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(04/11/07 4:00am)
WASHINGTON – The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed new documents Tuesday from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as part of its investigation into the firings of federal prosecutors, with the panel chairman saying he had run out of patience.\n“We have been patient in allowing the department to work through its concerns regarding the sensitive nature of some of these materials,” Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., wrote Gonzales in a letter accompanying the subpoena. “Unfortunately, the department has not indicated any meaningful willingness to find a way to meet our legitimate needs.\n“At this point further delay in receiving these materials will not serve any constructive purpose,” Conyers said. He characterized the subpoena as a last resort after weeks of negotiations with Justice over documents and e-mails the committee wants.\nThe Justice Department did not have an immediate comment.\nBut one Justice official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said the House request included the full text of all documents that had been partially or completely blacked out in the Justice Department’s initial release of more than 3,000 pages last month. The Justice official said some U.S. attorney evaluations were included in these documents.\nThe official said the request also included an unredacted list ranking the performance and standing of each of the 93 U.S. attorneys. Government officials have previously confirmed that Chicago-based prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, one of the Justice Department’s premier U.S. attorneys, was ranked as “not distinguished.”\nDemocrats who control Congress say statements by Gonzales and his lieutenants, three of whom have resigned in the aftermath of the dismissals, have raised questions over whether the ousters were politically motivated.\nThe Justice Department denies that and President Bush has stood behind Gonzales, but calls for a new attorney general have continued. Gonzales, Bush’s longtime friend, is scheduled before the Senate Judiciary Committee next week.\nAlong with the subpoenas, Conyers released letters of negotiation between his committee and the Justice Department dating to March 8, when the panel’s Democrats requested follow-up interviews with Gonzales’ top aides and any documents between the agency and the White House about the firings.\nThe Justice Department responded by releasing more than 3,000 documents, including internal communications between agency officials, White House aides and some of the fired prosecutors. But substantial portions of the documents released were blacked out or redacted.\nActing Assistant Attorney General Richard Hertling wrote that the agency blocked information that raised privacy concerns, including the names of prosecutors who were considered for removal but ultimately retained, as well as candidates for judicial appointments.
(04/11/07 4:00am)
WASHINGTON – President Bush on Tuesday invited Democrats to discuss their standoff over a war-spending bill, but he made clear he would not change his position opposing troop withdrawals. The White House bluntly said the meeting would not be a negotiation.\n“It’s time for them to get the job done, so I’m inviting congressional leaders from both parties – both political parties – to meet with me at the White House next week,” Bush said in a speech to an American Legion audience in Fairfax, Va.\n“At this meeting, the leaders in Congress can report on progress on getting an emergency spending bill to my desk,” Bush said. “We can discuss the way forward on a bill that is a clean bill, a bill that funds our troops without artificial timetables for withdrawal and without handcuffing our generals on the ground. I’m hopeful we’ll see some results soon from the Congress.”\nDemocratic leaders said they’re ready to sit down and talk with Bush. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that Bush must agree to “take a seat at the table of negotiation, of compromise, of direction change.”\n“Iraqi leaders are not willing to take the political risk of governing their own country. That must change,” Reid said. “That’s what Congress is demanding. That is what the American people, by a large majority, demand. And the president should be leading us in that direction, not threatening to veto funding for our troops unless we rubber-stamp his flawed plan.”\nIn essence, Bush invited the Democratic leaders of Congress to come hear the stance he has offered for weeks. He again accused them of shirking their responsibilities.\n“We’re at war,” Bush said. “It is irresponsible for the Democratic leadership in Congress to delay for months on end while our troops in combat are waiting for the funds they need to succeed.”\nBush said the Defense Department will soon send Congress a request to transfer $1.6 billion from other military accounts to cover funding for troops – a move needed, he said, because lawmakers have delayed his emergency spending request. He warned that continued delays would undermine troop training, slow the repair of equipment and force soldiers to serve longer tours of duty.\nAlso on Tuesday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said that he saw no need to set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from his country. His comments in Japan came a day after tens of thousands of Iraqis took to the streets of two Shiite holy cities, demanding that U.S. forces leave the country.
(04/11/07 4:00am)
Motorists can expect an easing of the recent gasoline price surge in coming weeks, with costs averaging about what they did last summer over the heavy vacation driving season, the government said Tuesday. The Energy Department predicted that the average nationwide cost of regular-grade gasoline would likely peak at $2.87 a gallon in May, up only 7 cents over the average last week.
