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House passes SCHIP funding with strong support.
An overwhelming bipartisan majority in the House voted 265-159 tonight to pass the popular and successful Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act. The support fell just short of the two-thirds majority needed to override Bush’s expected veto of the bill. Speaker Pelosi called on Bush to “dig deeply into his heart” before depriving millions of [...]

Durbin: Lieberman-Kyl Amendment Is ‘Dangerous,’ ‘Puts Us On Record’ In Support Of Iran War
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) spoke forcefully this afternoon on the Senate floor against the Lieberman-Kyl amendment. Durbin described the “sense of the Senate” legislation as a “dangerous effort to put us on the record for the use of military force in Iran.” Noting that the language of the amendment suggests the use of [...]

Inslee: Kennedy ‘Got Us To The Moon,’ But ‘Bush’s Energy Policy Wouldn’t Get Us To Cleveland’
On Thursday, President Bush will host a meeting of the world’s major emitters of greenhouse gases where he will push them to accept his misguided framework of “voluntary” reductions. Bush is using this meeting as an excuse for skipping yesterday’s conference at the United Nations where world leaders met to lay out an aggressive “road [...]

Maliki downplays Iran’s influence in Iraq.
While the Senate and House were busy today ratcheting up tensions with Iran, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki claimed that Iranian weapons are no longer flowing into Iraq. “Asked about Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Forces, which the U.S. military charges is arming, training and directing Shiite militias in Iraq, Maliki said: ‘There used to be support [...]

CNN’s Rick Sanchez Echoes O’Reilly While Discussing O’Reilly’s Racism
On Friday, Media Matters noted that on the Sept. 19 broadcast of his radio show, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly made explicitly racist remarks about his recent dinner at Sylvia’s, a famous African-American-owned restaurant in Harlem. O’Reilly said he was shocked that the restaurant’s service was like that of “any other restaurant…even though it’s run by [...]

Giuliani fundraiser seeking $9.11 from guests.
Tomorrow, a supporter of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is hosting a “$9.11 for Rudy” fundraiser, in which guests are asked to give $9.11 donations to Giuliani’s presidential campaign. The campaign has distanced themselves from the fundraiser, but has not asked it to stop. The event has angered the International Association of Fire [...]

Bush’s $83,000 Lie About SCHIP
Today, the House is expected to vote on an extension of the State Children Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which would provide health coverage to 10 million children. Despite broad bipartisan support and the urging of governors, President Bush has threatened to veto the bill by repeating false claims about the legislation. One of most egregious [...]

White House backs down, withdraws CIA nominee.
The White House has withdrawn the nomination of John Rizzo to become General Counsel at the CIA. Rizzo’s nomination had elicited a fury of outrage from key senators and human rights and advocacy groups. The anger stemmed form Rizzo’s refusal at a June confirmation hearing to disavow his approval of a 2002 memo that stretched [...]

Reid: Lieberman-Kyl amendment being revised.
At a press conference this afternoon, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said that the hawkish amendment on Iran being offered by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) is now being revised prior to a Senate vote on the matter:REID: There are efforts being made before we vote on them to modify those [...]

O’Reilly Rips Columbia’s Invitation To Ahmadinejad As ‘Revolting,’ But Admits He Invited Him Too
Last night, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly criticized Columbia University’s decision to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on campus. O’Reilly, who spent much of last week railing against Columbia’s invitation, called the event “revolting” and singled out Columbia University President Lee Bollinger as being “hypocritical beyond belief” for his invitation. But moments later, [...]

White House prepares ‘phonetic guide’ for Bush.
As President Bush spoke to the United Nation’s General Assembly this morning, “a marked-up draft of the president’s speech popped up on the U.N.’s website” that included “phonetic spellings of some names and countries, and the cellphone numbers for Bush speechwriters.” White House Press Secretary Dana Perino got annoyed when a reporter asked “if the [...]

Webb: Lieberman And Kyl’s Hawkish Iran Amendment Is ‘Cheney’s Fondest Pipe Dream’
On the Senate floor today, Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) made an impassioned appeal to his fellow senators, declaring that the Lieberman-Kyl amendment on Iran should be “withdrawn” because the “proposal is Dick Cheney’s fondest pipe dream.” Webb cautioned that the “cleverly-worded sense of the Congress” could be “interpreted” to “declare war” on Iran. He continued:Those [...]

Lieberman-Kyl Amendment Seeks To Escalate Possibility Of Military Action Against Iran
Today, the Senate is expected to vote on an “extremely threatening” amendment to the Defense Authorization Bill introduced by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ). The “sense of the Senate” amendment could “lead to a tit-for-tat escalation resulting in military confrontation between the US and Iran.”The legislation accuses Iran of fighting “a proxy [...]

McConnell reaffirms public FISA debate will kill Americans.
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this morning, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell reaffirmed that public discussion of the administration’s surveillance program would lead to the “killing of Americans.” Via TPM:

Pentagon and Petraeus’ casualty data ‘differ significantly.’
In a report today on the Pentagon’s methods for determining sectarian killings in Iraq, the Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung writes that “apparent contradictions are relatively easy to find in the flood of bar charts and trend lines the military produces.” For instance, the numbers in the Pentagon’s quarterly Iraq report released last week “differ significantly” [...]

Blackburn focused more MoveOn ad than troop deaths.
Yesterday on MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson show, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) repeatedly condemned the recent MoveOn.org ad about Gen. Petraeus. But when host David Shuster asked her for the name of the last soldier from her district killed in Iraq, Blackburn faltered. Schuster informed her of the soldier’s name and added, “When was the last time [...]

No more ‘Friedmans’ for Friedman.
In May 2006, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) released a study demonstrating how New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman continually “boiled down the intricacies of the Iraq situation into a make-or-break deadline” lasting “six months.” Atrios soon adopted the “Friedman Unit” to describe perpetual “six monthers.” But on The Colbert Report last night, Friedman [...]

ThinkFast: September 25, 2007
Defying a Bush veto threat, the House will vote today on a significant expansion of the popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program. It is “the first skirmish in the new battle for universal health coverage. It is also the first confrontation between the president and Congress fought out almost entirely on terms set by the [...]