Tag: Open Thread

This is an Open Thread: There are no hidden fees

Headlines For Thursday December 20: E.P.A. Says 17 States Can’t Set Emission Rules for Cars: Democrats savor power for a year but end it feeling unfulfilled: The last days of Private Scheuerman: Putin, scourge of the US, named person of the year by Time: A surge of their own: Iraqis take back the streets

USA

E.P.A. Says 17 States Can’t Set Emission Rules for Cars

WASHINGTON – The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday denied California and 16 other states the right to set their own standards for carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles.

The E.P.A. administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, said the proposed California rules were pre-empted by federal authority and made moot by the energy bill signed into law by President Bush on Wednesday. Mr. Johnson said California had failed to make a compelling case that it needed authority to write its own standards for greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks to help curb global warming.

The decision immediately provoked a heated debate over its scientific basis and whether political pressure was applied by the automobile industry to help it escape the proposed California regulations. Officials from the states and numerous environmental groups vowed to sue to overturn the edict.

Democrats savor power for a year but end it feeling unfulfilled

Their approval of a bill giving Bush funds for a war they oppose helps sum up their 2007 congressional record.

By Richard Simon and Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers

December 20, 2007

WASHINGTON — Congressional Democrats ended their first year in control of Congress in more than a decade Wednesday, approving a $555-billion government spending measure that gave President Bush $70 billion for an Iraq war they had promised to end.

And underscoring the frustrations that have beset the new majority much of the year, Democratic leaders left the Capitol complaining that much of their agenda had been thwarted by congressional Republicans who repeatedly stopped their most cherished initiatives.

“We could have accomplished so much more,” said a rueful Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) at a news conference in the old office of a Reid predecessor, Lyndon Johnson.

Despite the more than five dozen Iraq-related votes throughout the year, Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) were never able to muster the support needed to compel the president to begin withdrawing U.S. forces.

1 Turkish incursion overshadows Rice visit to Iraq

by Abdel Hamid Zebari, AFP

Tue Dec 18, 3:52 PM ET

This is an Open Thread: Always Free Until the End of Time

Headlines For Tuesday December 18: Democrats Delay a Vote on Immunity for Wiretapps : Fed Shrugged as Subprime Crisis Spread: FBI Probes Virginia Mortgage Scam: Turkish army sends soldiers into Iraq

USA

Democrats Delay a Vote on Immunity for Wiretaps

WASHINGTON – In a setback for the White House, Senate Democrats on Monday put off until at least next month any decision on whether to give legal protection to the phone carriers that helped with the National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program.

The Bush administration had pushed for immediate passage of legislation to grant immunity to the phone companies as part of a broader expansion of the N.S.A.’s wiretapping authorities. But that will not happen now.

After daylong debate in the Senate on the wiretapping issue, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, announced at the end of the day that there would not be time to consider the legislation this week as he had hoped. With a dozen competing amendments on the issue and an omnibus spending bill separately awaiting consideration, Mr. Reid said he believed it would be difficult to give the wiretapping issue the close consideration that it deserved this week before the Senate leaves for its Christmas recess.

Fed Shrugged as Subprime Crisis Spread

WASHINGTON – Until the boom in subprime mortgages turned into a national nightmare this summer, the few people who tried to warn federal banking officials might as well have been talking to themselves.

Edward M. Gramlich, a Federal Reserve governor who died in September, warned nearly seven years ago that a fast-growing new breed of lenders was luring many people into risky mortgages they could not afford.

But when Mr. Gramlich privately urged Fed examiners to investigate mortgage lenders affiliated with national banks, he was rebuffed by Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman.

This is an Open Thread: No Credit Needed To Enter

Headlines For Monday December 17: A town against the wall: Obama confronts rumor he is a Muslim: Storm buries Northeast, causes 3 deaths: Africa war wounds begin to heal amid progress: Inside the Hajj, with 1m believers

USA

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said this month that he would take landowners to court to seize property if needed, and also pledged that he would not pay more than market price for land.

A town against the wall

Granjeno on the Rio Grande has outlasted the rule of Spain, Mexico and the Republic of Texas. Now the border fence aims for its heart.

