Monthly Archives: May 2007

A Vote of No Confidence

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at his confirmation

The current headline: No-Confidence Vote Sought on Gonzales

But what does that really mean?

As a practical matter, it means that after all the questions and testimony, they have not found anything illegal or actionable against Gonzales.

As the Washington Post reports:

The resolution would have no force of law, but Democrats hope it would raise the political stakes for Gonzales and for Republicans who vote to support him.

They want him to resign, and would certainly welcome confirmation hearings over his successor.

After all, the big game is the 2008 Election. Everything else is just tactics. Or so it seems.

Ponder the Maunder

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The Facts and Fictions of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”

Welcome to Ponder the Maunder, an extra credit assignment for Honors Earth Science, Portland High School, by Kristen Byrnes of Portland Maine.

This report is a comprehensive look at the global warming issue without financial or political bias. It uses the most updated information provided by scientists and researchers and interjects common sense, an important component missing from the global warming debate.

continue
(h/t Noel Sheppard)

“He’s awesome”

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On Wednesday night, Senator Edward M. Kennedy stared at an exhausted negotiating team of 20 senators and two Cabinet secretaries and said, “Let’s shoot for 10 o’clock tomorrow morning.”

The negotiators were tantalizingly close to a historic deal to remake the nation’s immigration system. But at several points, nervous senators were ready to give up. Republicans wanted to give temporary visas only to workers taking undersubscribed jobs. Democrats wanted to allow family members of immigrants to come in more quickly.

But Kennedy, the Senate’s consummate dealmaker — still indefatigable at 75 — pushed hard at his fellow Democrats, wavering Republican moderates, and even members of the Bush administration, insisting that the deal-makers work all night Wednesday to beat the deadline imposed by the Senate leadership.

Yesterday, the two Cabinet secretaries — both of whom have been subjects of Kennedy broadsides in the past — lauded the Democrats’ aging lion as the one indispensable player in the negotiating process.

“He’s awesome,” gushed Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff , as he left a news conference announcing the bipartisan agreement. “I’d say he was one of the critical leaders in putting together this deal.”

Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez called it “a real privilege” to work with Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat and liberal stalwart who spends much of his time trying to thwart or undo Bush administration policies.

“It’s obvious we’re in different parties. We don’t always agree,” Gutierrez said. But, he added, Kennedy “is focused. He’s very determined.”

Kennedy’s demand that negotiators have a deal by 10 a.m., Gutierrez said, was the “stimulus” that got the deal done.


More->

Movement, movement, movement

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Iran’s foreign minister says Tehran will begin direct talks with the United States about Iraqi security later this month. From Islamabad, VOA correspondent Benjamin Sand reports the high-level meeting is not expected to touch on the ongoing controversy over Iran’s nuclear program. More->



On North Korea, the U.S. Country Reports on Terrorism 2006 stood out Monday in what it did not say — and in the one sentence that technically did not need to be included but was. More->



Key senators in both parties announced agreement with the White House Thursday on an immigration overhaul that would grant quick legal status to millions of illegal immigrants already in the U.S. and fortify the border. More ->

Rare experience

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Rare experience aboard N. Korean train across the border

By Sohn Suk-joo

JEJIN STATION, South Korea, May 17 (Yonhap) — At the urging of North Korean conductors, 100 South Koreans and 50 North Koreans boarded a five-car train at 11:25 a.m. With no speaker system at Kumgangsan Station at the North’s scenic mountain along the east coast, conductors repeated “Please board the train” through a loudspeaker mounted upon a South Korean-made Hyundai Starex utility vehicle. More ->

Huh?

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There is no truth whatever to a recent rumor about John Murtha replacing Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank.

Single Issue Mandate

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Psychologists probably have a name for it: a group of people acting together in some task and failing, but continuing to repeat the process over and over.

Why don’t they give up and do something else? The thing they are trying to do may be the only thing they have in common, and they don’t really agree with each other about anything else.

There they are, the new leaders on the Hill, hammering away at the one issue they believe they have in common: the war.

It costs money to keep the House and Senate running every day, whether they produce or not. No benchmarks on them, except earmarks, which evidently don’t count.

Just how much patience will the voters have, confronted with all this? Perhaps not as much as the new leaders expected.

And there are the military folks, wondering if their needs will be met. They are voters too, if their ballots are counted. They have long memories; ask the nearest Nam vet.

The Mayberry Option

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Some legislators on The Hill have come up with plans to stop the war or, at the very least, slow it down.

Unfortunately, the means described in their legislation seem only to slow down our side of the hostilities, not the bad guys. But no matter, we are assured, their hearts are in the right place.

Deputy Barney Fife was only given one bullet, and he had to keep it in his shirt pocket.

Mayberry’s redoubtable Deputy Fife was probably not their model when they came up with their plan.

But it was the image that came to mind when details of their plan emerged.

Here’s An Election to Watch

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The name to remember is Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf.

The Teheran City Council defied hard-line government pressure on Wednesday, re-electing a moderate-leaning mayor who is seen as a potential rival to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The mayor’s post was a stepping stone for Ahmadinejad before being elected president in 2005.

Earlier this week, state-run radio conducted an opinion poll via cell phone text messages in which it said more than 82 percent supported Qalibaf.

During local council elections in December, the president’s allies suffered an embarrassing defeat in a vote that was seen as a sign of growing public discontent with his leadership.

Qalibaf is seen as a likely candidate in the next presidential elections, expected in late 2008 or early 2009.

Getting Whose Act Together?

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Why are we trying to pull the rug out from under our troops?

If we, as a country, really believe that the hostilities are the result of the Iraqis being unable to get their act together, then why don’t we pull the rug out from under the Iraqis?

Or at the end of the day, is it all just about where we can scrap together enough votes to get reelected a year and a half from now?