International:
House Democrats Search for Support on Withdrawing Troops From Iraq Before 2008
House Democratic leaders hunted for votes Tuesday for a war spending bill that would demand troops leave Iraq before September 2008 and expressed optimism that they would garner the support needed for passage.
The bill, a direct challenge to President Bush's war policies, remained on schedule for an initial test vote Thursday in the House Appropriations Committee and was expected to reach the floor next week.
"We're going to be whipping and counting votes, and I think we're going to get the votes," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. More at FOXNews
Israel says hundreds of Hamas men trained in Iran
Hundreds of members of the radical Palestinian Hamas movement receive military training in
Iran every year, the head of Israel's internal security service was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
"Hundreds of Hamas men are sent for training in Iran, and not for short trainings of a week or a month, but for long sessions," MP Zvi Hendel told reporters after hearing Shin Beth chief Yuval Diskin brief parliament's influential foreign affairs and defence committee. According to Diskin, "the training in Iran is of high quality, and lasts several months," Hendel added.
Diskin also said that "an unprecedented quantity of weapons was smuggled into the
Gaza Strip during 2006, including 31 tonnes of explosives."
National:
Subprime fears spark global sell-off
A steep sell-off swept through global stock markets on Tuesday as investor confidence was hit by the escalating woes of the US subprime mortgage market and weak US retail sales data.
“Markets are pricing in a realistic chance that problems in the subprime sector will spill over into the general mortgage market,” said Richard Gilhoolly, senior fixed income strategist at BNP Paribas. Read the full story here. In other mortgage news, new foreclosures hit an all-time high. Late mortgage payments shot up to a 3 1/2-year high in the final quarter of last year and new foreclosures surged to record levels as borrowers with tarnished credit hist****s had trouble keeping up with monthly payments.
Hillary Clinton Calls for Gonzales' Resignation
"The buck should stop somewhere," Clinton told ABC News senior political correspondent Jake Tapper, "and the attorney general — who still seems to confuse his prior role as the president's personal attorney with his duty to the system of justice and to the entire country — should resign."
Watch "Good Morning America" on Wednesday for the full interview.
"I'm deeply disturbed by what we have learned thus far," Clinton said, "and I join those who are calling for a full and thorough investigation to try to get to the bottom of these very political decisions that interfere with prosecutorial responsibility by U.S. attorneys, and I think that the attorney general should resign."
House Democrats Search for Support on Withdrawing Troops From Iraq Before 2008
House Democratic leaders hunted for votes Tuesday for a war spending bill that would demand troops leave Iraq before September 2008 and expressed optimism that they would garner the support needed for passage.
The bill, a direct challenge to President Bush's war policies, remained on schedule for an initial test vote Thursday in the House Appropriations Committee and was expected to reach the floor next week.
"We're going to be whipping and counting votes, and I think we're going to get the votes," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md. More at FOXNews
Israel says hundreds of Hamas men trained in Iran
Hundreds of members of the radical Palestinian Hamas movement receive military training in
Iran every year, the head of Israel's internal security service was quoted as saying on Tuesday.
"Hundreds of Hamas men are sent for training in Iran, and not for short trainings of a week or a month, but for long sessions," MP Zvi Hendel told reporters after hearing Shin Beth chief Yuval Diskin brief parliament's influential foreign affairs and defence committee. According to Diskin, "the training in Iran is of high quality, and lasts several months," Hendel added.
Diskin also said that "an unprecedented quantity of weapons was smuggled into the
Gaza Strip during 2006, including 31 tonnes of explosives."
National:
Subprime fears spark global sell-off
A steep sell-off swept through global stock markets on Tuesday as investor confidence was hit by the escalating woes of the US subprime mortgage market and weak US retail sales data.
“Markets are pricing in a realistic chance that problems in the subprime sector will spill over into the general mortgage market,” said Richard Gilhoolly, senior fixed income strategist at BNP Paribas. Read the full story here. In other mortgage news, new foreclosures hit an all-time high. Late mortgage payments shot up to a 3 1/2-year high in the final quarter of last year and new foreclosures surged to record levels as borrowers with tarnished credit hist****s had trouble keeping up with monthly payments.
Hillary Clinton Calls for Gonzales' Resignation
"The buck should stop somewhere," Clinton told ABC News senior political correspondent Jake Tapper, "and the attorney general — who still seems to confuse his prior role as the president's personal attorney with his duty to the system of justice and to the entire country — should resign."
Watch "Good Morning America" on Wednesday for the full interview.
"I'm deeply disturbed by what we have learned thus far," Clinton said, "and I join those who are calling for a full and thorough investigation to try to get to the bottom of these very political decisions that interfere with prosecutorial responsibility by U.S. attorneys, and I think that the attorney general should resign."
Valerie Plame to testify before Congress Valerie Plame, the CIA operative exposed after her husband criticized President Bush's march to war, will testify next week before lawmakers probing how the White House dealt with her identity, the chairman of the panel said Thursday.
Also invited to testify March 16 before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is Patrick Fitzgerald, who last week won the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby of obstruction and perjury in the case, said Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Waxman said Plame has accepted the invitation and Fitzgerald has not responded. In a letter to the prosecutor, Waxman proposed a meeting with ranking Republican Tom Davis of Virginia to discuss the terms of any testimony. The hearing will be the first public forum at which Plame has agreed to answer questions. At a news conference in July announcing a lawsuit against Libby and other Bush administration officials, Plame read a short statement but did not respond to questions.