(04/06/07 4:00am)
BAGHDAD – Four British soldiers were killed Thursday in an ambush in southern Iraq, while five U.S. troops died in separate attacks in Baghdad, and a U.S. Army helicopter went down south of the capital but all nine aboard survived, officials said.\nBritish Prime Minister Tony Blair raised the possibility that elements linked to Iran might have been behind the ambush, which he called “a terrorist act,” but he added that it was too early to make a specific allegation against Tehran.\nThe U.S. military said the five U.S. soldiers were killed in three separate attacks in the Baghdad area, where thousands of American forces have taken to the streets with their Iraqi counterparts as part of the operation to quell sectarian violence in the city of 6 million people.\nA roadside bomb Wednesday killed two soldiers and wounded three others in southern Baghdad, while another blast north of the capital killed two soldiers and wounded one, the military said. The fifth soldier was killed Tuesday by small-arms fire while on patrol in eastern Baghdad, a predominantly Shiite part of the city, the military said.\nThe four British deaths – the biggest loss of life for British forces in more than four months – came a day after Iran released 15 British sailors seized two weeks ago off the Iraqi coast.\nThe British patrol struck a roadside bomb and was hit by small-arms fire about 2 a.m. in the Hayaniyah district in western Basra, 340 miles southeast of Baghdad, British military spokeswoman Capt. Katie Brown said.\nIn addition to the deaths of the British soldiers and the Kuwaiti civilian interpreter, another British soldier was seriously wounded in the attack, Brown said.\n“Now it is far too early to say that the particular terrorist act that killed our forces was an act committed by terrorists that were backed by any elements of the Iranian regime, so I make no allegation in respect of that particular incident,” Blair said.\nThe four deaths came as Britain celebrated the return home of 15 sailors and marines who had been held for 13 days by Iran in an incident that raised tensions between London and Tehran, as well as throughout the Middle East.\n“Just as we rejoice at the return of our 15 service personnel so today we are also grieving and mourning for the loss of our soldiers in Basra, who were killed as the result of a terrorist act,” Blair said.\nThe Basra explosion created a 3-foot-deep crater. Hours after the attack, the helmet of a British soldier was still in the streets as well as dozens of spent bullets.\nPolice in Basra said the British patrol had earlier detained 1st Lt. Haidar al-Jazaeri of the Interior Ministry’s Major Crimes unit, and were on their way back when they were attacked.\nFour British forces were killed on Nov. 12 in an attack on a Multinational Forces boat patrol on the Shatt Al-Arab waterway in Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city. Ten Britons also died in the Jan. 30, 2006, crash of a Hercules transport plane north of Baghdad.\nOverall, the deaths raised to 140 the number of British forces to die in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion and to 109 the number killed in combat.\nBlair has announced that Britain will withdraw about 1,600 troops from Iraq over the next few months and hopes to make other cuts to its 7,100-strong contingent by late summer.\nThe U.S. military issued only a brief statement saying the helicopter went down and that the incident was under investigation.\nAn Iraqi army official said earlier that a Black Hawk helicopter had gone down after it came under fire at about 7:30 a.m. near the Sunni insurgent stronghold of Latifiyah, 20 miles south of Baghdad.\nIt was the ninth U.S. helicopter to go down in Iraq this year, raising concern among the military that insurgents are using more sophisticated weapons or have figured out how to use the old arms in new and effective ways.
