Thursday, December 14, 2006
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Compiled by Stephen Bach CNN Washington Bureau Making news today... A source familiar with the senator's condition tells CNN's Ted Barrett the surgery ended about 12:30 am ET and "the surgery was successful." He's listed in "critical" condition but that is a classification given to anyone immediately following brain surgery. "The next 24 to 48 hours are critical," the source said. President's Schedule: First Lady Laura Bush will make remarks at the summit at 9 am ET. Also on the Political Radar: ================================================================= Political Hot Topics (Today's top political stories from news organizations across the country) JOHNSON IN CRITICAL CONDITION: Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota was in critical condition Thursday after undergoing brain surgery, a George Washington University Hospital source told CNN. David Boyd, in the nursing supervisor's office, confirmed Johnson's condition. Johnson, 59, was out of surgery at 12:30 a.m. Thursday, a source close to the senator told CNN. He was hospitalized Wednesday morning after he appeared to suffer stroke-like symptoms. The surgery was described as "successful." There was no formal announcement of the South Dakota senator's condition, The Associated Press reported, but a person in the hospital's media relations office, who declined to be identified, said the hospital was preparing to announce that Johnson's condition was critical. Should Johnson not be able to complete his term, which ends in 2008, South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican, would appoint his replacement, which could shift the balance of power in the Senate. CNN: Senate control hangs on hospitalized member's health ALL-TIME LOWS FOR BUSH'S HANDLING OF IRAQ, APPROVAL RATING IN NBC NEWS/WSJ POLL: As the White House searches for a way to move forward in Iraq after the midterm elections and the Iraq Study Group's recent recommendations, the American public has grown increasingly pessimistic that the war there can be won, the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll finds. Nearly seven in 10 respondents say they feel less confident the war will come to a successful conclusion. What's more, two-thirds believe the United States is already doing all it can to reduce the violence there. And a majority even says the U.S. doesn't have an obligation to killed or wounded American soldiers to remain in Iraq until the mission there is completed. "For the public, there is no confidence left," says Democratic pollster Peter D. Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican Bill McInturff... Only 23 percent approve of Bush's handling of Iraq — his lowest mark on this question and an 11-point drop since the last NBC/Journal poll in late October... Bush's overall job approval rating is 34 percent, which is another all-time low for the president in the poll. NBC News: U.S. confidence at new low on Iraq war MORE POLL RESULTS (pdf via MSNBC.com) STRENGTHENING IRAQI ARMY IS PIVOTAL, SAY CHIEFS: The nation's top uniformed leaders are recommending that the United States change its main military mission in Iraq from combating insurgents to supporting Iraqi troops and hunting terrorists, said sources familiar with the White House's ongoing Iraq policy review. President Bush and Vice President Cheney met with the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff yesterday at the Pentagon for more than an hour, and the president engaged his top military advisers on different options. The chiefs made no dramatic proposals but, at a time of intensifying national debate about how to solve the Iraq crisis, offered a pragmatic assessment of what can and cannot be done by the military, the sources said. The chiefs do not favor adding significant numbers of troops to Iraq, said sources familiar with their thinking, but see strengthening the Iraqi army as pivotal to achieving some degree of stability. Washington Post: Joint Chiefs Advise Change In War Strategy SEND MORE TROOPS, SAYS McCAIN IN BAGHDAD: Sen. John McCain said Thursday that America should to deploy 15,000 to 30,000 more troops to Iraq to control its sectarian violence, and give moderate Iraqi politicians the stability they need to take the country in the right direction. McCain made the remarks to reporters in Baghdad, where he and five other members of Congress were meeting with U.S. and Iraqi officials. "The American people are disappointed and frustrated with the Iraq war, but they want us to succeed if there's any way to do that," McCain, a possible 2008 presidential candidate, said at a news conference at the U.S. Embassy in Iraq's heavily fortified Green Zone. The Arizona Republican said five to 10 more brigades of U.S. combat soldiers must be sent to Iraq. Brigades vary in size but generally include about 3,000 troops, meaning he was recommending 15,000 to 30,000 additional forces. AP via Yahoo! News: McCain: Deploy more troops to Iraq FL'S NELSON MEETS ASSAD IN DAMASCUS: Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), the newest member of the Intelligence Committee, emerged from a Wednesday meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, saying