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Cheney: No One Could Have Predicted The Financial Crisis, Just As No One Foresaw 9/11 - 01/09/2009 09:37 PM

Yesterday in an interview with the Associated Press’s Deb Reichmann, Vice President Cheney repeatedly insisted that no one anticipated the looming U.S. financial crisis. “I don’t think anybody saw it coming,” he said. He then compared the financial crisis to 9/11, another crisis that supposedly no one predicted: CHENEY: No, obviously, I wouldn’t have [...]

Publisher: Bush will receive ‘minimal interest’ on the lecture circuit. - 01/09/2009 08:59 PM

In 2007, President Bush told biographer Robert Draper that he would “replenish the ol’ coffers” by going around and giving speeches after office, where he could make “ridiculous money.” But it’s unlikely that Bush will be rolling in the dough. Interviewed by the Daily Beast, a publisher said Bush will likely only receive “minimal interest” [...]

House passes legislation fighting wage discrimination. - 01/09/2009 08:15 PM

Today, in a vote of 247-171, the House passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which boosts a woman’s ability to bring pay discrimination lawsuits. The bill overrules a Supreme Court decision that workers must file a discrimination claim within 180 days of a pay violation, even though many people don’t learn about the wage [...]

Former Pardon Attorney Who Was Transferred For Racist Remark Now Critical Of Holder - 01/09/2009 07:30 PM

Earlier this week, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), issued what the New York Times characterized as a “broad attack” on President-elect Obama’s Attorney General Designate Eric Holder. Specter argued that Holder’s role in several pardons at the end of the Clinton Administration call into question his “character.” The AP explained what may be the real motives [...]

Pelosi: Bush is bragging about failed Social Security privatization efforts because he failed elsewhere. - 01/09/2009 07:00 PM

Last week, President Bush told the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes that his unsuccessful push to privatize Social Security was his biggest domestic policy achievement. In an interview with PBS’s Jim Lehrer last night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) knocked Bush for the claim, saying it was “curious” that Bush would cite something that was not [...]

Fox Report Cites Terrorism Expert Muslim-Basher Steve Emerson To Rip Keith Ellison’s Pilgrimage To Mecca - 01/09/2009 06:17 PM

In December, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) became the first congressman to travel to Mecca on the Hajj, the religious pilgrimage Muslims are expected to fulfill at least once in the course of their lives. “It was a personal trip, a pilgrimage,” Ellison’s spokesman said. Yesterday, FoxNews.com published a scurrilous article insisting that Ellison is “coming under [...]

Obama: ‘If Paul Krugman has a good idea…then we’re going to do it.’ - 01/09/2009 05:57 PM

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has been a frequent critic of President-elect Obama. During the primary season, he faulted Obama for saying there is a Social Security “crisis,” refusing to adopt a mandate in his health care proposals, and not fighting enough on “partisan issues.” In fact, today in his New York Times column, Krugman [...]

Illinois House votes 114-1 to impeach Blagojevich. - 01/09/2009 05:34 PM

After a unanimous vote by a special impeachment panel yesterday, the full Illinois state House of Representative voted 114-1 to impeach Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D). The impeachment trial will be held by the state Senate. As MSNBC pointed out, “You don’t have to be guilty of committing a crime to be impeached. You just have [...]

Bush: Library Institute Is Not Going To Be A ‘George Bush Is A Wonderful Person Center’ - 01/09/2009 04:21 PM

Yesterday, President Bush sat down with the Dallas Morning News for a 75-minute exit interview in which the paper described Bush as “sounding both wistful and a bit relieved that soon, the burdens will fall to the next president.” According to the Morning News, Bush said he is “eager for a more carefree life in [...]

524,000 jobs lost in December, unemployment rises to 7.2 percent. - 01/09/2009 03:30 PM

The U.S. economy lost 524,000 jobs in December, the 12th straight month of decline. “Nearly 2.6 million jobs were lost in 2008, with 1.9 million destroyed in just the past four months.” It’s the biggest job loss in any calendar year since 1945. The unemployment rate rose to 7.2 percent, the highest since early 1993 [...]

ThinkFast: January 9, 2009 - 01/09/2009 03:00 PM

A 21-member bipartisan investigative committee of the Illinois House voted unanimously yesterday in favor of the impeachment of Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D). The move “cleared the way for an impeachment vote by the full House, expected Friday. A majority vote there would send the matter to the State Senate for trial, where two-thirds approval would [...]

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 [...]