(04/06/07 4:00am)
ROYAL MARINE BASE CHIVENOR, England – Fifteen Royal Navy sailors and marines held captive by Iran returned home Thursday to a nation relieved at their freedom but also outraged that they were used by Tehran’s propaganda machine.\nPrime Minister Tony Blair insisted that no deal had been cut for their release and he called for continued international pressure on the hard-line Iranian regime.\nThe crew broke open champagne and changed into fresh uniforms on the flight home. After landing at Heathrow airport, they smiled and stood at attention before being whisked by helicopter to the Royal Marines base at Chivenor, southwest of London.\nThey are expected to be debriefed on their 13-day ordeal and reunited with family members at the Chivenor base, which is 210 miles southwest of London.\nWednesday’s announcement by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that the Britons had been released was a breakthrough in a crisis that had raised oil prices and escalated fears of military conflict in the volatile region. The move to release the sailors suggested that Iran’s hard-line leadership decided it had shown its strength but did not want to push the standoff too far.\nIran did not get the main thing it sought – a public apology for entering Iranian waters. Britain, which said its crew was in Iraqi waters when seized, insists it never offered a quid pro quo, either, instead relying on quiet diplomacy.\nSyria, Iran’s close ally, said it played a role in winning the release.\nBlair said Britain had managed to secure release of crew without any deal or negotiations.\nOn Wednesday, Iranian state media reported that an Iranian envoy would be allowed to meet five Iranians detained by U.S. forces in northern Iraq. A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said American authorities were considering the request, although an international Red Cross team, including one Iranian, had visited the prisoners.\nAnother Iranian diplomat, separately seized two months ago by uniformed gunmen in Iraq, was released and returned Tuesday to Tehran. Iran accused the Americans of abducting him, a charge the U.S. denied.\nThose developments led to speculation that the release of the Britons had been connected to the events in Iraq. Both Iran and Britain denied any connection.\nAhmadinejad timed Wednesday’s announcement so as to make a dramatic splash, springing it halfway through a two-hour news conference.\nThe president first gave a medal of honor to the commander of the Iranian coast guards who captured the Britons, and admonished London for sending a mother, Leading Seaman Faye Turney, on such a dangerous mission in the Persian Gulf.\nHe said the British government was “not brave enough” to admit the crew had been in Iranian waters when it was captured.\nAhmadinejad then declared that even though Iran had the right to put the Britons on trial, he had “pardoned” them to mark the March 30 birthday of the Prophet Muhammad and the coming Easter holiday.\n“This pardon is a gift to the British people,” he said.\nAfter the news conference, Iranian television showed a beaming Ahmadinejad on the steps of the presidential palace shaking hands with the Britons – some towering over him. The men were decked out in business suits and Turney wore an Islamic head scarf.\n“Your people have been really kind to us, and we appreciate it very much,” one of the British men told Ahmadinejad in English. Another male service member said: “We are grateful for your forgiveness.”\nAhmadinejad responded in Farsi, “You are welcome.\nAssociated Press Writer Courtney French in London contributed to this report.
(04/06/07 4:00am)
MIAMI – Network morning shows and cable news fueled the frenzied coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death and the saga that followed leading to her burial, a report from a media watchdog group found.\nThe Project for Excellence in Journalism study found that in the roughly three weeks between Smith’s death and burial, the story came up just shy of being the most-covered news of the period among all media reporting.\nOnly the Iraq war and 2008 election drew more focus.\nThe study found, however, that the Smith story was pushed mostly by relatively few outlets.\n“The Anna Nicole Smith story, all told, was a serious preoccupation of the news media,” said Mark Jurkowitz, associate director of the journalism project. “But if you look inside this frenzy, you find that most media outlets and most media sectors after the first two days just treated this story at arm’s length.”\nAcross all media, the study found 30 percent of news coverage was devoted to Smith in the first two days of the story. Cable news gave 55 percent of its airtime to the story in its first hours.\nThe study found that while most sectors of the media eased off after the first two days, the network morning shows and, particularly, cable news shows continued to give the story heavy airtime.\n“When cable really finds a megastory to dwell on,” Jurkowitz said, “they can really set the water-cooler agenda for what people end up talking about.”\nCable news programs devoted 22 percent of their airtime to the Smith story from Feb. 8 to March 2, double the amount given the second-biggest story, the presidential campaign, the study found.\nFox News Channel devoted 32 percent of its total airtime to the story, MSNBC gave 21 percent and CNN allotted 14 percent.\nThe percentages would have been higher, the study acknowledged, if two of the personalities who covered the story most extensively – CNN’s Larry King and Fox’s Greta Van Susteren – were included in its index of media outlets. “Larry King Live” included the story in 16 of the 21 shows in the survey period; “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren” devoted part of 16 out of its 17 shows to Smith-related coverage.\nIn a statement, Fox defended its coverage, saying, “We’ve invested in covering the Anna Nicole story as much as every other media outlet, including The Associated Press.”\nCNN and MSNBC declined to comment.\nThe study found the network morning news shows gave 15 percent of their first half-hour of programming to the Smith story, compared to 2 percent of their evening counterparts.\nTaking all media outlets into consideration, the Smith story’s 8 percent of total coverage was just short of the 9 percent devoted to the war and 2008 election, and well ahead of the time and space given to such stories as the February stock market plunge, the Scooter Libby trial and the nuclear deal with North Korea.\nView the entire report online at www.journalism.org/node/4872.
