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Commanders ‘divided’ over way forward in Iraq.
McClatchy reports: In a sign that top commanders are divided over what course to pursue in Iraq, the Pentagon said Wednesday that it won’t make a single, unified recommendation to President Bush during next month’s strategy assessment, but instead will allow top commanders to make individual presentations. […]Military analysts called the move unusual for an [...]

Bush seeks to be portrayed as confontationalist.
U.S. News reports, “White House insiders don’t want to encourage expectations that President Bush will turn into a born-again accommodator in the final year and a half of his administration.” The insiders express “concern” that there is an expectation that Bush will be more “conciliatory.”

Spitzer, Schwarzenegger write Bush to expand SCHIP.
Today, Govs. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA) and Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) wrote a letter to President Bush, calling on him to reverse new rules instituted by his administration that deny thousands of children health care coverage: California and New York cover more than 1.4 million children and pregnant women using State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) funds [...]

BREAKING: Sens. Coleman And McCain Call For Craig To Resign
Sens. Norm Coleman (R-MN) and John McCain (R-AZ) have become the first members of the Senate to call for Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) to resign over his arrest for alleged “lewd conduct” in an airport bathroom. Craig, who was arrested in June, pled guilty to “disorderly conduct” charges on August 8, though the plea was [...]

Becks solution for New Orleans: More guns.
As the pace of reconstruction in New Orleans slows, the crime rate in New Orleans has increased. Rather than focus on addressing the horrible conditions facing the region’s residents, right-wing pundit Glenn Beck offers an alternative solution: give them guns. “There’s not enough guns in New Orleans,” Beck claims. He said he envisions “an exchange [...]

Tucker: I assaulted a man who bothered me in a bathroom.
Yesterday on MSNBC, Tucker Carlson said “it’s really common” that men accost one another in mens’ rooms, much like Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) is alleged to have done to a plainclothed cop. Carlson said, “I’ve been bothered in Georgetown Park,” in Washington, D.C., “when I was in high school.” When asked how he responded to [...]

GOP lawmaker calls for Craig’s resignation.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) today became the first lawmaker to call for Sen. Larry Craig’s (R-ID) resignation. Hoekstra called for him to step down “as his conduct throughout this matter has been inappropriate for a U.S. senator.”Digg It!

INTERVIEW: Tauscher Returns From Iraq, Warns Of ‘Green Zone Fog’
Shortly after returning from Iraq, Rep. Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) conducted an interview with ThinkProgress. She said she conveyed three things to Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker: 1) “the American people don’t want to see some kind of Saigon-like helicopter liftoff trying to remove people out of Iraq,” 2) they don’t want to [...]

Iraqis seeking U.S. refugee forced to apply in Syria, Jordan.
The Bush administration recently announced a stepped-up commitment to giving refuge to Iraqis who have worked for the United States and are now in danger. Yet very few have signed up for the program because “they are not allowed to apply in Iraq, requiring them to make a costly and uncertain journey to countries [...]

Bush’s ‘Soft Bigotry Of Low Expectations’ On Katrina Reconstruction
To mark the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, President Bush spoke today at the Dr. Martin Luther King Charter School for Math and Science, “armed with facts and figures” to show how much he has done. This appearance marked the fourth time in a row that Bush has chosen a charter school as a backdrop [...]

Armstrong tells Matthews to ‘be a little nicer.’
During the second day of his Livestrong Presidential Cancer Forum, cycling champion Lance Armstrong had to implore his co-host, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, to “just be a little nicer“:It took the likes of international cycling star Lance Armstrong to tame the aggressiveness of MSNBC’s “Hardball” host Chris Matthews during the second day of Armstrong’s presidential forum [...]

55 percent:
Number of Idaho voters who want Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) to resign, according to a new poll taken yesterday. Just 34 percent approve of the job Craig is doing as senator.

Russert: Conservatives ‘Just Want Senator Craig To Exit, To Leave’
Yesterday, in his first public statement since his June arrest for “lewd conduct” was revealed, Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) took a defiant tone, claiming that he “can still be an effective leader for Idaho,” despite the controversy over his arrest and guilty plea. He also said he would announce a decision this fall about whether [...]

The Way Out Of Iraq: How To Safely And Orderly Redeploy In A Year
Opponents of a sensible Iraq withdrawal strategy have tried to argue that a redeployment is unfeasible either because it will be occur too quickly or because it will take too long.President Bush argued recently warned that “precipitous withdrawal from Iraq is not a plan to bring peace to the region or to make our people [...]

Condi dresses down minimum wage worker.
In his upcoming biography of Condoleezza Rice, Washington Post correspondent Glenn Kessler shows how the Secretary of State “has lost none of her bluntness” while working “hard to soften her edges.” In one anecdote revealed by Kessler, Rice dressed down a jewelry store clerk who gave her less than satisfactory service: Coit Blacker, a Stanford [...]

ThinkFast: August 29, 2007
Two years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, “none of the 115 ‘critical priority projects’ identified by city officials” for publicly funded rebuilding efforts “has been completed.” Of the $34 billion “earmarked for long-term rebuilding,” less than half “has made its way through federal checks and balances to reach municipal projects.” 45 percent: Number of [...]