that opportunities exist to continue a dialogue about Syria's role in helping steady the chaos in Iraq. Nelson was the first U.S. official to visit Syria since the bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended involving Syria and Iran, two nations considered state sponsors of terrorism by the White House, in the stabilization of Iraq. While Nelson responded cautiously to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, his judgment that there is "a crack in the door" for future talks sparked immediate criticism from the Bush administration and Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). The Hill: Nelson meets with Syrian leader, earns criticism from Kyl '04 REPORT RAISED QUESTIONS ABOUT DETAINEE TREATMENT: A previously undisclosed Pentagon report concluded that the three terrorism suspects held at a brig in South Carolina were subjected to months of isolation, and it warned that their "unique" solitary confinement could be viewed as violating U.S. detention standards. According to a summary of the 2004 report obtained by The Washington Post, interrogators attempted to deprive one detainee, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari citizen and former student in Peoria, Ill., of sleep and religious comfort by taking away his Koran, warm food, mattresses and pillow as part of an interrogation plan approved by the high-level Joint Forces Command. Interrogators also prevented the International Committee of the Red Cross from visiting at least one detainee, according to the report, which noted evidence of other unspecified, unauthorized interrogation techniques. Washington Post: '04 Pentagon Report Cited Detention Concerns FLOTUS TO ADDRESS MALARIA SUMMIT: Laura Bush will open a White House summit on malaria today to rally global partners and ordinary Americans, including schoolchildren, to work together to eliminate the scourge, which kills about 1 million people a year, mostly in Africa. In an interview with the Globe yesterday at the White House , Bush also said the health of African mothers and children has become personal for her -- so much so that a group of HIV-positive mothers in South Africa refer to her as "Grand Mama Bush." And their connection through the universal bond of motherhood took on an added dimension, she said, when her daughter witnessed the deaths of AIDS-ravaged babies while volunteering in a South African hospital last year. "The idea... that your children could have a chronic disease that they could die from, that they couldn't live through childhood, is what every mother worldwide fears," Bush said. Boston Globe: Laura Bush to open malaria summit PELOSI PLANS NEW INTEL OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: Incoming Speaker Nancy Pelosi is moving to establish a new House intelligence oversight committee that will have unusual authority over funding for the nation's major spy agencies. The California Democrat said she hopes to break a logjam that for two years has stymied recommendations by the 9/11 Commission, which argued that Congress must strengthen oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies by drawing a close link between oversight and funding. The membership of the new panel, Ms. Pelosi said in an interview, would be a "hybrid" drawn from the House Intelligence and Appropriations committees, and serve as a bridge of sorts between the two. Additional investigative staff will be hired for oversight, and the new panel would prepare the classified section to the annual Defense Department appropriations bill that covers much of the annual intelligence budget. Wall Street Journal: Pelosi Plans Panel to Oversee Spy-Agency Funds DEMS WANT TO "ASSERT MORE CONTROL" OVER IRAQ FUNDS: Frustrated by the Bush administration's piecemeal financing of the Iraq war, Democrats are planning to assert more control over the billions of dollars a month being spent on the conflict when they take charge of Congress in January. In interviews, the incoming Democratic chairmen of the House and Senate Budget Committees said they would demand a better accounting of the war's cost and move toward integrating the spending into the regular federal budget, a signal of their intention to use the Congressional power of the purse more assertively to influence the White House's management of the war. The lawmakers, Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Representative John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, said the administration's approach of paying for extended military operations and related activities through a series of emergency requests had inhibited Congressional scrutiny of the spending and obscured the true price of the war. New York Times: Democrats Plan to Take Control of Iraq Spending "WE HAVE A DUTY TO REPAIR REAL DAMAGE," SAYS LEAHY: Incoming Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy said yesterday that he plans to rein in President Bush's program of wiretapping without warrants, rewrite the policy for handling terrorism detainees and more closely scrutinize nominees to the federal courts. "As a Democratic majority prepares to take the lead on the Judiciary Committee, we do not have the luxury of starting with a completely clean