(04/06/07 4:00am)
Prosecutors filed charges Thursday against three people who allegedly conspired with suicide bombers in the attacks that killed 52 subway and bus passengers in London on July 7, 2005. For the first time, authorities alleged that the plot’s targets may have included London tourist attractions. The three, who were arrested last month, are from the same area of West Yorkshire, England, as three of the four suicide bombers.
(04/05/07 4:00am)
In the '90s there was this craze for what I thought of as straight-to-video big-screen movies. They weren't good enough for the big screen, yet somehow made it. Seagal, Van Damme, Stallone and the Governator all made one of those movies at some point (some never made it past those).\nWelcome Mark Wahlberg to that pantheon. Wahlberg plays a Marine gunnery sergeant named Bob Lee Swagger, who becomes framed for an attempted assassination on the president and then goes on a vendetta of "kick ass" to clear his name. Michael Peña of "World Trade Center" fame plays the FBI agent who believes he's innocent, while Danny Glover plays a colonel of -- wait for it -- a "shadowy organization" that "decides what the world needs" to fix its problems, even if those decisions require some wet work.\nThis movie was typical of a lot of those '90s movies, with seedy second-rate actors playing the "henchmen," the typical "main character ends up running into the widow of the best friend who was killed because he is injured and needs help" (she somehow has medical training, as usual), and the climactic "main character walks toward audience while walking away from really big Hollywood explosion." What made this movie different was that it was actually pretty good. \nThe acting is much better than I expected. Marky Mark is one of those rare rapper-turned-actors who can actually act. Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day") made the movie a little deeper than its genre usually follows, with a better plot twist at the end. We're not talking a "Sixth Sense"-style plot twist but enough to show the movie was thought out. It also had limited use of cheesy one-liners. Of course, being a movie about an American soldier and shadowy organizations, there are elements of politics relevant to today, such as Africa, Iraq, etc. While these "ideals" are laid out pretty blatantly, they don't detract from the story too much.\nAll in all, "Shooter" was not a horrible movie. Wahlberg fans will probably enjoy it, but this one is probably better as a rental than anything else. If it's anything like its predecessors, it will be in the $5 bin within a year of its DVD release.
(04/05/07 4:00am)
This young Canadian bunch produced some of this year's most advanced music to date. They fly through hollow synth solos and wade through boastful bass with vocals switching between dramatic sing-alongs and melancholy wanderings, with lyrics telling stories of robots and blogs, as well as the mundane life of us twentysomethings. \nThey evoke Bloc Party, The Killers and The Strokes -- sometimes all at once.\nNot that everything is perfect in Tokyo: Someone tell these boys and girls that songs can go on after the solo! And, to date, the lyrics are a bit shallow. But fans should and can expect their lyrics to become a little more grounded in real life dramas as they mature, much like how The Decemberists have kept their stylings while growing. \nKey track: "Nature Of The Experiment"
(04/03/07 4:00am)
WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke to Bush administration policy on global warming.\nIn a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars.\nGreenhouse gases are air pollutants under the landmark environmental law, Justice John Paul Stevens said in his majority opinion.\nThe court’s four conservative justices – Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas – dissented.\nMany scientists believe greenhouse gases, flowing into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate, are leading to a warming of the Earth, rising sea levels and other marked ecological changes.\nThe politics of global warming have changed dramatically since the court agreed last year to hear its first global warming case.\n“In many ways, the debate has moved beyond this,” said Chris Miller, director of the global warming campaign for Greenpeace, one of the environmental groups that sued the EPA. “All the front-runners in the 2008 presidential campaign, both Democrats and Republicans, even the business community, are much further along on this than the Bush administration is.”\nDemocrats took control of Congress last November. The world’s leading climate scientists reported in February that global warming is “very likely” caused by man and is so severe that it will “continue for centuries.” Former Vice President Al Gore’s movie, “An Inconvenient Truth” – making the case for quick action on climate change – won an Oscar. Business leaders say they are increasingly open to congressional action to cut greenhouse gases emissions, of which carbon dioxide is the largest.\nWhite House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the Bush administration questioned whether it had the legal authority to regulate greenhouse gases as a pollutant. “Now the Supreme Court has settled that matter for us, and we’re going to have to take a look and analyze it and see where we go from there.”\n“We’re going to have to let EPA take a good look at it, and they’re going to have to analyze it and think about what it means for any future policy decisions,” she added.\nCarbon dioxide is produced when fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas are burned. One way to reduce those emissions is to have more fuel-efficient cars.