Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich lent credence Sarah Palin's claim that the healthcare reform legislation will create "death panels" to judge end-of-life issues.
"Communal standards, historically, have been a very dangerous proposition," he said on ABC's "This Week" Sunday morning.
On Saturday morning, Palin called President Obama's healthcare proposal "downright evil" because it would create a "death panel" that would decide if individuals are worthy of treatment based on their "level of productivity in society."
In defense of Palin's remarks, Gingrich cited an article written by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of White House Chief of Stadff Rahm Emanuel and a healthcare policy adviser, that suggested the possibility of population control.
"You're asking us to trust the government, not the Obama administration, the government," to provide healthcare Gingrich added.
The show's other guest, former DNC Chairman and Vermont Governor Howard Dean, dismissed Palin's comments, saying "about euthanasia, they're just totally erroneous. She just made that up."
House Republicans released a new video today showing footage of 9/11 and attacking President Obama's decision to close Guantanamo Bay.
The video is part of a Republican offensive against the prospect of transferring or releasing Guantanamo detainees into the United States.
Yesterday, Republicans introduced the Keep Terrorists Out of America Act, which would require consent of the governor and legislature of a state before detainees could be transferred there. It would also require the administration to certify that the detainees would not threaten U.S. safety.
Attorney General Eric Holder said yesterday that no one considered a terrorist would be released into the United States.
President Bush, during the signing ceremony Thursday for the bill overhaulingthe Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), said that the threat of terrorism remains "very real."
Bush and his administration had strongly pushed for Democrats to pass the FISA update, along with immunity from lawsuits for telecom companies that participated in the White House's domestic warrantless wiretapping program.
Below is the portion of Bush's remarks in the Rose Garden during which he stresses the need for the legislation in defending the country:
The fact that the terrorists have failed to strike our shores again, does not mean that our enemies have given up. To the contrary, since 9/11 they've plotted a number of attacks on our homeland. Like members standing up here, I receive briefings on the very real and very dangerous threats that America continues to face.
The most important lessons learned after 9/11 was that America's intelligence professionals lacked some of the tools they needed to monitor the communications of terrorists abroad. It's essential that our intelligence community know who our enemies are talking to, what they're saying, and what they're planning.
Last year, Congress passed temporary legislation that helped our intelligence community monitor these communications. The legislation I'm signing today will ensure that our intelligence community professionals have the tools they need to protect our country in the years to come.
The [Director of National Intelligence] and the attorney general both report that once enacted, this law will provide vital assistance to our intelligence officials in their work to thwart terrorist plots. This law will ensure that those companies whose assistance is necessary to protect the country will themselves be protected from lawsuits from past or future cooperation with the government.
This law will protect the liberties of our citizens, while maintaining the vital flow of intelligence. This law will play a critical role in helping to prevent another attack on our soil.
The Senate today passed the House's Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) overhaul, voting 69 to 28 in favor of the bill.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) praised the bill's passage. "Today the Senate ensured that our national security officials have the tools they need to help protect our country from future terrorist attacks.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee want Attorney General Michael Mukasey to clarify his claim that the the government failed to act on a phone call about the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Mukasey said last month in San Francisco that the government failed to wiretap a phone call from an Afghanistan "safe house" to somebody in the United States prior to the September 11th strike. Mukasey made the claim while arguing that that Congress should renew a 2007 expansion of government surveillance capabilities.
On Monday, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Robert "Bobby" Scott (D-Va.) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) sent a letter to Mukasey asking what he was referring to. Mukasey's statement, they wrote, was "very disturbing" because it was the first time someone had referred "to a call from a known terrorist safe house in Afghanistan to the United States which, if it had been intercepted, could have helped prevented the terrorist attacks.
They added: "If such calls were known about and not intercepted, serious additional concerns would be raised about the government's failure to take appropriate action before 9/11."
Here's Mukasey's quote under scrutiny, as reported by the New York Sun:
Officials "shouldn't need a warrant when somebody picks up the phone in Iraq and calls somebody in the United States because that's the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that's the call that we didn't know about. We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went."
Mukasey made the claim while calling on Congress swiftly renew an amendment to the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA) that had allowed for expanded surveillance activities.
House Democrats have bucked the Bush administration's request, passing their own FISA update last month that does not include retroactive legal immunity for telecom companies that participated in the government's domestic warrantless wiretapping program. President Bush has said he would veto any FISA bill that lacks immunity for the companies.
Read the Democrats' letter to Mukasey here (.pdf).
The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) criticized the Bush administration today for lobbying Congress to oppose the so-called "media shield" bill, officially titled the Free Flow of Information Act.
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and Attorney General Michael Mukasey all sent letters to key senators each sent letters to Senate leaders and key committee chairmen expressing intelligence, security, and law enforcement concerns over the bill. The Justice Dept. also launched a website yesterday dedicated to opposing the bill.
The bill, introduced by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), seeks to "protect the free flow of information to the public" by providing conditions under which the government can compel journalists to release information. The administration says these conditions are too restrictive.
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) released its own 3 a.m. web ad today. U.S. intelligence officers cannot monitor phone conversations between suspected terrorists, the NRCC says, "because the Democrat Majority refuses to answer the call to protect the American people."
President Bush set out an agenda for Congress this morning: reform FISA, modernize the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and approve his Colombia free trade agreement.
Congress returns today from two weeks of recess, and Bush spoke this morning as he departed from the White House for NATO's summit in Bucharest, which will begin Wednesday.
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