slate," the Vermont Democrat told an audience at Georgetown University Law Center. "We begin knowing that we have a duty to repair real damage done to our system of government over the last few years." Mr. Leahy accused Mr. Bush of "corrosive unilateralism," eroding the privacy rights of Americans, erasing constitutional checks and balances, and "packing" the federal judiciary. Washington Times: Leahy vows to repair Bush 'damage' "CRYPTIC" STATEMENT FROM APPROPS CHAIRMEN CAUSES "WIDESPREAD CONFUSION AND ANXIETY": The announcement this week that the new Democratic Congress will eliminate all 2007 spending earmarks and instead pass a stopgap measure to keep the government funded for the entirety of this fiscal year has caused widespread confusion and anxiety, both within the Bush administration and on K Street, as lobbyists scramble to figure out how their clients will be affected. "We don't know what that means," said Sean Kevelighan, spokesman for Office of Management and Budget Director Rob Portman. He added, "There's no real clarity above and beyond the statement that was released." Roll Call: Byrd-Obey Approps Move Puzzles OMB, Lobbyists JEFFERSON TO JOIN "LOW-PROFILE" SMALL BUSINESS COMMITTEE: A day after being denied a seat on the prestigious Ways and Means Committee, beleaguered Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson said Wednesday he was pleased with his new assignment on the Small Business Committee. The Democratic Steering Committee decided Tuesday that Jefferson, stripped of his spot on the Ways and Means panel last June, won't be reassigned to that committee until a federal bribery investigation involving him is completed. On Wednesday the Steering Committee said Jefferson, who won a runoff election last Saturday to claim a ninth term representing his New Orleans district, would join the Small Business Committee, one of the more low-profile committees in Congress. Jefferson, in a statement, said he appreciated the granting of his request to join Small Business because "it allows me to focus on areas of our (Katrina) recovery that deserve more attention such as the Small Business Administration loan program." AP via Yahoo! News: Rep. Jefferson happy with new assignment SWIFT BOAT VETS, MOVEON, AND LCV HIT WITH SIX-FIGURE FEC FINES: Three independent political groups paid six-figure settlements to resolve charges that they broke campaign-finance laws in the 2004 presidential election, the Federal Election Commission said Wednesday. The action is the first clampdown on outside political groups, FEC Chairman Michael Toner said, and could diminish the role of such organizations. Swift Boat Veterans and POWs for Truth paid $299,500 in penalties; the MoveOn.org Voter Fund paid $150,000; and the League of Conservation Voters 527 and 527 II paid $180,000. The groups stepped over the line by either raising funds or by paying for activities that called for the election or defeat of the presidential contenders, Toner said. These so-called 527 groups, named for the section of the tax code that governs their activity, emerged as players in the 2004 race between President Bush and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. USA Today: Groups penalized for breaking campaign finance laws in 2004 election OBAMA PAC HAS COLLECTED OVER $1 MILLION IN "LOW-DOLLAR DONATIONS": Though Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has yet to announce whether he will run for the presidency, he already is showing considerable success in transforming grass-roots enthusiasm for his message into the kind of hard dollars that he would need to wage a national Democratic primary campaign. A political action committee that Obama has formed already has taken in more than $1 million this year in the kind of low-dollar donations that reflect excitement among ordinary voters. More than $165,000 flowed in during a six-week period this fall that coincided with the Democratic senator's highly publicized book tour, according to federal disclosure documents. That level of support from Americans who send in checks or click on an Internet site to make contributions of $20 or $50 suggests Obama has momentum and a solid base of potential repeat donors to at least begin a presidential campaign, political veterans and academic analysts said. Chicago Tribune: Obama's appeal attracting donations HILLARY MEETS WITH BILL'S "BRAIN TRUST": With Obama-mania soaring to new heights, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton rushed yesterday to powwow with her husband's brain trust. Sen. Clinton hosted a dinner at her swank Embassy Row home last night with Bubba's buddies James Carville, Paul Begala, Joel Johnson and Joe Lockhart. Bill Clinton's former gurus serve as an informal sounding board and think tank for the former first lady, separate from her army of campaign staffers and consultants. The confidential confab - coming as Sen. Clinton plots her official candidacy for the White House - is a repeat of 2000, when she hosted a similar dinner shortly before announcing her Senate bid. New York Post: BUBBA'S BUDS CHEW OVER 2008 WITH HILL CLINTON WOULD BE "SOUNDLY BEATEN" BY McCAIN TODAY, SAYS LAT/BLOOMBERG POLL: Democrats have an overwhelmingly favorable view