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By Michael Shnayerson
$16.50
By Richard Rhodes
$20.00
$20
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state.nj.us
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Talk about a killjoy: After a long slog and Thursday’s sweet victory in the New Jersey Assembly, the same-sex marriage bill that had managed to make it through all the legislative steps except one was vetoed Friday by Gov. Chris Christie.
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democracynow.org
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Late last year, President Obama pulled a fast one by changing his stance on the National Defense Authorization Act so suddenly and drastically that Americans were left with a bad case of legislative whiplash—and a very serious state of affairs with regard to our civil liberties.
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White House / Pete Souza
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President Obama’s decision to not veto the defense authorization bill, which “would codify indefinite detention without trial into U.S. law for the first time since the McCarthy era,” is a “historic tragedy,” Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.
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AP / J. Scott Applewhite
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The House passed the controversial National Defense Authorization Act on Wednesday night, scarcely hours after President Obama caved to pressure from various factions in Congress and withdrew his veto threat. Let’s consider some of the scary tactics that would be permitted if the measure is signed into law.
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Flickr / DFID - UK Department for International Development (CC-BY)
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If pushing away from the European Union was British Prime Minister David Cameron’s goal in making the U.K. the only nation in the region to veto a proposal to renegotiate the EU treaty, he got what he wanted Friday.
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Wikimedia Commons / Scrumshus
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Pointing to the threat of terrorist groups like al-Qaida, Sen. Carl Levin and 60 of his colleagues voted Wednesday in favor of keeping provisions in the proposed National Defense Authorization Act that would grant the military the ability to detain terrorist suspects abroad and at home under controversial circumstances.
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AP / Evan Vucci
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President Obama rolled out a plan on Monday to reduce the federal deficit by $3 trillion over the next decade by combining cuts to benefit rights and war savings with tax increases. (more)
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Flickr / Southerners on New Ground
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All aboard the hate train. Georgia’s Legislature has passed a bill that copies some of the most maligned parts of Arizona’s infamously anti-immigrant SB 1070. The Georgia bill is now on the desk of Gov. Nathan Deal.
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White House / Pete Souza
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Emboldened by their big wins in last fall’s midterm elections, Republican members of Congress are sharpening their battle axes with the aim of hacking away at the health care reform legislation that President Obama and the Democrats took such great pains to pass ...
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AP / Sebastian Scheiner
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Although the U.S. never has been a neutral arbiter in the Middle East, it’s still surprising that Washington has now reportedly promised Israel a long-term security agreement—including 20 F-35 fighter jets and a pledge to veto any damaging U.N. resolution—in exchange for a 90-day extension of the Israeli freeze on constructing settlements in the West Bank. Updated
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AP / Susan Walsh
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The good news, for those awaiting the repeal of the military’s oppressive “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, is that the House of Representatives on Friday voted in favor of lifting the policy. However, it’s far from a done deal ... (continued)
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By Joe Conason — Things are bad, and very likely to get worse—but the Republicans seem determined to plunge us into a real depression, gambling that catastrophe would return them to power.
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By David Sirota — Somehow, immediately releasing more bailout funds is being portrayed as a self-evident necessity. Amid Barack Obama’s paeans to “new politics,” we’re watching old-school paybacks from a politician who raised more Wall Street dough than any other.
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United States Senate
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Barack Obama made sure that anyone who might oppose his plan for rolling out the next part of the $750 billion bailout package understands that he means business: In a meeting Tuesday on Capitol Hill, he threatened to veto a possible disapproval resolution, according to Democratic senators who met with him.
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AP photo / Washingtonpost.com
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As governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, now the mother of a pregnant teen, cut state funds that would have helped house and support teenage mothers. This on top of the news that both Palin and John McCain have opposed teen pregnancy prevention programs.
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AP photo / Lauren Victoria Burke
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Just when it seemed they wouldn’t have enough votes to pass a key Medicare bill, Democratic senators staged a dramatic coup by secretly whisking Sen. Edward Kennedy into the Capitol on Wednesday to cast his vote and make his first congressional appearance since he was diagnosed with brain cancer in May.
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DoD / Sgt. Luis R. Agostini
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President Bush is trying to wrap up a new status-of-forces agreement with the Iraqi government before the U.N. resolution under which the U.S. operates its occupation runs out. Team Bush has made some concessions to the Maliki government, but there’s one sticking point that threatens an agreement: veto power over military operations.
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flickr.com
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Without batting an ironic eye, President Bush has vetoed a $289-billion farm bill, claiming the legislation gives too much money to wealthy farmers. The bill includes steps to spur biofuel use and would expand nutrition programs to help poor Americans buy food. The Democratic Congress is expected to override the veto.
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AP photo / Hasan Jamali
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The Lebanese government and the Hezbollah opposition group came to a power-sharing agreement Wednesday, potentially marking the end to the country’s two-year-old political crisis, which only weeks ago erupted in clashes that left 65 people dead. The move, which some analysts say may benefit Hezbollah more than the Western-backed government, has been hailed by the parties directly involved and others, including the U.S. as well.
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AP photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta
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The reputation of the U.S. on the world stage might be further colored by President Bush’s veto of a bill that would have limited the CIA’s (and other intelligence agencies’) array of interrogation techniques to those in the Army field manual. In defending Saturday’s veto, Bush once again invoked 9/11.
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AP photo / Lauren Victoria Burke
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Sen. John McCain has established himself as an outspoken critic of torture, which makes his vote Wednesday against the Feinstein Amendment, which would set limits on the types of interrogation techniques used by American intelligence agencies, all the more puzzling—or, in the case of The Atlantic columnist Andrew Sullivan, heartbreaking.
