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Report: Obama prepared to talk to Hamas. - 01/09/2009 04:26 AM

Barack Obama is reportedly planning to ditch President Bush’s strategy of isolating Hamas, and will instead move to open contacts with the group. “The Guardian has spoken to three people with knowledge of the discussions in the Obama camp. There is no talk of Obama approving direct diplomatic negotiations with Hamas early on, but he [...]

Bush: I liberated America’s school children. - 01/09/2009 02:02 AM

President Bush is fond of saying that he “liberated 50 million people” by taking military action in Iraq and Afghanistan. But the populations of those two foreign countries aren’t the only people that Bush claims to have liberated. In his last policy speech as President, Bush said today that No Child Left Behind has led [...]

U.S. Air Force releases flow chart of ‘counter-blog’ reponse plan. - 01/09/2009 01:16 AM

As part of its halting efforts to reach out to bloggers in constructive ways, the U.S. Air Force has assembled a “counter-blog” action plan aimed at responding to bloggers who have “negative opinions about the U.S. government and the Air Force.” The plan includes a detailed flow-chart that, as Danger Room explains, “lays out a [...]

Democratic senators come out against Obama’s tax cuts for corporations. - 01/09/2009 12:34 AM

In a closed-door meeting of the Senate Finance Committee today, Democratic Sens. John Kerry, Kent Conrad, and Ron Wyden expressed their skepticism of Barack Obama’s $3,000 tax credit proposal for companies that hire or retrain workers, arguing that it wouldn’t do much to create jobs. The Wonk Room’s Pat Garofalo has the details.

Former FEMA chief Michael Brown forced to evacuate from Colorado wildfires. - 01/08/2009 11:49 PM

In recent days, vicious wildfires have forced thousands of Boulder, Colorado area residents to evacuate. One of those residents: disgraced former FEMA chief Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown. This morning in an interview with a Colorado radio station, Brownie remarked, “Here I am on the other side of the fence now.” He added that “was strange [...]

Boot: Bring Back The Bush Doctrine, Attack Iranian And Pakistani Nuclear Facilities - 01/08/2009 10:48 PM

Council on Foreign Relations senior fellow and prominent neoconservative Max Boot has surfaced on Foreign Policy magazine’s website this week, bemoaning the unpopularity of the Bush Doctrine despite its disastrous results in Iraq. Taking advantage of hindsight, Boot says that if only the world had taken seriously warnings about Hitler’s Germany and later al Qaeda, [...]

Gonzales claims he can’t get a job because of the ‘rough economy.’ - 01/08/2009 10:10 PM

In April, reports revealed that former attorney general Alberto Gonzales was “unable to interest law firms in adding his name to their roster.” Gonzales has previously said that law firms were hesitant to hire him because of “all the investigations and the possibility that I might be indicted.” But in an interview with the Austin-American [...]

In Last-Minute Move, Bush Ditches Fuel Economy Standards That He Trumpeted In 2007 - 01/08/2009 09:31 PM

During the debate over the 2007 energy bill, one of the Bush administration’s chief demands – besides opposing strong renewable energy goals – was raising fuel efficiency standards to 31.8 miles per gallon by 2015 and 35 mpg by 2020. The administration repeatedly trumpeted their goal: – BUSH: My proposal at the State of the Union [...]

Cheney awkwardly stands before Congress as Pelosi interrupts his speech to applaud Obama’s victory. - 01/08/2009 08:59 PM

Today, Vice President Cheney stood before Congress and read the official results of the 2008 presidential election. After reading the electoral totals, he declared that they “shall be entered, together with a list of the votes, in the journals of the Senate and the House of Representatives.” Just as he was about to move on [...]

Courts using Ledbetter decision to ‘undermine civil rights principles across the board.’ - 01/08/2009 08:21 PM

Tomorrow, the House is set to take up the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would overturn a Supreme Court decision that restricted a woman’s right to bring pay discrimination lawsuits. The House handily passed the bill last year, but Senate conservatives blocked it after President Bush threatened to veto it. On a conference call organized [...]