\nThe court had three questions before it.\n–Do states have the right to sue the EPA to challenge its decision?\n–Does the Clean Air Act give EPA the authority to regulate tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases?\n–Does EPA have the discretion not to regulate those emissions?\nThe court said yes to the first two questions. On the third, it ordered EPA to re-evaluate its contention that it has the discretion not to regulate tailpipe emissions. The court said the agency has so far provided a “laundry list” of reasons that include foreign policy considerations.\nThe majority said the agency must tie its rationale more closely to the Clean Air Act.\n“EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change,” Stevens said. He was joined by his liberal colleagues, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David Souter, and the court’s swing voter, Justice Anthony Kennedy.\nThe lawsuit was filed by 12 states and 13 environmental groups that had grown frustrated by the Bush administration’s inaction on global warming.\nIn his dissent, Roberts focused on the issue of standing, whether a party has the right to file a lawsuit.\nThe court should simply recognize that redress of the kind of grievances spelled out by the state of Massachusetts is the function of Congress and the chief executive, not the federal courts, Roberts said.
(04/03/07 4:00am)
A tsunami that struck without warning overnight Tuesday washed away coastal villages in the western Solomon Islands, killing at least 13 people. The death toll was expected to rise. Bodies floated out to sea, and thousands of residents camped out on a hillside above a devastated town. A wall of water reportedly 30 feet high struck the island of Choiseul and swept a third of a mile inland.
(04/02/07 4:00am)
WASHINGTON – A key element of the second major report on climate change being released Friday in Belgium is a chart that maps out the effects of global warming, most of them bad, with every degree of temperature rise.\nThere’s one bright spot: A minimal heat rise means more food production in northern regions of the world.\nHowever, the number of species going extinct rises with the heat, as does the number of people who may starve, or face water shortages, or floods, according to the projections in the draft report obtained by The Associated Press.\nSome scientists are calling this degree-by-degree projection a “highway to extinction.”\nIt’s likely to be the source of sharp closed-door debate, some scientists say, along with a multitude of other issues in the 20-chapter draft report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. While the wording in the draft is almost guaranteed to change at this week’s meeting in Brussels, several scientists say the focus won’t.\nThe final document will be the product of a United Nations network of 2,000 scientists as authors and reviewers, along with representatives of more than 120 governments as last-minute editors. It will be the second volume of a four-volume authoritative assessment of Earth’s climate being released this year. The last such effort was in 2001.\nAndrew Weaver, a climate scientist with the University of Victoria in British Columbia, said the chart of results from various temperature levels is “a highway to extinction, but on this highway there are many turnoffs. This is showing you where the road is heading. The road is heading toward extinction.”\nWeaver is one of the lead authors of the first report, issued in February.\nWhile humanity will survive, hundreds of millions, maybe billions of people may not, according to the chart – if the worst scenarios happen.\nThe report says global warming has already degraded conditions for many species, coastal areas and poor people. With a more than 90 percent level of confidence, the scientists in the draft report say man-made global warming “over the last three decades has had a discernible influence on many physical and biological systems.”\nBut as the world’s average temperature warms from 1990 levels, the projections get more dire. Add 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit – 1 degree Celsius is the calculation scientists use – and between 400 million and 1.7 billion extra people can’t get enough water, some infectious diseases and allergenic pollens rise, and some amphibians go extinct. But the world’s food supply, especially in northern areas, could increase. That’s the likely outcome around 2020, according to the draft.\nAdd another 1.8 degrees and as many as 2 billion people could be without water and about 20 percent to 30 percent of the world’s species near extinction. Also, more people start dying because of malnutrition, disease, heat waves, floods and droughts – all caused by global warming. That would happen around 2050, depending on the level of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels.\nAt the extreme end of the projections, a 7- to 9-degree average temperature increase, the chart predicts: “Up to one-fifth of the world population affected by increased flood events ... “1.1 to 3.2 billion people with increased water scarcity” ...”major extinctions around the globe.”\nDespite that dire outlook, several scientists involved in the process say they are optimistic that such a drastic temperature rise won’t happen because people will reduce carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming.\n“The worst stuff is not going to happen because we can’t be that stupid,” said Harvard University oceanographer James McCarthy, who was a top author of the 2001 version of this report. “Not that I think the projections aren’t that good, but because we can’t be that stupid.”
