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Monday, February 13, 2012
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After days of doubt about whether the revived Senate comprehensive immigration reform bill could attract the 60 votes needed to survive a procedural barrier, it did so Tuesday with several votes to spare. While the 64-35 vote was not strictly along party lines, it was primarily supported by Democrats and opposed by Republicans.
Media coverage of the successful "test vote" was fairly muted, and tended to focus on the bill's tenuous future. The New York Times, for example, has a feature about Canadian immigration policy on its front page, and runs its report on the Senate vote on page A17. And while all three broadcast networks covered Tuesday's developments, only ABC ran a full-length report.
ABC World News said the "controversial immigration bill that was essentially written off as dead a few weeks ago, has been revived," but "there are many legislative hurdles ahead," and passage "is considered an uphill fight."
The CBS Evening News said "immigration reform...still faces stiff opposition from Republican conservatives." NBC Nightly News notes the measure "faces another key vote in what is now a deeply divided Senate on Thursday."
The Washington Post reports opponents "insisted they would scuttle it by week's end. ... Still, Bush administration officials who have championed the proposal insisted that a bill once left for dead was now on its way toward passage."
USA Today notes the bill "picked up an additional 19 backers since a similar test vote was held earlier this month." The New York Times says "many conservatives said they were still determined to defeat the measure because it would offer legal status to most of the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants." The Los Angeles Times notes Democratic support "appears to be slipping and could jeopardize it as much as fierce Republican opposition does."
The Washington Times says Tuesday "was a victory for President Bush, who delivered 24 Republican votes to keep the bill alive and give it a fighting chance of surviving the week." The Wall Street Journal says Bush "must now hold together Senate Republican votes in the face of increased hostility from their colleagues in the House." The Chicago Tribune says it "is not clear that senators who supported resuming debate ultimately would vote to back the bill itself or help it clear upcoming procedural hurdles." The Financial Times says Bush "has aligned himself with Democrats and Republican moderates in support of immigration reform, in defiance of fierce opposition against the bill among a large majority of grassroots Republicans." The Christian Science Monitor and the AP also report on the vote. Fox News' Special Report reported, "Whatever the outcome of the Herculean effort in the Senate, immigration reform faces yet another daunting challenge getting through the House, where some Republican members made clear today they are not receptive."
Bush Misspeaks On "Amnesty." The Los Angeles Times reports, "At every opportunity, President Bush has said -- emphatically -- that the legislation he favors to overhaul the nation's immigration laws does not provide amnesty to those in the United States illegally. On Tuesday morning, he said it did, and his comment prompted a rare acknowledgment from the White House that the president had made a mistake."
A Senate floor speech by Sen. Richard Lugar on Monday night and a letter to President Bush from Sen. George Voinovich released on Tuesday sparked a flurry of high profile media coverage that suggested Republican support for the war in Iraq may be crumbling.
The CBS Evening News reported, "In the past 24 hours, two more Republican senators have told the president in blunt language they believe the troop surge is not working, and they want American troops to start coming home." ABC World News reported "there are signs other Republicans might soon follow suit." Sen. John Warner, "who is the number one Republican on the Armed Services Committee, hailed Lugar for his comments, and also said, after the Fourth of July recess, we should expect to hear other Republicans express similar sentiments and call for President Bush to end this war."
NBC Nightly News noted Lugar "doesn't speak out often. So when he does, people listen up. ... Today another Republican senator did the same and so tonight many are wondering if we're witnessing the beginning of some kind of turning point." On NBC Nightly News, David Gergen said, "I think this makes it almost inevitable that we will move from Plan A to Plan B in the next few months if not in the next few weeks."
The Washington Post reports, "The harsh judgment from one of the Senate's most respected foreign-policy voices was a blow to White House efforts to boost flagging support for its war policy, and opened the door to defections by other Republicans who have supported the administration despite increasing private doubts." The Washington Times reports, "Democratic leaders and antiwar groups seized upon the remarks, especially Mr. Lugar's, as evidence their plan to isolate Mr. Bush from his Republican allies was working." The Los Angeles Times characterizes the Lugar and Voinovich statements as "a sign that Republican congressional support for the White House's Iraq strategy is starting to wane."
The New York Times says Lugar's "remarks reverberated through Capitol Hill on Tuesday, picking up support from other Republican senators, even as the White House, which was not alerted about Mr. Lugar's speech in advance, tried to minimize their significance." But as The Hill notes, "Lugar's speech does not necessarily translate into a newly reliable vote for Democrats seeking to end the war in Iraq. The senator said yesterday that he has not embraced any of the pending bills to require a timetable for withdrawal, and that he has not made any plans on how he would vote when expected amendments to end the war are offered during debate over the defense authorization bill."
AFP, Bloomberg, and the Financial Times reported the story.
