MORE ANTI-SURGE SENS; KY GOV NEWS; POLITICAL STORM; OBAMA ATTACK DEBUNKED.
January 22nd, 2007
TUESDAY NEWS UPDATE.MORE ANTI-SURGE SENS; KY GOV NEWS; POLITICAL STORM; OBAMA ATTACK DEBUNKED.
On the eve of the President's State of the Union Address, more Congressional leaders lined up against the Bush Administration's plan for an escalation in the Iraq War. On Monday, US Senator John Warner (R-VA), Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Norm Coleman (R-MN) announced they were introducing a resolution opposing the President's plans to send an additional 21,500 American soldiers to Iraq. The proposal is similar to the Levin-Hagel-Biden proposal last week, but with much less confrontational language. Warner, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee and a former US Navy Secretary, said he does not want to see US troops caught in the crossfire of sectarian violence, "the origins of which sometimes go back thousands of years." Meanwhile, the VoteVets.org group released a statement Monday saying US Senators Arlen Spector (R-PA) and John Sununu (R-NH) were opposed to Bush's troop "surge" plans for Iraq ... In Kentucky, US Senator Jim Bunning (R) endorsed former Congresswoman Anne Northup on Monday in her primary challenge to Governor Ernie Fletcher (R). Also, former Lieutenant Governor Steve Henry (D) and State House Speaker Jody Richards (D) will both announce gubernatorial candidacies this week. Richards' runningmate will be former Secretary of State John Y. Brown III ... Speaking in New York over the weekend, former FEMA Director Michael Brown said the White House played "disgusting" partisan politics in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Brown said he recommended the President federalize all 90,000 square miles along the Gulf Coast impacted by the hurricane. In response, Brown explained, "certain people in the White House were thinking, 'We had to federalize Louisiana because she's a white, female Democratic governor, and we have a chance to rub her nose in it. 'We can't do it to [Mississippi Governor] Haley [Barbour] because Haley's a white male Republican Governor, and we can't do a thing to him. So we're just gonna federalize Louisiana.'" A White House spokesman was quick to respond: "It is unfortunate that Mike Brown is still hurling false statements about the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina." Governor Blanco had a different reaction: "Karl Rove was playing politics while our people were dying. The federal effort was delayed, and now the public knows why" ... CNN reported Monday that the conservative Insight Magazine article which claimed US Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) was educated in Indonesia at a radical Muslim madrassa school was false. Fox News and others also repeated the false allegation from the Insight story. Rather than rely on second-hand info, CNN sent a reporter to find the school and former classmates. Obama briefly lived in Indonesia for as a child and attended the school in 1969-71. It turns out the school Obama attended was a regular "mixed" public school not involving any religious teachings. Insight -- which says it is sticking with their report -- attributed the original allegations to an "unnamed source ... connected to Senator Clinton." The Clinton campaign denied any involvement. CNN noted the school was not even a Wahhabi Muslim school, as the students were Muslim, Christian, Buddhist and Confucian and the teacher's wear traditional Western-style clothes. Obama's campaign said the Insight article was "appallingly irresponsible."
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