(04/02/07 4:00am)
Pope Benedict XVI, in his Palm Sunday Mass, opened the Roman Catholic Church’s most solemn week by urging young people to live pure, innocent lives. This year, Holy Week also includes the second anniversary of the April 2, 2005, death of Pope John Paul II.
(03/30/07 4:00am)
WASHINGTON – Contrary to his public statements, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was deeply involved in the firing of eight federal prosecutors, his former top aide said Thursday, adding that the final decision on who was to be dismissed was made by Gonzales and President Bush’s former counsel.\n“I don’t think the attorney general’s statement that he was not involved in any discussions of U.S. attorney removals was accurate,” Kyle Sampson, who quit this month as Gonzales’ chief of staff, told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I remember discussing with him this process of asking certain U.S. attorneys to resign.”\nResponding to questions from Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Sampson rejected the notion that the dismissals were ordered by young or inexperienced Justice Department officials.\n“The decision makers in this case were the attorney general and the counsel to the president,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “I and others made staff recommendations but they were approved and signed off on by the principals.”\nThe White House response was notably muted.\n“I’m going to have to let the attorney general speak for himself,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said.\nSampson’s testimony and thousands of e-mails released over the past two weeks point to a much deeper involvement by Gonzales and then-White House counsel Harriet Miers in discussions taking place over several months about which U.S. attorneys to fire.\n“The attorney general was aware of this process from the beginning in early 2005,” Sampson testified Thursday. “He and I had discussions about it during the thinking phase of the process. Then in the more final phase ... he asked me to make sure that the process was appropriate.”\nGonzales said on March 13 that he did not participate in discussions or see any documents about the firings. Documents released last week show he attended a Nov. 27 meeting with senior aides on the topic, where he approved a detailed plan to carry out the dismissals. Gonzales later recanted, saying he had signed off on the plan to fire the prosecutors.\nSampson, sitting alone at the witness table, said the fired prosecutors were found to be insufficiently committed to the president’s law enforcement priorities. His appearance was the latest act in a political drama that has shaken the Bush administration and imperiled Gonzales’ tenure at the Justice Department.\nGonzales planned to meet with U.S. attorneys from the mid-Atlantic region at Justice Department headquarters Thursday, wrapping up a multistate tour in which he touted the agency’s crackdown on child predators.\nAs he traveled, the Justice Department unraveled, according to Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa.\n“It is generally acknowledged that the Department of Justice is in a state of disrepair, perhaps even dysfunction, because of what has happened,” Specter said. The remaining U.S. attorneys are skittish, he said, “not knowing when the other shoe may drop.”\nSampson said he would testify as long as need be. His comments contradicted Gonzales’ earlier denial of being involved in the firings, as well as the attorney general’s suggestion that two other Justice Department officials misled Congress about the firings because they had been badly briefed.\n“I don’t think it’s accurate if the statement implies that I intended to mislead the Congress,” Sampson said. “I shared information with anyone who wanted it. I was very open and collaborative in the process.”\nSampson also testified the prosecutors were fired last year because they did not sufficiently support Bush’s priorities, defending a standard that Democrats called “highly improper.”\n“The distinction between ‘political’ and ‘performance-related’ reasons for removing a United States attorney is, in my view, largely artificial,” Sampson said.\n“Some were asked to resign because they were not carrying out the president’s and the attorney general’s priorities,” he said. “In some sense that may be described as political by some people.”\nHe denied that any prosecutor was fired for pursuing corruption cases that might hurt the administration. “To my knowledge, nothing of the sort occurred here,” Sampson told the committee.\n--Associated Press Writers Lara Jakes Jordan and Deb Riechmann contributed to this report.