of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, but she would be soundly beaten if she ran for president against Republican Sen. John McCain now, a new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll has found. Underscoring the New York Democrat's potential vulnerability, the poll also found that Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican little known to most voters, would give Clinton a run for her money. Given a choice between McCain and Clinton, half of those surveyed said they would vote for the Arizona Republican, compared with 36% for the former first lady. In a matchup with Romney, the poll indicated Clinton would win by just 6 percentage points, 42% to 36%. Los Angeles Times: Voters favor McCain over Clinton in '08 RICHARDSON WILL MEET WITH NORTH KOREANS IN NEW MEXICO: Gov. Bill Richardson will meet on Friday in Santa Fe with two North Korean diplomats for an attempt to convince the country to dismantle its nuclear weapons. The Governor's Office said the North Koreans asked for the meeting in advance of upcoming multilateral talks about the North Korean nuclear weapons program. "While I will not be acting as an official representative of the administration, I am pleased to do whatever I can to help increase understanding between our two countries and help move the six-party talks forward," Richardson said in a statement. "I believe we have an opportunity to use diplomacy to end this crisis and bring stability to the Korean Peninsula. I will press the North Koreans to start dismantling their nuclear weapons," he said. Albuquerque Tribune: Richardson to discuss nukes with North Koreans "FINAL REBUKE" FOR DeLAY: Former congressman Ciro Rodriguez's victory in a House runoff election Tuesday in Texas not only allowed Democrats to pick up their 30th seat of the 2006 elections but served as a final rebuke to one of the architects of the Republican House majority: Tom DeLay. The former congressman from Texas was the mastermind of a 2003 redrawing of congressional lines in the state that led to the removal of six House Democrats in the 2004 elections. Two years later, DeLay's fortunes have suffered a near-total reversal, as the redistricting map that once seemed certain to cement his legacy and GOP majorities for years has instead led to the end of that career and may well be a building block for a reenergized Democratic Party in the state. Washington Post: House Win Adds Insult to Injury for DeLay AFTER "20 YEARS AND $530 MILLION," A DEBATE OVER VALUE OF CUBA BROADCASTING: As Cuban President Fidel Castro battles serious illness and the nation he has ruled for more than four decades braces for change, the taxpayer-financed media outlets that the U.S. government counted on to communicate American values to Cuba find themselves invisible or ignored on the island. After 20 years and more than $530 million, the Office of Cuba Broadcasting operates a radio station that by the U.S. government's own estimates has suffered a precipitous drop in listenership and a television station that may never have been seen by anyone in Cuba for more than a few minutes at a time. Cubans who manage to tune in to Radio or TV Marti hear or see programming that is sprinkled with vulgarity, presents one-sided programming as news and omits stories critical of the Bush administration and Miami's Cuban exile community, all in apparent violation of federal broadcast standards, according to recent U.S. government quality-control reviews of OCB offerings. Chicago Tribune: U.S. broadcast efforts in Cuba worth the cost? DINNER WITH GOV. BLANCO FETCHES $1 WINNING BID: Call it a sign of the times for Louisiana's embattled governor: A chance to dine with Gov. Kathleen Blanco fetched a winning bid of $1 at a recent fundraising auction hosted by a group of business leaders. The president of the Monroe Chamber of Commerce, in northeastern Louisiana, said she called Blanco's office Tuesday to apologize for a "poor joke gone awry." "It's something we deeply regret," chamber president Sue Edmunds said Wednesday. "Our organization has worked very well with the governor. We have been pleased with her efforts on behalf of this community." Dinner with Blanco was the last item up for bid at the fundraising auction last week. Edmunds said the bidding opened at $1,000 and dropped to $500 before the auctioneer accepted a $1 bid from bank executive Malcolm Maddox, a regional chairman for Capital One. Others were trying to bid on the dinner when the bidding abruptly closed, according to Edmunds. "We were all stunned," she added. "It was at the end of the auction, so there was no way to go back and amend that." AP via Yahoo! News: Dinner with La. gov. goes $1 at auction |
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• Senator in critical condition after brain surgery• South Dakota senator in hospital for 'stroke-like... • Potential vacancy could determine Senate control • Reid issues statement on Johnson • Is Obama a "Marxist leftist"? • Giuliani taps RNC Political Director • Draft Obama ad set to hit New Hampshire airwaves • Bush says he will not be rushed • Levin urges president to consider Iraq timetable • Dodd announces Middle East trip SUBSCRIBE
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