Any Wall Street bailout plan must be approved by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the White House said today.
John McCain's call for the resignation of Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris Cox is "dishonest," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) said Monday.
Presdent Bush celebrated Colombia's independence day at the White House this afternoon, two days after the holiday, offering a "brief discurso" on why Congress should approve his trade agreement with the South American nation.
The president appeared with members of his cabinet, GOP Reps. David Dreier (Calif.),
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President Bush repealed the executive ban on offshore oil drilling, trying to apply pressure on Democrats in Congress to go along.
"With this action, the executive branch's restrictions on this exploration have been cleared away," Bush said at a press conference Monday. "This means that the only thing standing between the American people and these vast oil resources is action from the U.S. Congress. Now the ball is squarely in Congress's court. Democratic leaders can show that they have finally heard the frustrations of the American people by matching the action I have taken today, repealing the congressional ban, and passing legislation to facilitate responsible offshore exploration."
Bush also said that it has been nearly a month since he called on Congress to lift its ban.
"And as the Democratically controlled Congress has sat idle, gas prices have continued to increase," he said. "Failure to act is unacceptable. It's unacceptable to me, and it's unacceptable to the American people."
Rep. Dennis Kucinich's (D-Ohio) latest article of impeachment against President Bush, which he will introduce on the House floor today, will accuse the president of misleading Congress into voting to invade Iraq.
Kucinich was working on the language of the article earlier today, a spokesman told The Hill. The finalized version accuses Bush of "deceiving Congress with fabricated threats of Iraq WMDs to fraudulently obtain support for an authorization of the use of military force against Iraq."
The Ohio Democrat leveled a similar accusation in the 35 articles of impeachment he introduced against Bush June 9.
The Briefing Room first reported Kucinich's plans to introduce the article yesterday.
Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) sent a letter to Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman last week asking him to calculate the potential savings of a switch to a 55 mph speed limit on major federal highways.
Warner wrote in the letter that the first time a 55 mph limit was enacted, back in 1974, national highway fuel consumption dropped by 2 percent. The 55 mph federal limit was repealed in 1995.
Warner said on Fox News Tuesday that he's merely urging lawmakers to study consider ways to help families deal with soaring gas prices.
"This is just an idea -- repeat, an idea of how America faced a similar crisis in 1973-'74, did reduce the demand at the pump and did reduce the cost at the pump," said Warner, who also noted he's a supporter of more domestic offshore oil drilling. "So why shouldn't we at least look at it as we scramble together here and work to put forward a program that'll help alleviate the very serious problem of cost to families at the gas pump today?"
Rep. Dennis Kucinich's (D-Ohio) move to impeach President Bush was defeated in the House of Representatives today.
Kucinich introduced articles of impeachment against Bush on Monday, successfully forcing a vote on them today. The House voted 251 to 166 today to send them to the Judiciary Committee, where it will likely languish.
Despite opposition from Democratic leaders, Kucinich's bill saw a vote because it was introduced as a privilege resolution, a type of legislation that must be voted on.
Kucinich's articles of impeachment were similar to those he introduced last year against Vice President Dick Cheney. In them, Kucinich alleged that Bush manufactured a false case for war before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
See CSPAN video of the vote, and analysis from The Hill's Bob Cusack, here.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is calling on Congress to ban the Department of Defense (DoD) from using tax money to fund "propaganda."
Kerry, along with fellow Democratic Sens. Byron Dorgan (N.D.), Bob Menendez (N.Y.), and Frank Lautenberg (N.Y.), is planning to introduce a companion bill to House legislation instituting such a ban, Kerry's office said today. The House version, introduced by Rep. Paul Hodes (D-N.H.), was included in the 2009 Defense authorization bill.
The bill defines propaganda as "any form of communication in support of national objectives designed to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, or behavior of the people of the United States in order to benefit the sponsor, either directly or indirectly."
Prompted by the influential New York Timesstory, in April Kerry called for a Government Accountability Office investigation into the Pentagon's placement of military analysts on U.S. news networks leading up to the Iraq war.
In a upcoming article in Foreign Affairs, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice writes that the United State did not invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein in order to spread Democracy throughout the Middle East but to rid itself of a threat.
"The United States did not overthrow Saddam to democratize the Middle East. It did so to remove a long-standing threat to international security," Rice writes in the July/August edition of Foreign Affairs.
"It is important to remember that we did not overthrow Adolf Hitler to bring democracy to Germany either. But the United States believed that only a democratic Germany could ultimately anchor a lasting peace in Europe," Rice adds.
Rice's claim conflicts with former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's memory of events.
In his much discussed book, McClellan writes that the Bush sold the American public on the war using faulty intelligence because he knew his vision of spreading Democracy throughout the Middle East would not be enough to sway the country.
Rice herself infamously said during the run-up to war in 2003 that she did not want the "smoking gun" on Iraqi WMD to come in the form of to a "mushroom cloud."
McClellan's account puts Bush's vision on Democracy in the Middle East front and center in the President's mind during the push to war, a claim Rice seems to refute.
Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) posted this video to his congressional site today, attacking a proposed loophole that would exempt contractors from waste, fraud, and abuse oversight on jobs done overseas. Welch has introduced legislation to prevent the loophole.
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