(03/30/07 4:00am)
WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats ignored a veto threat and pushed through a bill Thursday requiring President Bush to start withdrawing troops from “the civil war in Iraq,” dealing a rare, sharp rebuke to a wartime commander in chief.\nIn a mostly party line 51-47 vote, the Senate signed off on a bill providing $123 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It also orders Bush to begin withdrawing troops within 120 days of passage while setting a nonbinding goal of ending combat operations by March 31, 2008.\nThe vote came shortly after Bush invited all House Republicans to the White House to appear with him in a sort of pep rally to bolster his position in the continuing war policy fight.\n“We stand united in saying loud and clear that when we’ve got a troop in harm’s way, we expect that troop to be fully funded,” Bush said, surrounded by Republicans on the North Portico, “and we got commanders making tough decisions on the ground, we expect there to be no strings on our commanders.”\n“We expect the Congress to be wise about how they spend the people’s money,” he said.\nThe Senate vote marked its boldest challenge yet to the administration’s handling of a war, now in its fifth year, that has cost the lives of more than 3,200 American troops and more than $350 billion.\n“We have fulfilled our constitutional responsibilities,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told reporters shortly after the vote.\nIf Bush “doesn’t sign the bill, it’s his responsibility,” Reid added.\nIn a show of support for the president, most Republicans opposed the measure, unwilling to back a troop withdrawal schedule despite the conflict’s widespread unpopularity.\n“Surely this will embolden the enemy and it will not help our troops in any way,” said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala.
(03/30/07 4:00am)
A tornado as wide as two football fields carved a devastating path through an eastern Colorado town as a massive spring storm swept from the Rockies into the Plains, killing at least four people in three states, authorities said Thursday. Sixty-five tornadoes were reported in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Colorado and Nebraska on Wednesday, the National Weather Service said.
(03/27/07 4:00am)
SAN FRANCISCO – It took seven years after the fighting had ended for the nation to dedicate the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. This time around, Americans aren’t waiting for the shooting to stop.\nOn beaches and bases, town squares and veterans’ clubs, they are building their monuments to America’s fallen as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grind on.\nVietnam, in one way or another, looms large over this impulse to memorialize the war dead in real time. Some are erecting these monuments as anti-war statements against what they regard as another Vietnam; others are doing it to express their gratitude to the troops now, rather than later, as was done with the Vietnam veterans.\n“The sentiment of the nation – they’re more behind us this time. They saw what happened in Vietnam. They didn’t want to do that again to soldiers,” said Fort Stewart, Ga., spokesman Kevin Larson, emphasizing that he was speaking for himself, not for the Army base.\nThe names of the fallen are engraved on the rocks in a rambling stone wall in Asheville, N.C. They are etched in black marble at a military club in San Francisco and in black granite at the state Capitol in Salem, Ore. In Santa Monica, Santa Barbara and Lafayette, Calif., the Iraq toll is measured in thousands of white crosses.\nVeterans for Peace in North Carolina, an anti-war group, helped raise money for the Asheville monument.\n“Some of us are still young enough to remember the Vietnam War, and we see this war in Iraq as being very much the same sort of misguided adventure,” said past president Ken Ashe, who served two tours of duty in Vietnam.\nOregon taxpayers and other private donors financed the Afghan-Iraqi Freedom Memorial in Salem. It consists of a bronze statue of a kneeling soldier and a black granite wall engraved with the names of more than 70 soldiers and Marines with Oregon ties who have died in the two wars.
(03/27/07 4:00am)
MOSCOW – The presidents of Russia and China on Monday called on Iran to fulfill the U.N. Security Council’s demands over its disputed nuclear program – a sign of impatience from Iran’s two closest allies over its continued defiance.\nThe joint call from Vladimir Putin and Hu Jintao came a day after Iran announced it was partially suspending cooperation with the International Aromic Energy Agency in response to the latest Security Council sanctions – a decision the United States said was a “step in the wrong direction.”\nIran insisted it was not aiming to escalate the standoff with its partial suspension, which truncates the time period in which it will notify the U.N. about new nuclear projects.\n“Iran is not after adventurism. It does not want to violate international measures,” said Kazem Jalali, the spokesman of parliament’s committee on foreign policy and national security.\nIn their joint statement, Putin and Hu said their countries – permanent, veto-wielding Security Council members – were ready to “search for a comprehensive, long-term and mutually acceptable solution to the Iranian nuclear problem.” They also emphasized that the increasingly tense dispute should be resolved “exclusively through peaceful means.”\nRussia and China have significant trade ties with Iran and have used their veto power to push for less stringent sanctions against their ally. That stance has often put them at odds with the other veto powers, the United States, Britain and France, which favor a tougher approach to the nuclear dispute.\nBut the two joined the rest of the Security Council on Saturday in voting to impose the new sanctions – the second in three months against Iran for its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment. The sanctions included the banning of Iranian arms exports and the freezing of assets of 28 people and organizations involved in Iran’s nuclear and missile programs.\nIran rejected the sanctions and later announced a partial suspension of cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency. Its hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said the latest U.N. sanctions would not halt the country’s uranium enrichment “even for a second.”