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The Washington Post reports Vice President Cheney's office "offered its first public written explanation yesterday for its refusal to comply with an executive order regulating the handling of classified material, arguing that the order makes clear that the vice president is not subject to the oversight system it creates for federal agencies." In a letter to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), Cheney Chief of Staff David S. Addington "wrote that the order treats the vice president the same as the president and distinguishes them both from 'agencies' subject to the oversight provisions of the executive order."
Meanwhile, House Democrats prepared to vote on cutting Cheney's office funding, based on the claim that the Vice President has claimed his office is not an executive agency. USA Today /AP notes Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said the "proposal could come up Thursday as an amendment to an annual spending bill." The Chicago Tribune reports Rep. Rahm Emanuel "said Tuesday he will try to cut off the $4.8 million needed annually to run Cheney's office and home."
Asked about Vice President Cheney's assertion that he is not part of the executive branch, Sen. Joseph Biden said on CNN's The Situation Room that what bothers him about Cheney "is not the cockamamie ideas he comes up" with but "the way he has had this web of control over the President's policy-related national security has fundamentally damaged American interest."
Cheney Backed Business Over Environment In the fourth installment of its four-part series on Vice President Cheney, the Washington Post reports in an approximately 3,500-word front-page story that he "took on a decisive role to undercut long-standing environmental regulations for the benefit of business. By combining unwavering ideological positions -- such as the priority of economic interests over protected fish -- with a deep practical knowledge of the federal bureaucracy, Cheney has made an indelible mark on the administration's approach to everything from air and water quality to the preservation of national parks and forests."
The Washington Post reports the presentation of a 1997 CNN interview with Osama bin Laden that prompted Jose Padilla co-defendants Adham Hassoun and Kifah Jayyousi to react like "star-struck fans" has "sparked one of the most intense debates in the five weeks since opening arguments in the trial of the three men on terrorism charges." Defense attorneys called it "unduly inflammatory," but prosecutors said it "shed light on" the defendants "allegiance to al-Qaeda."
USA Today /AP reports jurors "heard FBI wiretap intercepts in which Padilla's two co-defendants said positive things about the al-Qaeda leader."
The Washington Post reports US District Judge Ellen S. Huvelle "rejected the tearful pleas of the former second-ranking official in the Interior Department," J. Steven Griles, and "sentenced him to 10 months in prison for a felony conviction of obstructing a Senate investigation into corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff."
The New York Times reports Judge Huvelle "doubled the amount of prison time recommended by federal prosecutors and added three years of supervised release, 100 hours of public service and a $30,000 fine." The Hill reports Griles "pleaded guilty in March to lying to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee about the access and influence he'd given to Abramoff, a Bush "pioneer" fundraiser, on Indian casino issues."
USA Today /AP notes, "Second in rank only to then-Secretary Gale Norton, Griles effectively was Interior's chief operating officer between 2001 and 2005 and its top representative on Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force."
In his Washington Post "Washington Sketch" column, Dana Milbank says Griles "asked Abramoff for favors for the women in his life, prosecutors said, and in exchange helped Abramoff's clients with their government business."
The CIA released 700 pages of documents that catalogued numerous Central Intelligence Agency operations that exceeded the Agency's charter. The New York Times reports that known "inside the agency as the 'family jewels,' the 702 pages of documents catalog domestic wiretapping operations, failed assassination plots, mind-control experiments and spying on journalists from the early years of the C.I.A."
ABC World News reported, "These documents open a window to another era, a time when the nation's top spies were running amok. But many experts say they also shed light on this era, on the questions of what the agency should and shouldn't be doing, at a time when the CIA is running secret prisons, using coercive interrogation techniques such as water boarding, and expanding its role in the war against Al Qaeda and other terrorists." The Los Angeles Times says some documents "seem remarkably relevant today, as the nation grapples anew with questions of how much latitude U.S. intelligence agencies should be given, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks." USA Today says, "As the CIA now endures criticism for its role in pre-Iraq war intelligence failures, it has exposed past flaws by complying with a 15-year-old request to disclose those activities."
The CBS Evening News said, "Number one on the list has been blanked out as still too sensitive to release. But look at number two. Johnny Roselli, the use of the Mafia in an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro. That was in 1960."
The Washington Post reports in a front page story that the "hundreds of pages of decades-old documents declassified and released by the CIA yesterday revealed a 1970s-era agency in the throes of unaccustomed self-examination, caught between its traditional secrecy and demands that it come clean on a history of unsavory activities."