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The House of Representatives and Senate have now both signaled their disapproval of the CIA’s use of waterboarding by voting for a ban on any techniques but the 19 officially approved by the Army, but President Bush has already, in turn, signaled his intent to veto any legislation that would rule out harsh interrogation methods.
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George W. Bush, the president who lied America into a war that will end up costing trillions of dollars, scolded the Democratic-controlled Congress in his final State of the Union address on Monday for undermining “the people’s trust in their government” with too many pet projects. Now that’s chutzpah, coming from a man who never met a spending bill he didn’t like unless it had to do with stem cells and sick children.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Democrats in Congress are discovering what it’s like to live in the worst of all possible worlds. They are condemned for selling out to President Bush, and for failing to make compromises aimed at getting things done.
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politico.com
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House Democrats managed to pick up a few more votes for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, but not enough to override the president’s veto. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised to keep fighting for the overwhelmingly popular program: “In the next two weeks we will send the president another bill that insures coverage for 10 million children.”
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By Will Durst — Oooh. He’s clever. And obviously knows exactly what he’s doing. This is all a setup, people. Has to be. Yes, I’m talking about George Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Who but a total stoned horned ogre would do that? Maybe an ogre with something up his sleeve, eh?
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Conservatives claim to be in favor of stable families, small businesses, hard work, private schools, investment and homeownership. So why in the world are so many on the right attacking the family of Graeme Frost?
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By Eugene Robinson — To say that George W. Bush spends money like a drunken sailor is to insult every gin-soaked patron of every dockside dive in every dubious port of call.
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foxnews.com
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President Bush may not have done his party any favor in coming elections by exercising his veto privilege—the fourth time he’s done so—to deep-six a bipartisan bill passed by Congress that would have renewed the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
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By Marie Cocco — Voters put Democrats in control of both houses of Congress last fall and, for this act of civic determination, they face an infuriating conundrum. Republicans are still running things.
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Christo Komarnitski, Bulgaria —
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By Marie Cocco — The president’s strategy is to fake out the public so that it believes Democrats in Congress can’t perform basic governmental tasks. Is this any way to run a country?
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The House has passed an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program but failed to win enough votes to override President Bush’s promised veto. Still, SCHIP has overwhelming public support, and Democrats welcomed the opportunity to force Bush and his congressional allies to take a stand against poor children.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — This week’s showdown over children’s health insurance 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 new Democratic majority.
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By Amy Goodman — The deputy White House chief of staff will be leaving the nation’s capital, but his shady legacy is likely to remain on the national scene for years.
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Defying President Bush’s promise to veto the bill, House Democrats approved a broad expansion of the popular SCHIP program that would offer healthcare coverage to millions more poor children. The Senate version appears likely to pass, which would force Bush to make good on his vow and in the process deny poor children fiscally responsible healthcare.
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By Marie Cocco — Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have the demeanor of someone who leads a Congress suffering from the worst public disapproval in contemporary polling history.
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By Marie Cocco — In keeping with Oscar Wilde’s adage that one cannot be too careful in the choice of enemies, congressional Democrats have chosen wisely and well.
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President Bush has once again exercised his executive veto privilege, nixing a bill that proposed fewer limits on stem cell research. This latest move brings the president’s overall veto total to three—two related to stem cell legislation and one shooting down a proposed time line to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.
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According to Gallup, a majority of Americans disapprove of the way all parties involved are handling Iraq, though the Dems got slightly better numbers than Bush or congressional Republicans. Most Americans want some kind of timetable, and a huge majority wants benchmarks for progress.
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President Bush says he is now willing to talk about setting up benchmarks to gauge progress in Iraq, perhaps responding to pressure from both sides of the political aisle. However, he also made it clear Thursday that he’s going to reject another bill expected to pass soon in the House that would stop funding for the Iraq war this July.
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Sen. Russ Feingold, Majority Leader Harry Reid and eight other Senate Democrats have decided to respond to Bush’s veto with an amendment that would halt war funding if troops were not safely withdrawn from Iraq by March 31, 2008. Exceptions would include operations against terrorist organizations, training for Iraqi soldiers and protection of U.S. infrastructure and personnel.
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The House has passed an expansion of hate crimes legislation to include discrimination against gender, sexual orientation and disability. Though the measure succeeded with bipartisan support and is expected to make it through the Senate, President Bush has vowed to veto the bill, calling it unnecessary.
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Congress regrouped Wednesday to vote in response to President Bush’s veto of the troop pullout bill on Tuesday, but the bill’s supporters failed to win the two-thirds of House votes needed to override the veto. Now Democrats, responsible for 220 of the 222 votes to override (203 members voted in opposition), have to take a different tack.
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The president says the Democrats are trying to substitute political opinions for military judgment (he should talk). House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the president wants a blank check for the war and he’s not going to get one (at least for now). On Wednesday they meet to debate the issue in person. Here’s a preview.
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Making good on his threat, President Bush vetoed the bill Tuesday that would have started U.S. troop withdrawal on Oct. 1 and stipulated that an additional $124 billion would be dedicated to the war effort. Now it’s up to Congress to challenge his veto or come up with another plan instead.
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AP Photo / J. Scott Applewhite
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Four years ago, President Bush delivered his now-infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln, declaring that military aggression was a successful and appropriate response to the alleged threats posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime. Judging by the current situation, Bush might do well to pick a new slogan about the war in Iraq.
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By Jeremy Scahill — The author of “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” argues that the Democrats’ withdrawal plan—even if it ever gets past a veto—isn’t anything to write home about.
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Benghazi: Dissecting Congressional Follies, Media Coverage and ‘Cover-Up’ Charges
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