Entries for April 05, 2007

After angering some Latinos by referring to Spanish as the "language of living in a ghetto," Newt Gingrich not only released a YouTube video yesterday clarifying his remarks; he did so in both English and Spanish.

Gingrich said in a speech Saturday that English immersion should replace bilingual education in America, contrasting Spanish with the "language of prosperity." Here at News Desk we decided to put his own language skills to the test.

After watching the video, Middlebury College Spanish Prof. Roberto Véguez called his statement "labored and not fluid."

Just for the record, the Baby Einstein videos aren't meant to be educational.

That's how the Walt Disney Co. is framing its cash-cow series of videos for the under-3 demographic after a report was published yesterday claiming that educational materials for toddlers, from state-issued Mozart CDs to the Neighborhood Animals Digital Board Book DVD ($19.99 from Baby Einstein), do not make babies smarter in any empirical way.

"Building brighter babies ... [is] based on misinterpretations and misapplications of brain research," states the report, published by the D.C.-based think tank Educational Sector and first reported yesterday by USA Today.

This update comes in from U.S. News special correspondent Aamir Latif in Pakistan:

In Pakistan's lawless borderlands, pro-government tribesmen are fighting foreign militants, mostly Uzbeks, allegedly linked to al Qaeda. According to reports from the remote area, as many as 170 militants, and 75 tribesmen, have been killed during two weeks of heavy clashes in South Waziristan.

The foreign militants reportedly belong to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, headed by Tahir Yuldashev, who is said to have been a confidant of Osama bin Laden. Locals claim to have routed the militants from a stronghold in Shin Warsak, some five miles south of Wana, the capital of South Waziristan. Some of the militants are said to have fled to North Waziristan, others across the border into Afghanistan, where U.S. and Afghan forces are stationed.

In a speech this morning at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., former U. S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton slammed the administration's February 13 agreement with North Korea and four other countries on implementing a broader deal to denuclearize the north in return for economic and political benefits, U.S. News Diplomatic Correspondent Tom Omestad reports.

Bolton, once an influential and hawkish member of the Bush administration, predicted that the February 13 agreement will collapse when President Bush is forced to deal with the north's expected noncompliance.

"I think this deal will inevitably fail," Bolton said. "That day cannot come too soon in my view."

Monica Goodling, the Department of Justice liaison with the White House now caught up in the U.S. attorneys firing feud, has invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in refusing to appear before Congress.

Her lawyer, John Dowd, whose biography reflects a longtime career as an attorney for high-profile government-employee clients, has recently fired off two letters to the Democratic House and Senate Judiciary Committee chairmen in which he lectured them on constitutional rights.

But in this first week of the return of baseball, Dowd may be remembered by many as the counsel to Bart Giamatti who investigated Pete Rose's gambling habits and issued the report on which the late baseball commissioner based his decision to ban Rose from the game for life.

Rose, meantime, was recently spotted by News Desk signing autographs at a sports memorabilia shop in, you guessed it, Las Vegas.

--Kent Allen

Some things don't change after kindergarten: Here in Washington, the name-calling peaks during recess.

Congress may be on break for another 10 days, but the rhetoric over war funding ratchets up by the day. President Bush is promising a veto of the Democratic plans; Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he'll bring up even more-stringent legislation if the current bill isn't signed into law.

Whatever the recess rhetoric, though, with lawmakers out of town, it seems a good time to look back at just how far the debate over the war has come in the past year or so and just how much more willing Democrats are to oppose Bush, notes U.S. News reporter Silla Brush. Democratic challengers in the hottest congressional races last year were wary about supporting even nonbinding resolutions challenging Bush's Iraq policies, and a majority of them were opposed to withdrawal deadlines.

Democrats:

• Dennis Kucinich holds a town hall meeting at the New Hampshire Institute of Art in Manchester.
• Barack Obama attends a healthcare forum in Mason City, Iowa, and then makes campaign stops in Algona, Dakota City, and Fort Dodge.
• Bill Richardson makes four stops in New Hampshire: Littleton, Whitefield, Berlin, and Center Sandwich.

Republicans:

• Sam Brownback attends the annual Iowa Prayer Breakfast at the Polk County Convention Complex in Des Moines.
• Rudy Giuliani throws out the first pitch on opening day for the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Pelicans, a single-A minor-league baseball team. He'll also mett with small-business owners in Charleston, S.C.
• Mitt Romney attends a fundraiser at the Columbia Club in Indianapolis and another in Kansas City, Mo.

Etc.: Obama Rivals Clinton in Fundraising (Video), on USNews.com