Home / thinkprogress.org rss archive / September-04-2007


Bush’s advisers tell him what he wants to hear.
“President Bush’s senior advisers on Iraq have recommended he stand by his current war strategy, and he is unlikely to order more than a symbolic cut in troops before the end of the year, administration officials told The Associated Press Tuesday.” This advice reaffirms Bush’s stated desire to stay in Iraq.UPDATE: Watch Keith Olbermann’s special [...]

Chertoff promised right-wing group charges against Clinton.
The LA Times reports that in 2001, Michael Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, met with the conservative group Judicial Watch and “personally assured” them that he would pursue criminal charges against Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) “in connection with a lavish fundraising event in Los Angeles.” Chertoff is now one of the [...]

Breaking: Sen. Craig reconsidering his intention to resign.
Last week, Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) announced, “It is with sadness and deep regret that I announce that it is my intent to resign from the Senate, effective Sept. 30.” Apparently, he is now reconsidering. MSNBC’s Dan Abrams reports that the man who said “he would resign to avoid becoming a distraction is now once [...]

Service to Cheney is like serving in Iraq.
On this evening’s Hardball, Ron Christie, a former aide to Vice President Cheney, equated his work in the White House to serving in Iraq. While debating Iraq war veteran Jon Soltz, Christie said to Soltz, “I am pleased and honored by the fact that you chose to wear the uniform of this country, but I [...]

Gore confirms VP is part of executive branch.
In June, House investigators learned that Vice President Cheney exempted his office from a presidential executive order, arguing that the Office of the Vice President is not an “entity within the executive branch.” In a recent interview with Harvard’s alumni magazine, former Vice President Al Gore confirmed that the Vice President is indeed part of [...]

GAO Chief Suggests Administration Is Cooking The Books On Levels Of Sectarian Violence In Iraq
Gen. David Petraeus has claimed that there has been a 75 percent reduction in sectarian violence. In testimony today before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, GAO Comptroller General David Walker said those statistics cannot be independently verified.The GAO’s statistics, which extend through the end of July, demonstrate that the number of daily attacks against Iraqis [...]

GOP Power Grab For California Votes Linked To Swift Boat Funder
This summer, a group of California lawyers filed a ballot initiative that would apportion the state’s presidential electors on a district-by-district, rather than statewide, basis. The ballot initiative “would rig elections in a way that would make it difficult for a Democrat to be elected president, no matter how the popular vote comes out.” [...]

High school student criticizes McCain on gay marriage.
This morning, a high school student challenged Sen. John McCain about his age, causing McCain to jokingly refer to the student as “a little jerk.” The troubles for McCain didn’t end there. Another student pressed him with regards to his stance on gay marriage. Here’s the exchange:Student: “Do you support civil unions or gay marriage?”McCain: [...]

Doolittle aides subpoenaed.
Rep. John Doolittle’s (R-CA) chief of staff and deputy chief of staff “have been subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury in a federal probe into ties between Doolittle, his wife and jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff.” FBI agents raided Doolittle’s Virginia home in April “looking for information about a fund-raising business his wife ran that [...]

Thompson: ‘The Whole’ Middle East ‘Will Become Nuclearized’ If We Redeploy From Iraq
Former senator Fred Thompson has regularly fearmongered about terrorist threats. In June, he warned that undocumented immigration could lead to “suitcase bombs” from Cuba and alleged that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s (D-NV) call to redeploy from Iraq was “encouraging our enemies.”Taking his fearmongering to new heights, yesterday on Hannity and Colmes, Thompson claimed that [...]

Why Gonzales finally quit.
Newsweek reports that although a former colleague urged outgoing Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to quit months ago, he hung on “believing the president wanted him to stay.” But the turning point came when an internal review by chief of staff Josh Bolten “concluded that Gonzales was so politically weak he had become an obstacle to [...]

McCain calls high school student a ‘little jerk.’
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) snidely responded to a high school student who challenged whether he was too old and too conservative to be president. McCain jokingly referred to the questioner as “a little jerk” who ought to be drafted: An unflinching John McCain was told Tuesday by New Hampshire high school students he might be [...]

Former Bush Official: White House Wanted To ‘Get Rid Of That Obnoxious FISA Court’
A new book by Jack Goldsmith — one of the “brightest stars in the conservative legal firmament,” good friend of John Yoo, visiting scholar at AEI, and former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — has published a book detailing the administration’s extraordinary efforts to expand its wiretapping program. While Goldsmith [...]

GAO Report: Daily Attacks Against Iraqis Have Remained Unchanged
The Government Accountability Office has released its congressionally mandated report on the Iraq’s progress towards meeting 18 separate security and political benchmarks. The Iraqi government met 3, partially met 4, and did not meet 11 of its 18 benchmarks.Contrary to claims made by Gen. David Petraeus that sectarian violence has decreased dramatically, the GAO report [...]

Souter nearly resigned after Bush v. Gore decision.
According to a new book on the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin, Justice David Souter nearly resigned in the wake of Bush v. Gore because he was so distraught over the decision that effectively ended the Florida recount and installed Bush as president:Toobin writes that while the other justices tried to put the case behind [...]

Draper: Laura Bush Considers Rove ‘A Necessary Evil,’ ‘Self-Aggrandizing’
In a new book on the Bush presidency, entitled “Dead Certain,” former Texas Monthly senior editor Robert Draper reveals that First Lady Laura Bush refers to her husband’s longtime political adviser, Karl Rove, as “Pigpen,” the perpetually dirty character from Charles Schulz’ “Peanuts” comic strip.On the Today Show this morning, host Meredith Veira asked Draper [...]

Karl Rove’s next move.
U.S. News reports: President Bush’s behind-the-curtain adviser, Karl Rove, is expected to reprise that role for the prez in Texas, we hear. Now retired from the White House, Rove is planning to take charge of the Bush library and museum, including the design, fundraising, and planning for what insiders are calling a copy of [...]

ThinkFast: September 4, 2007
Bush’s arrival in Sydney was marked by protests. “An established anti-war group called the Stop Bush Coalition called a small ‘unwelcoming ceremony’ in Sydney to kick off a series of protests culminating in a march by up to 20,000 people on Saturday.” Authorities have locked down the city in the biggest security operation in Australian [...]

Petraeus’s office responds to misleading bios of lawmakers.
Last week, ThinkProgress highlighted bios of Reps. Jim Moran (D-VA) and Ellen Tauscher (D-CA) that the Strategic Effects (STRATEFF) office of MNF-I created and distributed to U.S. troops in Iraq.The Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum has received a response from Gen. David Petraeus’s spokesman regarding the bios: First, the sheets of paper were open-source bio’s that [...]