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Ann Coulter’s Disastrous Political Strategy: ‘Take Away Women’s Right To Vote’
Our guest blogger is Page Gardner, president and founder of Women’s Voice. Women Vote Action Fund.Earlier this week, Ann Coulter told The New York Observer that she believes women shouldn’t have the right to vote: If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind [...]

McConnell cancels press event to avoid questions on Craig.
Sen. Larry Craig (R-NM) today announced that he would go the distance and serve until the end of his Senate term. Fox News reports that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who had previously referred to Craig’s conduct as “unforgivable,” canceled a press conference in order “to avoid questions and declined comment about Craig’s future [...]

Army Denies Education Benefits To National Guard Troops Who Served 22 Months In Iraq
Approximately 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard recently returned home after serving multiple tours of duty in Iraq. They served 22 months — “longer than any other ground combat unit” — recieved nine fatalities, and were awarded dozens of Purple Hearts.But the Army wrote the orders for 1,162 of these soldiers for 729 days, [...]

Mired in attorney scandal, Wilson to seek Domenici’s seat.
After news broke that Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) would not be running for re-election, Rep. Heather Wilson (R-NM) announced she would be seeking Domenici’s seat. Domenici continued to be “dogged” by questions about his role in the U.S. attorney scandal, but Wilson isn’t in the clear either. Like Domenici, Wilson made “unprecedented” — and possibly [...]

Waxman: State Dept. Muzzling Evidence Of Iraqi Corruption To Avoid ‘Embarrassing’ Maliki
Last month, House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In the letter, Waxman objected to the State Department’s “instruction to its officials that they cannot communicate with the Committee about corruption in the Maliki government.” unless the Committee treat that information as classified and “withhold it from the [...]

FBI investigating HUD secretary over Katrina contracts.
In May, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson told Congress, “I don’t touch contracts.” But now the FBI and HUD Inspector General Kenneth Donohue are investigating whether Jackson “lined up a contract Katrina contract for his “golfing buddy”:The investigation appears to focus, in part, on whether Jackson misled Congress when he testified earlier [...]

Byrd: Senate’s ‘Saber-Rattling’ Is ‘Sleep-Walking’ America To War With Iran
On the Senate floor today, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) decried the recent Kyl-Lieberman amendment on Iran that 72 of his colleagues voted for, calling it an exercise in “international verbal spitball.” Byrd warned his colleagues against “sleep-walking” into another war, saying “I hope that we can stop this war of words before it becomes a [...]

Hannity named ‘radio personality’ of the year.
The National Association of Broadcasters announced today that right-wing talker Sean Hannity, who also hosts two shows on Fox News, has “won his second Marconi award, as best syndicated national radio personality.” Phil Boyce, the program director of WABC, Hannity’s home station, said “Sean wakes up every morning with a show screaming to get off [...]

Karl Rove’s Deputy J. Scott Jennings Resigns
J. Scott Jennings, White House Deputy Director of Political Affairs, has been Karl Rove’s right-hand man, assisting him in schemes ranging from the U.S. attorney scandal to political briefings at government agencies. ThinkProgress spoke with a White House spokesperson today who confirmed that Jennings is resigning, less than two months after his boss stepped [...]

Jawad: With Robust U.S. Commitment, ‘Afghanistan Is Winnable,’ ‘Achieving Victory Is Easy’
This Sunday marks the six-year anniversary of the initial U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan. In an interview with ThinkProgress, Said Tayeb Jawad, the Afghanistan Ambassador to the U.S., said the military incursion “was something that the Afghan people demanded.” He explained, “Every Afghan knows that there’s no way for us to have a better life except [...]

U.S. confiscates the AP’s Iraq bombing footage.
At least three people were killed yesterday when the diplomatic convoy carrying Poland’s ambassador to Iraq was ambushed by bombs and gunfire “in one of Baghdad’s most secure neighborhoods.” The ambassador survived after “being pulled to safety and airlifted in a rescue mission by the embattled security firm Blackwater USA.” An AP Television News caught [...]

GAO: FCC leaks tips to business interests.
A new GAO report “accuses the Federal Communications Commission of leaking tips to business interests before they’re made public” and that “the FCC has informed phone and cable lobbyists about items coming up for a vote in Congress.” The FCC is “closely intertwined with industry lobbyists — almost as close as the White House and [...]

Did Secretary Rice Know About Gonzales’ Secret ‘05 Legal Opinion On Torture?
In 2004, the Washington Post revealed a secret 2002 Justice Department memo that claimed that the torture of detainees in the war on terror “may be justified.” The memo, written by John Yoo, was so secret, that even then-National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell were unaware of its existence until [...]

Bush’s approval rating hits new low.
Just 31 percent of the American public approves of the job President Bush is doing, the “lowest level” ever ever recorded in the AP-Ipsos poll. “Bush also hit a new low with 31 percent approving of his work on domestic issues like health care, just below June’s 32 percent.”

House passes bill to prosecute contractors.
Today, the House voted 389-30 to “make all private contractors working in Iraq and other combat zones subject to prosecution by U.S. courts. It was the first major legislation of its kind to pass since a deadly shootout last month involving Blackwater employees.” The Senate plans to follow with similar legislation soon. The White House [...]

Gen. Peter Pace For President?
On Monday, the National Review wrote an editorial calling on Virginia to draft Gen. Peter Pace to run for Senate. “Virginia Republicans should tell this devoted patriot that he is not done, and encourage him to take on another mission,” wrote the editors.Today, Joseph Farah on WorldNetDaily takes the Pace-mania a step further, pushing [...]

Clear Channel Rejects VoteVets Ad Because It ‘Conflicts’ With Listeners Who Tune Into Rush
Rush Limbaugh’s hometown radio station that broadcasts his show — WJNO AM in Palm Beach, Florida — has refused to air a VoteVets ad by Brian McGough, the Iraq war veteran who was compared by Limbaugh to a suicide bomber.John Hunt, the vice president/market manager for Clear Channel in Palm Beach, wrote a letter yesterday [...]

ThinkFast: October 4, 2007
Despite releasing a legal opinion in Dec. 2004 that declared torture is “abhorrent,” the Alberto Gonzales-led DoJ issued a secret opinion shortly after his arrival in Feb. 2005 that provided “an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used” by the CIA. A lengthy NYT expos describes the Office of Legal Counsel, headed by [...]