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Audience boos Brownback’s proposal to ban gay marriage.
At the Fox News GOP presidential debate tonight, correspondent Carl Cameron asked a New Hampshire woman whether she wanted gay marriage banned. Her answer — “Absolutely not” — received cheers from the audience. When Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) then said he believes the nation should have a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, the audience loudly [...]

Upset Over GAO’s Findings On Iraq, Lawmaker Attacks Agencies’ Qualifications To Issue Report
Now that the GAO has reported that there is little to no progress in Iraq and that the administration may be cooking the books on levels of violence, conservatives are desperately trying to attack the agency’s credibility.Today at a House International Relations Committee hearing, ranking member Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) attempted to claim that the [...]

Group sues White House over missing e-mails.
The National Security Archive today filed a lawsuit charging that the White House “abandoned an automatic archiving system for its e-mail in 2002 and did not replace it,” resulting in the loss of approximately five million e-mails between March 2003 and Oct. 2005. In May, the watchdog group CREW also filed a lawsuit seeking information [...]

Giuliani: Corruption-Laden Haley Barbour ‘On The Top Of Everybody’s List’ For VP
The AP reports that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani stood with Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour (R) yesterday, calling Barbour an ideal running mate:Responding to the question about a possible running mate, Giuliani said: “Gov. Barbour will be on the top of everybody’s list.”Selecting Barbour as a running mate would instantly bring the stain [...]

BBC caves to executives, scraps climate change series.
The BBC has scrapped plans for Planet Relief, a television special on climate change designed to “raise consciousness” about the environment and encourage viewers to save energy. The network’s corporate executives protested the series, claiming it was “not the corporation’s job to save the planet.” “Negative reaction to the flop Live Earth concert, promoted by [...]

Judge ’scolds’ Bush administration on spying secrecy.
Today, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. “scolded” the Bush administration “for responding with sometimes blanket secrecy to a request for documents on its warrantless wiretapping program.” While the judge agreed that the documents could not be released, he criticized the government’s reasons for holding them back:“While the court is certainly sensitive to the [...]

President Clinton calls for ’substantial drawdown’ this year.
Tonight, President Clinton will appear on CNN’s Larry King Live. Clinton says, “We’ll have to have a substantial drawdown of troops this year.” One of the reasons that a drawdown is necessary, Clinton explains, is that the armed forces are extremely over-stretched. “If we had a big national security emergency now, we’d be virtually compelled [...]

Bush: ‘We’re kicking ass’ in Iraq.
Upon arriving in Iraq yesterday, President Bush told the Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister Mark Vaile, “we’re kicking ass” in Iraq. His comments come in spite of a new Government Accountability Office report that finds the escalation has failed to improve the security situation. (HT:Carpetbagger Report)

Shays’ spectacular surge.
Asked to assess the chances that escalation would succeed, Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) said last week, “[I]f you ask me now, I think it is one out of four.” But yesterday on the PBS Newshour, Shays underwent a major conversion. “The surge is working,” he said. “It’s a huge success!“

The new head of the Office of Strategery.
Yesterday, President Bush named Barry Jackson to be Peter Wehnher’s replacement to run the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives. Jackson was the major White House strategist behind Bush’s failed Social Security privatization ploy, and was one of the White House employees discovered to be using RNC email accounts to e-mail an associate of disgraced [...]

Bush ‘Still Believed Saddam Possessed WMD’ In April 2006
In Oct. 2004, President Bush finally admitted that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction: “Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there.” Yet according to former White House chief of staff Andy Card, this statement was just rhetoric. In his new book on Bush, Robert Draper writes [...]

DHS ends controversial data-mining project.
The Department of Homeland Security “has given up on one of its broadest anti-terrorism data-mining tools after investigators found it was tested with information about real people without the required privacy safeguards.”

Boehner Caught Shifting His Own Benchmarks On Escalation
On Jan. 23, 2007, just weeks after President Bush announced his escalation plan in Iraq, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said on CNN that we would know if the troop increase would “work” within “60 to 90 days“:Q: How long can you and your membership give the president and give the Iraqi military, before [...]

Ohio congressman found dead.
“Rep. Paul Gillmor (R-Oh) passed away suddenly Tuesday night, according to his office. No other details were immediately available. He was 68. … Capitol Police is currently investigating, but sources believe that the 10-term lawmaker may have had a heart attack.”

Ney threatened staffer with ‘abusive phone calls.’
Neil Volz, a former top staffer to Rep. Bob Ney (R-OH) who pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the Jack Abramoff scandal, is now asking for “house arrest” instead of prison time. Documents filed in federal court last week said that Volz has “endured harsh criticism, including abusive phone calls” from Ney when the former congressman [...]

Goldsmith: In DoJ Hiring Interview, I Was Asked ‘Are You A Republican?’
In his new book, The Terror Presidency, former Office of Legal Council chief Jack Goldsmith claims “he was quizzed about his political loyalties during his initial job interview” with the Department of Justice. According to Goldsmith, the first question asked in his interview with David Leitch, a deputy to then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, [...]

Rep. Lamborn apologizes for threatening constituents.
Jonathan and Anna Bartha recently wrote a critical letter to the editor about Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) in the Denver Post, taking issue with a $1,000 contribution he received from the International Game Technology PAC. Lamborn then left two threatening voicemails on the couple’s answering machine, warning there would be “consequences” if they did not [...]

Soltz to Senor: ‘You can’t spin me a third time.’
Last night on Hannity and Colmes, Iraq war vet and VoteVets founder Jon Soltz debated Dan Senor, former senior adviser to Paul Bremer in Iraq. When Senor told Soltz “you got to admit” progress is being made in Iraq, Soltz responded:When you were in Iraq, I believed you. I trusted you. Our soldiers needed your [...]

Kingston refuses to correct reference to ‘Demoncrats.’
In a statement released over the summer recess, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) referred to Democrats as “Demoncrats.” “Demoncrats and Republicans Split Over Government Healthcare,” the statement read. A Kingston spokeswoman called it a mistake and an “obvious typo,” but CQ reports:Typo? Probably. But apparently not one Kingston’s office cares to correct. A month after its [...]

ThinkFast: September 5, 2007
A recent poll finds 52 percent of Australians believe Bush is the worst U.S. president ever, primarily due to his Iraq war policy. Yesterday, Australian Prime Minister John Howard told Bush he would not reduce the 1,600 Australian forces in Iraq.The nation’s Medicaid directors yesterday told the Bush administration that its new restrictions on the [...]