carl levin

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) might have postponed this week’s planned Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on the Fort Hood shooting after President Obama asked Congress to await the results of ongoing Army and FBI inquiries. But today the committee will go forward with a closed-door briefing on Fort Hood, held at the Russell office building [...]

A statement released by Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence:
“Due to the high visibility of the issues surrounding the tragic event at Fort Hood, the President has instructed the National Security Council to assume control of all informational briefings. The NSC has directed that the leadership, [...]

The push is on to dilute the climate change bills moving through Congress, and it’s not coming only from conservatives. Mother Jones’ Kate Sheppard reports today that 14 Senate Democrats are urging their leadership to amend the proposal to grant more free polluting permits to the coal-burning utilities that emit the most greenhouse gases. In [...]

Just released from the Senate Armed Services Committee staff:
Today’s Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on the shooting incident at Fort Hood, Texas, has been postponed. The committee will send out a notice when the new date for the briefing has been scheduled.
In the aftermath of the Fort Hood shooting, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the [...]

The briefing, according to a release from the committee, will be entirely closed to the public. Presumably Nidal Malik Hasan’s intercepted communications with al-Qaeda affiliates will be discussed. It all goes down, with testimony from Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey and Army Secretary John McHugh, on Monday, Nov. 16.

Just released from Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee:
Our hearts go out to the families of the brave Americans who lost their lives in today’s senseless violence at Ft. Hood, Texas, and to those who were injured. For all Americans, and especially for those of us who know and work [...]

It’s not quite a call to end the Afghanistan war, but Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), chairman of the crucial House Appropriations Committee and a participant in Tuesday’s congressional meeting with President Obama, has emailed out a very long statement saying that waging a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan is likely to be “futile.” Even Sen. Carl Levin’s [...]

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) clearly prefers to read entire speeches in context before calling a general insubordinate. After attending yesterday’s congressional meeting with President Obama on Afghanistan, Levin told Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin that the president expressed high regard for his chosen commander:

ThinkProgress has the video from “Good Morning America,” in which the ousted deputy U.N. special representative to Afghanistan says that the stolen election has unmoored U.S. strategy for Afghanistan to such a point that increasing troop levels doesn’t make sense. TP’s transcript:
In the absence of having a credible Afghan partner … it makes no sense [...]

The White House’s Office of Management and Budget has put out a statement mostly in support of the version of a fiscal 2010 Defense appropriations bill making its way through the Senate Appropriations Committee. “Mostly” because the White House is taking issue with a few funding priorities in the bill. In the statement, OMB offers [...]