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In a report on its website, ABC News examined the presidential hopefuls' chase for cash ahead of the looming second-quarter fundraising deadline. ABC reported that Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both may "shatter fundraising records" during the second quarter. However, "none of that will matter if one or the other brings in far more." The two "could both top $30 million, but they are really are in a race against each other." Of Sen. John McCain's and John Edwards' fundraising, ABC said, "Anything less than $10 million this quarter would be a big disappointment, and they'd need $15 million apiece to quiet talk of their campaigns fading in the money race." Mitt Romney "wants to repeat his first-quarter haul of $20 million -- which would put him ahead of the record-setting six-month total raised by George W. Bush at this time in the 2000 cycle. But he appears so worried about his numbers that he floated himself a loan this week." Rudy Giuliani, meanwhile, "needs to show skeptics that his campaign operation is running on all cylinders. Realistically, he's got to clear $15 million."
Bloomberg reports that "Obama and Clinton are poised to match or exceed the $25 million-plus each collected in the first quarter. ... Both have said only that they'll raise more than $20 million this quarter and, in an attempt to raise the bar for their competition, suggested that the other will bring in more. Bragging rights will go to the candidate with the most cash. A similar fight on the Republican side pits Romney" and Giuliani. Bloomberg notes, "McCain, more than any other candidate, can't afford a fundraising dip, said Rogan Kersh, associate dean of New York University's Wagner School of Public Service. ... If McCain 'is again in a weak third place or lower, that could signal the beginning of the end,' Kersh said."
Utah Comes Through Big For Romney Most candidates rely on the major urban centers for their fundraising, such as Los Angeles or New York, but not all. Through a series of events last weekend, Utahns raised about $1.4 million for Mitt Romney's presidential campaign, the Salt Lake Tribune. Romney's ties to the state have been good for his campaign so far residents contributed $2.7 million to his campaign in the first quarter alone.
Rudy Giuliani spoke yesterday at socially conservative Liberty University, avoiding social issues and focusing on terrorism. NBC Nightly News reported on Rudy Giuliani's "foray today into the territory of Christian conservatives," casting a skeptical eye on Giuliani's ability to win over the key Republican constituency. NBC (Yang) added, "Talk about strange bedfellows: Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, and Rudy Giuliani, supporter of abortion right and gay rights, something neither man mentioned today at Robertson's Regent University. ... Giuliani's betting that his post-9/11 reputation trumps disagreement with social conservatives on core issues. ... Despite reservations about Giuliani by virtually every leader on the religious right, this week's NBC Wall Street Journal poll shows him leading among white evangelicals." Newsday says Giuliani "avoided any explicit mention of his pro-choice stand on abortion or any other social issue as he addressed about 650 people" at the school, and "no one in the audience even asked him about those issues in the question and answer period following his talk."
Giuliani also rolled out one of his key themes should he ultimately face Sen. Hillary Clinton in the general the shortcomings of Bill Clinton's fight against terrorism. The New York Times reports Giuliani "addressed Israeli-Palestinian discord" in his speech, and "broadly criticized the Clinton administration's approach in the 1990s, trying to broker peace with Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader." Giuliani said, "Let's not become like starry romantics like we were with Arafat, where he was leading us down the primrose path [and we] were helping him get the Nobel Peace Prize." The AP says Giuliani accused Democrats "of weakness and naivete in dealing with terrorism." Giuliani said, "Islamic terrorists killed more than 500 Americans before Sept. 11. Many people think the first attack on America was on Sept. 11, 2001. It was not. It was in 1993." Giuliani said President Clinton "treated the World Trade Center bombing as a criminal act instead of a terrorist attack, calling it 'a big mistake' that emboldened other strikes on the Khobar Towers housing complex in Saudi Arabia, in Kenya and Tanzania and later on the USS Cole while docked in Yemen in 2000."
Newsday adds in a separate piece that Giuliani "acknowledged that it's clearer in retrospect what was happening, 'but now is now, and there is no reason to go back into denial, and that is essentially what the Democratic candidates for president want to do...to put the country in reverse to the 1990s.'"
The Los Angeles Times reports that state Assemblywoman Laura Richardson defeated "her closest Democratic rival," state sen. Jenny Oropeza in Tuesday's special primary election to fill the congressional seat left vacant by the death of Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald. However, because Richardson did not receive 50% of the vote, she faces a runoff election on August 21 against the top GOP vote getter in the open primary, John Kanaley. Given the Democratic lean of the district, yesterday's victory for Richardson is tantamount to election to the seat. The AP reports Richardson finished with 38% of the vote, according to unofficial returns, with Oropeza at 31% in the crowded field. Kanaley was the top Republican with 8%.
CQ reports, "The victory by Richardson, who is African-American, was shared by black activists who urged that district voters maintain a now decades-long history of black representation."
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Jay Leno: "Well, a new poll says that 40% of Americans still mistakenly believe that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. The sad part, two of those people, Bush and Cheney."
Jay Leno: "Well, last night, we had John and Elizabeth Edwards on the show. As you know, he's running for president. And she's a very nice woman, Mrs. Edwards. I got to talk to her for about three hours while John was in hair and makeup, and it was...a nice discussion."
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