By Miguel Bustillo, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

December 17, 2007

GRANJENO, TEXAS — Gloria Garza doesn’t have a whole lot. But what she has, she clings to with pride.

She lives in a simple stucco house with a rustic wooden veranda and a well fashioned from odd stones her husband found around the state. Kittens stretch lazily in the sun beside her porch. Armadillos dart across her backyard.

Her two-acre lot is her heirloom, her link to a legacy that dates to 1767, when Spain’s King Carlos III gave her pioneer ancestors a porcion of property that started at the Rio Grande and stretched inland for miles.

So she is not going to be quiet while some bureaucrat in Washington tries to take it — to build a border fence. She doesn’t want to become an unintended victim in a war against illegal immigration that she sees as misguided and wrong.

1 Turkish planes bomb PKK targets in Iraq

By SUZAN FRASER, Associated Press Writer

1 hour, 11 minutes ago

This is an Open Thread: The Toll Booth is Closed

Headlines For Sunday December 16: Control sought on military lawyers: Wider Spying Fuels Aid Plan for Telecom Industry: Obama is hitting his stride in Iowa : Balkanized Homecoming

USA

Control sought on military lawyers

Bush wants power over promotions

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House’s policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.

The administration has proposed a regulation requiring “coordination” with politically appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member of the Judge Advocate General corps – the military’s 4,000-member uniformed legal force – can be promoted.

A Pentagon spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the reasoning behind the proposed regulations. But the requirement of coordination – which many former JAGs say would give the administration veto power over any JAG promotion or appointment – is consistent with past administration efforts to impose greater control over the military lawyers.

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

1 Judge urged not to ask about CIA tapes

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer

7 minutes ago

This is an Open Thread: No Cover Charge

Headlines For Saturday December 15: Justice Dept. Seeks Delay on C.I.A. Inquiry: Nations Agree on Steps to Revive Climate Treaty: Bush’s Budget Wins May Cost Him : Ethiopians Said to Push Civilians Into Rebel War: Sealed Off by Israel, Gaza Reduced to Beggary

USA

Justice Dept. Seeks Delay on C.I.A. Inquiry

WASHINGTON – The Justice Department asked the House Intelligence Committee on Friday to postpone its investigation into the destruction of videotapes by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2005, saying the Congressional inquiry presented “significant risks” to its own preliminary investigation into the matter.

The department is taking an even harder line with other Congressional committees looking into the matter, and is refusing to provide information about any role it might have played in the destruction of the videotapes. The recordings covered hundreds of hours of interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda.

The Justice Department and the C.I.A.’s inspector general have begun a preliminary inquiry into the destruction of the tapes, and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said the department would not comply with Congressional requests for information now because of “our interest in avoiding any perception that our law enforcement decisions are subject to political influence.”

Nations Agree on Steps to Revive Climate Treaty

NUSA DUA, Indonesia – The world’s countries wrapped up two weeks of intense and at times emotional talks here on Saturday with a two-year timetable for reviving an ailing, aging climate treaty.

After negotiations went through the night on a compromise between the United States and Europe, an agreement appeared close at hand. But some developing countries remained dissatisfied with some aspects of the deal, including the help they would receive from rich countries.

American delegates then said they could not accept the compromise, leading to a series of verbal attacks on the country. But in a dramatic turnabout less than an hour later, the Americans reversed themselves, accepting the changes sought by the developing countries.

This is an Open Thread: Always Free Unless There is a Service Charge

Headlines For Friday December 14: House Passes Bill to Ban CIA’s Use of Harsh Interrogation Tactics: Arizona Is Split Over Hard Line on Immigrants: Writers file labor charges against studios:

USA

House Passes Bill to Ban CIA’s Use of Harsh Interrogation Tactics

Friday, December 14, 2007; Page A07

The House approved legislation yesterday that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, drawing an immediate veto threat from the White House and setting up another political showdown over what constitutes torture.

The measure, approved by a largely party-line vote of 222 to 199, would require U.S. intelligence agencies to follow Army rules adopted last year that explicitly forbid waterboarding. It also would require interrogators to adhere to a strict interpretation of the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war. The rules, required by Congress for all Defense Department personnel, also ban sexual humiliation, “mock” executions and the use of attack dogs, and prohibit the withholding of food and medical care.