Obama breaks from Bush: ‘I often read bad press.’ - 01/08/2009 07:39 PM

Yesterday in his CNBC interview, President-elect Obama said that he doesn’t plan on living in a “bubble” during his time in office and will be “open to outside information, particularly criticism.” “I very rarely read good press,” he added. “I often read bad press, not because I agree with it, but because I want to [...]

Perle Washes His Hands Of Iraq: I Was Not An ‘Architect Of That War,’ Neocons Had No Influence - 01/08/2009 06:48 PM

Over the past few weeks, many Bush administration officials have begun rewriting history in an effort to burnish President Bush’s legacy. Following suit, neoconservative war hawk Richard Perle has taken the opportunity to polish his own record during the Bush years — mainly on Iraq. In the latest issue of The National Interest, Perle devotes 4,600 [...]

Palin on Olbermann: ‘THAT guy is EVIL!’ - 01/08/2009 06:01 PM

Right-winger John Ziegler — who is waging a one-man crusade to prove that President-elect Obama won the election solely because of “media bias” — recently interviewed Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK). In a gushing description published on a new website devoted to making Hollywood more conservative, Ziegler details Palin’s reaction to seeing a photo of MSNBC [...]

Lesbian couple invited on Obama’s inaugural whistle stop tour. - 01/08/2009 05:38 PM

The Washington Blade reports that “lesbian couple Lisa Hazirjian and her partner Michelle have been invited to join” President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden on their Whistle Stop train ride to the nation’s capital leading up to the inauguration. “Hazirjian, who is from Ohio, serves as an at-large board member of Equality Ohio, as a [...]

McConnell Urges Coleman To Fight On, Despite Urging Gore To ‘Be A Statesman’ And Concede In 2000 - 01/08/2009 04:44 PM

On Monday, the Minnesota State Canvassing Board certified Democrat Al Franken as the victor in the U.S. Senate race recount, beating incumbent Republican Norm Coleman by 225 votes. In a press conference the next day, however, Coleman rejected the Board’s ruling, vowing to wage a court battle to challenge the results. A trial will [...]

Debunking the top 10 conservative myths about health care reform. - 01/08/2009 04:25 PM

Today, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions is holding confirmation hearings for former senator Tom Daschle, President-elect Obama’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services. In advance of the confirmation, conservatives have been actively filling the nation’s leading newspapers with editorials attacking Daschle and misrepresenting the consequences and implications [...]

Engel: Israel waiting until Obama’s inauguration to let reporters into Gaza, when ‘viewers simply won’t care.’ - 01/08/2009 03:56 PM

Last night on The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC correspondent Richard Engel discussed Israel’s refusal to let reporters into Gaza. “I’ve called everyday and said ‘when are we going to be allowed in?’” he said, adding that one Israeli official “had an interesting explanation” for the situation. The official told Engel that Israel doesn’t want reporters [...]

ThinkFast: January 8, 2009 - 01/08/2009 03:00 PM

Anti-American Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr yesterday called for “revenge operations” against U.S. forces to protest Israel’s offensive in Gaza. Sadr also “urged that Palestinian flags be raised on mosques, churches and other buildings in Iraq and that all countries shut down Israel’s embassies.” Three rockets fired from Lebanon into Northern Israel today “raised concern [...]

Mississippi, A Hotbed of Abstinence Education, Now Boasts Highest Teen Pregnancy Rate In America - 01/08/2009 02:30 AM

The Centers for Disease Control released a new report today that found that Mississippi “now has the nation’s highest teen pregnancy rate, displacing Texas and New Mexico for that lamentable title.” The report found that in 2006, the Mississippi teen pregnancy rate was over 60 percent higher than the national average and increased 13 percent [...]

Freshman congressman plans to sleep in his DC office to save on rent. - 01/08/2009 02:00 AM

In an effort to save money, freshman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) is planning to live in his Capitol Hill office, rather than rent an apartment in Washington, DC. “I’m trying to live the example that it doesn’t take big dollars in order to get where we want to go,” Chaffetz said. “I can save my [...]