(03/27/07 4:00am)
The military has found no criminal wrongdoing in the friendly fire death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman in Afghanistan. But it says there were critical errors in reporting the former NFL star’s death and failing to provide details to his family. Army and Defense Department investigators said Monday that officers looking into the incident passed along misleading and inaccurate information and delayed reporting their belief that Tillman was killed by his fellow soldiers. The investigators recommended the Army take action against the officers.
(03/27/07 4:00am)
NEW YORK – Having already blossomed as a newspaper, Web site and book publisher, The Onion – perhaps the most dominant provider of fake news anywhere – is bringing its brand of humor to the hot medium of the moment: online video.\nThe dispatches on the Onion News Network, which goes live Tuesday, aren’t likely to be causing much missed sleep at CNN and Fox News Channel – unless those outlets start covering fake news stories like Civil War re-enactors being dispatched to Iraq.\nBut on the Web, The Onion will be going up against several others who have already established themselves in comedy video, including Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”\nMuch of that awareness, however, came from unauthorized clips being viewed on Google Inc.’s YouTube, something that Comedy Central’s parent company Viacom Inc. is suing YouTube over for $1 billion.\nSean Mills, the president of the closely held company that runs The Onion, says he has “some tolerance” for unauthorized use of clips and is optimistic the company will reach a mutually beneficial arrangement with YouTube.\nClips from the Onion News Network will also be available for free downloads on Apple Inc.’s iTunes store, and Mills said the company is in talks with other Web companies about possible distribution deals.\nIn the meantime, The Onion wanted to give its audience as much flexibility as possible, and will allow features that are popular on video-sharing sites such as allowing Web publishers to embed clips into their blogs.\n“We want as many people to see our news reports as possible,” Mills said. “We can work out a deal with YouTube when they’re ready.”\nThe Onion’s network will start out with two new video clips per week, supported by ads. An in-house staff of eight people will work on the videos, which have a professional look to them despite the buffoonery being discussed, such as a top-level technology executive who is forced to sell his estate and take a job managing a TGI Friday’s after his job goes to an illegal immigrant.\nScott Dikkers, one of the founders of The Onion who returned about two years ago and is now its editor, says the company is frequently approached with offers to do television shows but so far has turned them all down.\n“What makes The Onion what it is is that it’s a totally uncensored voice. If you go through a network filter, you get a totally different vibe,” Dikkers said. “I don’t need someone to tell me what I can’t do.”\nWhile the subject matter of the videos is sure to be funny, based on samples reviewed ahead of the launch, it’s also a real business that a number of advertisers have already signed up for, including Dewar’s Scotch, Hyundai and Red Stripe Beer. Mills said he expects the online video operation to become profitable by the end of the year.\nAll this comes as The Onion’s print publications continue to expand. In early April it will launch an edition in Washington, its 11th, bringing its total weekly circulation to just over 700,000. The Washington Post Co. is providing printing, distribution and help with advertising sales in the Washington edition in exchange for a share of revenue.\nIts print publications remain profitable, but The Onion is moving more and more toward the Web, where it now draws about 60 percent of its advertising revenue versus 40 percent from print, about the reverse of where it was four years ago, Mills said.\nAnd while The Onion is happy to indulge its audience with a lot of flexibility over how and where to view its new video product online, its patience isn’t unlimited.\n“If 98 percent of viewing is on YouTube, we need to figure out how to support that,” Mills said. “I think they’re motivated to make it work for people like The Onion who make the content.”