Home / thinkprogress.org rss archive / September-01-2007


Buyer beware: Bush admin neglecting consumer safety.
With recent recalls of toys, jewelry, and other products made in China, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has come under intense public scrutiny lately. The New York Times notes that the agency “has hardly been a priority of the Bush administration“:Under the Bush administration, which promised to ease what it viewed as costly rules that [...]

Bush’s plan to help homeowners ‘less than it appears.’
On Friday, President Bush unveiled his “plan to help homeowners,” who are facing foreclosures in the housing slump. But McClatchy reports that most of what Bush announced simply duplicates what Congress is already doing: The plan was announced days before Congress returns from its August recess with housing issues high on its agenda. The proposals, [...]

Rove: Bush Will Be Remembered As A ‘Far-Sighted Leader’
Yesterday, outgoing White House adviser Karl Rove penned a piece in the National Review devoted to extolling President Bush’s greatness and predicting that “history will provide a more clear-eyed verdict on this president’s leadership than the anger of current critics would suggest.” The White House liked it so much that it forwarded the piece [...]

Craig resigns, effective Sept. 30.
AP reports:Idaho Sen. Larry Craig resigned Saturday over a men’s room sex sting, bowing to pressure from fellow Republicans worried about a scandal dimming their election prospects. “I apologize for what I have caused,” Craig said. Craig’s resignation completed a stunning downfall that began Monday with the disclosure that he had pleaded guilty to a [...]

Condi accepts that Iraq is ‘a stain’ on her legacy.
In an analysis of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s efforts to “reshape her legacy,” New York Times reporter Helene Cooper notes today that Rice “is trying hard to rewrite her legacy to include something more than Iraq.” As for Iraq, Rice’s “colleagues and friends say that she has accepted that Iraq is a stain that [...]

Government secrecy on the rise.
A new report by OpenTheGovernment.org, a coalition of 67 organizations, finds that government secrecy “by almost any measure is expanding and little is being done to stop it.” Some highlights:– In six years, President Bush has issued at least 151 signing statements, challenging 1149 provisions of laws. In the 211 years of our Republic to [...]

Moyers Responds To Wallace’s Baseless Slander: Repeated Requests To Rove Went Unanswered
On Aug. 17, PBS’s Bill Moyers criticized Karl Rove for cynically invoking Christianity for political purposes while telling others that he is an agnostic. Moyers called Rove “a skeptic, a secular manipulator.”Two days later, Rove appeared on Fox News Sunday and took on Moyers’s criticism. “I’m a Christian. I go to church. I’m an Episcopalian,” [...]

Iraqi deaths rise for second month straight.
New Iraqi civilian death toll statistics contradict the Bush administration’s claims that the escalation is working. From the LA Times:Bombings, sectarian slayings and other violence related to the war killed at least 1,773 Iraqi civilians in August, the second month in a row that civilian deaths have risen, according to government figures obtained Friday.In July, [...]