In Other News…
“The White House was deeply involved in the decision late last year to dismiss federal prosecutors, including some who had been criticized by Republican lawmakers,” the New York Times reports. “Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans” about several U.S. Attorneys. Weeks later, they were forced out.
In related news, Attorney General Gonzales’ chief of staff Kyle Sampson resigned yesterday in the wake of the U.S. Attorney scandal. Sampson was involved in generating the list of prosecutors to fire.
Why all the questions about Halliburton’s move to Dubai? Senate Commerce Committee member Byron Dorgan (D-ND) asked yesterday, “I want to know, is Halliburton trying to run away from bad publicity on their contracts? Are they trying to run away from the obligation to pay U.S. taxes? Or are they trying to set up a corporate presence in Dubai so that they can avoid the restrictions that currently exist on doing business with prohibited countries like Iran?”
News of Scooter Libby’s guilty verdict has brought in $70,000 in Internet contributions in a week. Wealthy supporters like publisher Steve Forbes and lobbyist Wayne Berman plan to raise much more; actor Fred Thompson plans a Washington fundraiser that may bring in more than $100,000.
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) introduced a resolution yesterday to allow Al Gore to stage a global-warming concert on the Capitol grounds. Gore’s Live Earth event will feature seven major concerts on seven continents to help bring attention to global climate change.
The Blotter (ABCNews blog) updates us on the whereabouts of the Iraqi defector who served as the source for Iraq’s supposed mobile bioweapons program. Even though he was considered an “unstable, immature and unreliable” source by some senior officials at the CIA, former Sec. of State Colin Powell said he was never told the CIA had doubts about the reliability of the source. “I spent four days at CIA headquarters, and they told me they had this nailed,” Powell said.
From The Right: Dinesh D'Souza: The lie that Bush lied If you want to know how the Iraq debate got so acrimonious, the tipping point was when mainstream Democrats went from accusing Bush of bungling the Iraq war to accusing him of lying to get America into that war.
From The Left: Dan Eggen and John Solomon: Firings Had Genesis in White House The White House suggested two years ago that the Justice Department fire all 93 US attorneys, a proposal that eventually resulted in the dismissals of eight prosecutors last year, according to emails and internal documents that the administration will provide to Congress today.
Quote Of The Day: "I'm happy to learn that after I speak you're going to hear from Ann Coulter. That's a good thing. I think it's important to get the views of moderates." --Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, right before Coulter called Edwards a "faggot"
(Sources: TownHall, FOXNews, CenterForAmericanProgress, TruthOut, NYT, WashingtonTimes, TPMmuckraker, WashingtonPost, DrudgeReport, Bloomberg, FinancialTimes, AP, ABCNews, AFP)
“The White House was deeply involved in the decision late last year to dismiss federal prosecutors, including some who had been criticized by Republican lawmakers,” the New York Times reports. “Last October, President Bush spoke with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to pass along concerns by Republicans” about several U.S. Attorneys. Weeks later, they were forced out.
In related news, Attorney General Gonzales’ chief of staff Kyle Sampson resigned yesterday in the wake of the U.S. Attorney scandal. Sampson was involved in generating the list of prosecutors to fire.
Why all the questions about Halliburton’s move to Dubai? Senate Commerce Committee member Byron Dorgan (D-ND) asked yesterday, “I want to know, is Halliburton trying to run away from bad publicity on their contracts? Are they trying to run away from the obligation to pay U.S. taxes? Or are they trying to set up a corporate presence in Dubai so that they can avoid the restrictions that currently exist on doing business with prohibited countries like Iran?”
News of Scooter Libby’s guilty verdict has brought in $70,000 in Internet contributions in a week. Wealthy supporters like publisher Steve Forbes and lobbyist Wayne Berman plan to raise much more; actor Fred Thompson plans a Washington fundraiser that may bring in more than $100,000.
Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) introduced a resolution yesterday to allow Al Gore to stage a global-warming concert on the Capitol grounds. Gore’s Live Earth event will feature seven major concerts on seven continents to help bring attention to global climate change.
The Blotter (ABCNews blog) updates us on the whereabouts of the Iraqi defector who served as the source for Iraq’s supposed mobile bioweapons program. Even though he was considered an “unstable, immature and unreliable” source by some senior officials at the CIA, former Sec. of State Colin Powell said he was never told the CIA had doubts about the reliability of the source. “I spent four days at CIA headquarters, and they told me they had this nailed,” Powell said.
From The Right: Dinesh D'Souza: The lie that Bush lied If you want to know how the Iraq debate got so acrimonious, the tipping point was when mainstream Democrats went from accusing Bush of bungling the Iraq war to accusing him of lying to get America into that war.
From The Left: Dan Eggen and John Solomon: Firings Had Genesis in White House The White House suggested two years ago that the Justice Department fire all 93 US attorneys, a proposal that eventually resulted in the dismissals of eight prosecutors last year, according to emails and internal documents that the administration will provide to Congress today.
Quote Of The Day: "I'm happy to learn that after I speak you're going to hear from Ann Coulter. That's a good thing. I think it's important to get the views of moderates." --Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, right before Coulter called Edwards a "faggot"
(Sources: TownHall, FOXNews, CenterForAmericanProgress, TruthOut, NYT, WashingtonTimes, TPMmuckraker, WashingtonPost, DrudgeReport, Bloomberg, FinancialTimes, AP, ABCNews, AFP)
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