Home / thinkprogress.org rss archive / September-26-2007


Clinton rips right wing for ‘feigned outrage’ over MoveOn ad.
In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, President Bill Clinton said there was something “completely disingenuous about the feigned outrage” from conservatives over the MoveOn ad. Clinton noted that many of the same conservatives who expressed outrage had likened Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA) to Osama bin Laden and had smeared Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) war [...]

Goldberg Misreads His Own Blog Post In Order To Attack ThinkProgress
On September 21, ThinkProgress noted a 2004 blog post by National Review Online editor-at-large Jonah Goldberg, in which the conservative writer approvingly posted an e-mail from a then-active duty reader that savagely bashed generals as “a gigantic pain in the ass” who are “dishonest.” In the post, ThinkProgress contrasted Goldberg’s vicarious attack on the credibility [...]

Boxer-Inhofe global warming rematch.
Today, the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works held a hearing about global warming’s impact on the Chesapeake Bay. Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), a proud climate skeptic, loudly objected to the fact that Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) was going to testify, but was quickly put down by the chair of the committee, Sen. Barbara [...]

Giuliani tells Talabani: I’ll stay ‘as long as necessary.’
In a private meeting with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in New York City today, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is seeking the Republican nomination for President, “indicated that he would keep a U.S. presence in that country for as long as necessary,” according to his aides. The Congressional Budget Office reported recently [...]

Spanish Notes Reveal Bush Was Hell-Bent On War, Despite Claiming Ive Not Made Up My Mind
Today, the Spanish newspaper El Pais published a transcript of a discussion between President Bush and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar in February 2003 in which the Bush told Aznar that the U.S. would go to war with Iraq to disarm Saddam Hussein with or without a UN resolution:“We must take him right now. [...]

Pace’s comments on gays elicits loud protests.
In March, Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace declared, “I believe that homosexual acts between individuals are immoral.” Today, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) called them “very hurtful comments, very demoralizing comments.” Harkin then offered Pace, who was attending his final hearing before resigning his post, an opportunity to clarify his remarks. But Pace only caused more [...]

Gen. Sean Hannity And Fox News Lay Out Their War Plan For Attacking ‘Ticking Bomb’ Iran
The Fox News network is now in full drumbeat mode, trying to promote a war against Iran.Last night, armchair General Sean Hannity did his part to beat the Iran war drums. On Hannity and Colmes, the bellicose host devoted half the show to previewing “what a U.S. strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would look like“:HANNITY: [...]

Spakovsky not recommended, but will get full Senate vote.
Earlier today, ThinkProgress noted that the Senate Rules Committee was voting today on the nomination of former Bush DoJ official Hans von Spakovsky to a seat on the Federal Election Commission. TPM’s Paul Kiel reports that after Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) broke party lines to support Spakovsky, Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) “chose to agree to [...]

From One Bunker To Another: Dick Cheney To Address Super-Secret, Conservative Policy Group
On Friday, Dick Cheney will leave his “secure undisclosed location” to attend another one in Utah. The Salt Lake Tribune reports:Vice President Dick Cheney will speak to a super-secret, conservative policy group in Utah on Friday during his second trip to the state this year.The group is called the Council for National Policy, and its [...]

3,000 and growing:
The number of students and faculty at Stanford University “protesting plans to bring former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to the Hoover Institution next year as a distinguished visiting fellow.”

Fleischer Callously Tells Dead Soldier’s Mom ‘There Are Going To Be A Lot More Mothers’ Like You
Yesterday, former White House Press Secretary and current board member of the White House front group Freedom’s Watch, appeared on MSNBC to defend a recent ad showing an injured Iraq veteran saying “they attacked us, and they will again.”During the segment, host Norah O’Donnell showed Fleischer a video of a mother whose son was killed [...]

Couric blasts Bush on Iraq, war was ‘a mistake.’
Speaking at the National Press Club yesterday, CBS anchor Katie Couric “pulled back the curtain on her personal views of the war in Iraq,” stating that Americans were “misled” into invading Iraq:“Everyone in this room would agree that people in this country were misled in terms of the rationale of this war,” said Couric, [...]

BREAKING: Lieberman-Kyl’s Iran amendment passes.
By a vote 76-22, the Senate passed the Lieberman-Kyl amendment, which threatens to “combat, contain and [stop]” Iran via “military instruments.” Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) called the amendment “Cheney’s fondest pipe dream” and said it could “read as a backdoor method of gaining Congressional validation for military action.”

Ahmadinejad scrubs gay denial from speech.
During his speech at Columbia University on Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad outlandishly denied the existence of homosexuality in Iran, saying “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country.” That section of his speech, however, is not included in the transcript posted on Ahmadinejad’s official website.

Sylvia’s patrons: O’Reilly’s comments were ‘inappropriate.’
On NBC’s Today Show this morning, patrons of the famous Harlem restaurant Sylvia’s expressed their shock over recent comments by Fox News’ host Bill O’Reilly, who said on his radio show that he was surprised that the service at Sylvia’s was like that of “any other restaurant…even though it’s run by blacks.” “It wasn’t appropriate,” [...]

Rice Compares Zarqawi To Ulysses S. Grant And Robert E. Lee
Yesterday in an interview with the Fox News editorial board, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attributed U.S. progress in Iraq to the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) leader. She likened him to a great civil war general, inflating the importance of his death and the U.S. “successes”: He [...]

Hans Von Spakovsky 101: How To Suppress The Vote Like A Pro
Today, the Senate Rules and Administration Committee will vote on the nomination of Hans von Spakovsky for a seat on the Federal Election Commission. In June, the Rules Committee held a confirmation hearing on four nominees to the FEC. But much of the hearing focused on Spakovsky, who has become a lighting rod for criticism [...]

GAO: Wounded vets still getting shoddy treatment.
In February, the Washington Post’s Dana Priest and Anne Hull revealed that wounded veterans at Walter Reed were living in deplorable conditions of “neglect” and “indifference.” Following the reports, the Bush administration, Congress and the military promised to fix the problems. But a new report released by the Government Accountability Office concludes that “wounded warriors [...]

Jenna distances herself from dad’s abstinence-only policy.
Asked if her new book’s advocacy of condoms and sex-ed contradicts the Bush administration’s abstinence-only policies, First Daughter Jenna Bush told ABC’s Diane Sawyer she refuses to endorse the views espoused by her father’s administration:No, I mean, not at all, first, because I’m not part of the administration. You know, I’m just my father’s daughter. [...]

ThinkFast: September 26, 2007
U.S. military officials are pressing the State Department to “assert more control over” Blackwater USA, “which operates under the department’s authority.” “This is a nightmare,” said a senior military official of the recent incident involving Blackwater. “This is going to hurt us badly. It may be worse than Abu Ghraib.” While expressing his support for [...]