meet the threat of terrorism.” He said a “different set of rules” may be needed to limit “terrorists’ ability to use the Internet and free speech.”
The president-elect of the Christian Coalition of America “has stepped down, saying the group resisted his efforts to broaden its agenda to include reducing poverty and fighting global warming.” Rev. Joel Hunter said of the split, “When we really got down to it, they said: ‘This just isn’t for us. It won’t speak to our base, so we just can’t go there.’”
A classified Marine Corps intelligence report concludes that in Western Iraq, “the social and political situation has deteriorated to a point” that U.S. and Iraqi troops “are no longer capable of militarily defeating the insurgency in al-Anbar.”
“The Bush administration pleased farmers and frustrated environmentalists Monday by declaring that pesticides can be sprayed into and over waters without first obtaining special permits.”
The “stakes in Afghanistan are much larger in the near term than they are in Iraq,” former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in a speech yesterday, predicting that Iraq’s troubles would remain internal for some time while Afghanistan’s could have “enormous repercussions” on Pakistan and India.
Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) yesterday “hit out at efforts by figures in the Bush administration and business to roll back corporate accountability reforms imposed in the wake of financial scandals such as Enron.” Spitzer argued businesses are failing to compete not due to over-regulation, but because of “failed business models and the lack of smart investment in technology.”
A decade ago, “researchers had assumed the number of AIDS cases would be declining. Instead, it’s on the rise.” A new report by the Public Library of Science’s Medicine Journal finds AIDS “is set to join heart disease and stroke as the top three causes of death worldwide” within the next 25 years. The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) called for an official investigation into whether House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) broke the law “by pushing for federal funding of a highway project near land he owned west of Chicago.” Hastert turned a 500 percent profit by selling the land last year.
And finally: Put away your tissues, she’s back. “Rumors are floating in Florida GOP political circles that outgoing Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL), one of the most disastrous Senate candidates in a very long time, is secretly plotting an ’08 House campaign,” Roll Call reports.
What did we miss? Let us know in the comments section.