The White House sent out a press release last night cataloging statements of praise by leaders in various fields for President Obama’s decision, announced yesterday, to go to Copenhagen for the international climate talks next month. These leaders include politicians — Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) calls the move “one hell of a global game changer with big reverberations here at home” — environmental activists and energy company executives.
The full text of the release is after the jump.
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It’s one of the year’s slower news days, a perfect time for this rap from Hi Caliber. The best line, in my opinion:
The population of the march was over a million
and I have a new hero, his name is Joe Wilson.
Video after the jump.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, after spending much of 2009 pushing against the Obama administration’s call for a settlement freeze, has proposed a 10-month settlement freeze in the interest of what he called “meaningful negotiations to reach a historic peace agreement that would finally end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.” Here’s the official reaction from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton:
Today’s announcement by the Government of Israel helps move forward toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We believe that through good-faith negotiations the parties can mutually agree on an outcome which ends the conflict and reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps, and the Israeli goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israeli security requirements. Let me say to all the people of the region and world: our commitment to achieving a solution with two states living side by side in peace and security is unwavering.
Clinton created a great deal of outrage in the Arab world after she called a previous offer from Netanyahu that came far short of a total freeze “unprecedented.” This reply is far more restrained.
Marcy Wheeler at Firedoglake has an interesting take today on the most recent summary of classified documents that the government turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union Friday, as part of its response to the organization’s Freedom of Information Act requests about the destruction of 92 videotapes of CIA interrogations. The documents reveal what Wheeler calls “a tension between the torturers in the field growing increasingly panicked about the torture tapes” and wanting the CIA to destroy them, and the reluctance, at first, of the CIA’s Office of General Counsel to do that.
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Here’s an interesting response from Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa), senior Republican on the Finance Committee, when asked by a reporter this morning whether Congress intends to pay for the wars its launched, or continue to borrow the money and pile onto federal deficits.
Defending America is a number one responsibility and money’s not the first consideration. The first consideration is winning….
But we have always, one way or the other, raised the money to defend America, and in this case to defend America from a different kind of war, the war on terrorism. And it will be done.
He’s right on one account. You fight a war because you must, and the budget concerns should be immaterial. But the original question was, effectively, “Why aren’t lawmakers willing to ask Americans to pay for the costs of protecting the homeland, either through tax hikes or spending cuts elsewhere in the government?”
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After years of slamming anyone who proposed any sort of “amnesty” for “illegal aliens,” former CNN host Lou Dobbs has apparently changed his tune. On Friday, he told the Spanish-language TV station: “We need the ability to legalize illegal immigrants under certain conditions.”
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Midday on Wednesday Nov. 25, one of the busiest travel times of the year, and journalists stuck in check-in lines at the airport frustratingly checking their mobile devices find this pre-Thanksgiving gift from the Department of Defense:
Today, prosecutors in the Office of Military Commissions announced they intend to ask the convening authority to refer new charges under the recently-enacted Military Commissions Act of 2009 against Ahmed Mohammed Ahmed Haza al Darbi, in connection with his alleged involvement in an al Qaeda conspiracy to attack military and commercial shipping in the Port of Aden and the Straits of Hormuz.
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“We’re going to re-define the pro-life debate in the 2010 election,” said Terry.
“The backlash towards our community is nowhere even close,” Jamal Baadani said. “I attribute that to the intellect and the resiliency of the American people. And that’s why I’m proud to be an American.”
Tim Griffin, a controversial figure in the U.S attorney firing scandal, is a source of new optimism among Bush-era Republicans.
Both the House and Senate health reform proposals would force insurance plans to follow the recommendations as part of a minimum swath of services.
Despite Hasan’s reported contacts with an al-Qaeda-connected cleric in Yemen, the U.S. Army’s Criminal Investigation Division and FBI will handle the probe.
As the foreclosure crisis worsens, renters increasingly have become caught as innocent bystanders, evicted often without notice when their landlord faces foreclosure.
“This is war,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). “I think the decision you’ve made to try these cases in federal court represents a policy and political decision.”
“If they had been pulling out all the stops and working as hard as possible to get as many nominations as fast possible,” said former associate counsel in the Bush White House Rachel Brand, “they might have done the same as us.”
If President Obama orders an additional 30,000 to 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, he will be deploying practically every available U.S. Army brigade to war, leaving few units in reserve in case of an unforeseen emergency and further stressing a force that has seen repeated combat deployments since 2002.
Neither chamber takes aim at the underlying fiscal problems of Medicaid, the state-federal partnership that covers the poorest Americans.
“I am a pro-life conservative,” said Carly Fiorina. “I believe in the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman. I am a fiscal conservative. In other words, I share the conservative values that many Republican voters share, and have been public about that for a very long time.”
Health policy experts warn the Democrats’ proposal to terminate the Children’s Health Insurance Program would hike health care costs for low-income families and increase the number of uninsured kids.
Although the government has said that warrantless wiretapping under the Terrorist Surveillance Program has stopped, the Obama administration has not said that warrantless wiretapping isn’t ongoing under some other program.
“If the Stupak amendment is in there, I would definitely define it as one of most important life votes in more than a decade,” said Doug Johnson, the legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee.
“Al Qaeda will exploit an execution by the U.S. government as a significant propaganda victory, no matter how fair and legitimate the trial,” writes Ken Gude.
Experts say long-term unemployment is dangerous because it can have a snowball effect.
President Obama confirmed Wednesday that he plans to keep the controversial military commissions alive.
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