Tuesday, Dec 09th
Last update07:17:16 AM GMT
Congressional Glance
The US Senate included a measure to restore full funding for foreign aid to the budget it approved late Thursday, increasing chances that the pool of money including assistance for Israel wouldn't be cut.
Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and co-sponsor of the amendment, defended the move as important to advancing moderation in the Middle East.
Republican Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina is delaying the nomination vote and swearing-in of injured Iraq veteran Tammy Duckworth for a top post in the Veterans Affairs administration.
His actions angered some veterans groups Friday.
Those of you following the George W. Bush prosecution trail will be interested to know that Patrick Leahy’s “truth commission” is a no-go. I was in a meeting with Leahy and four other Vermonters on Monday when he broke the news to us.
We had asked for the meeting to learn why he supported a truth commission over the appointment of a special prosecutor.
Halfway through the allotted 30 minute meeting (with him taking up much of the time explaining why he was not generally opposed to prosecution, since he had been a DA for eight years and had the highest conviction rate in Vermont), he told us that his truth commission had failed to get the broad support it needed in Congress, and since he couldn’t get one Republican to come behind the plan, “it’s not going to happen.”
TVNL Comment: Told you so....
The Philip Morris Company did not like to talk about what went on inside its lab in Cologne, Germany, where researchers secretly conducted experiments exploring the effects of cigarette smoking.
So when the Justice Department tried to get its hands on that research in 1996 to prove that tobacco industry executives had lied about the dangers of smoking, the company moved to fend off the effort with the help of a highly regarded young lawyer named Kirsten Rutnik.
Ms. Rutnik, who now goes by her married name, Gillibrand, threw herself into the work. She traveled to Germany at least twice, interviewing the lab’s top scientists, whose research showed a connection between smoking and cancer but was kept far from public view.
The House Judiciary Committee chose to interview former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove behind closed doors because they wanted more time to question him, and not as a concession to Bush Administration representatives, sources say.
Both aides confirmed that Rove would not be sworn in before his testimony but explained that testimony before Congress is de facto sworn testimony and any false statements would in fact be perjury regardless.
Asked why in that case Congress bothers to swear people in during public hearings, one of the aides quipped, “Because it looks good.”
TVNL Comment: It will be held in secret so we, the public, don't see what a crock this is. We won't see how many crimes Congress will ignore or are complicit in.
The Obama administration will ask Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said this morning.
The wording in too many provisions of these bills are simply too VAGUE and open the door WIDE for some government bureaucrat on the state of federal level to decide what farmers can or cannot use to grow food, and how that food will be handled--all under the benign guise of "protecting" the public. Where have we heard that before?
The government has NO BUSINESS interfering or attempting to control farming methodologies, or what choices farmers make for seed or fertilizer or any other aspect of farming or distribution. Period.
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