Speaking to the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, President Bush yesterday strongly criticized the Democratic-led Congress' national security priorities, criticizing the delay in the confirmation of Michael Mukasey as the next attorney general "during this time of war." Bush said, "When it comes to funding our troops, some in Washington should spend more time responding to the warnings of terrorists like Osama bin Laden and the requests of our commanders on the ground, and less time responding to the demands of MoveOn.org bloggers and Code Pink protesters."
The AP reports Bush "compared Congress' Democratic leaders Thursday to people who ignored the rise of Lenin and Hitler early in the last century, saying 'the world paid a terrible price' then and risks similar consequences for inaction today." The Los Angeles Times says Bush "stressed the need to remain vigilant against a potential attack and his differences with Congress about a broad swath of national security issues."
The New York Times reports the President defended the nominee "in a speech and in an Oval Office interview, where he complained that Mr. Mukasey was 'not being treated fairly' on Capitol Hill." The effort, says the Times, "suggests that the White House believes it can combat criticism of Mr. Mukasey and his views by appealing to public concern about terrorism."
Media reports particularly noted Bush's suggestion that if Mukasey is rejected by the Senate, he will not nominate a replacement. The Washington Times titles its front-page story "It's Mukasey Or No One, Bush Warns." NBC Nightly News reported Mukasey's nomination "does look increasingly shaky ahead of next week's vote, and if it does fail, the President suggested today that he may not nominate anybody else, leaving him without an attorney general, potentially, for the rest of his term." ABC World News also reported the President "spent much of his day trying to save the nomination."
McClatchy reports, "If the Senate rejects Mukasey because of his stand on waterboarding, Bush said, 'they would set a new standard for confirmation that could not be met by any responsible nominee for attorney general and that would guarantee that America would have no attorney general during this time of war.'"
Bush counselor Ed Gillespie said on CNN's The Situation Room, "We believe that if Judge Mukasey is given an up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate, he will be confirmed." In his "Washington Sketch" column for the Washington Post, Dana Milbank writes, "Americans, many of whom get their information about medieval torture from Monty Python and Mel Brooks, might be inclined to agree with Cheney: 'Waterboarding,' after all, sounds like a benign cross between water skiing and snowboarding."
Reid: No Vote Without Committee Approval The Politico reports Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said yesterday "that the Senate would not hold a floor vote on" the Mukasey nomination if it "is rejected by the Judiciary Committee." The Wall Street Journal says Mukasey "would likely still win a majority vote in the Senate."
USA Today reports "Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., became the fourth Democrat on the Judiciary Committee to say that he will vote against...Mukasey. Other Democrats on the committee, including Mukasey's Democratic patron, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, have not said how they will vote Tuesday." The Washington Post says "no Democratic lawmaker has found himself in a tighter spot than...Schumer," who "had eagerly recommended the former federal judge as a consensus candidate." The New York Times reports Schumer "real concerns had been raised in his mind about whether Mr. Mukasey would show independence from the White House on controversial issues."
The Hill reports "Republicans hope they can win over" Sen. Dianne Feinstein, "given that she broke ranks and sided with committee Republicans in August to send the nomination of Leslie Southwick as an appeals court judge to the Senate floor. Southwick was later confirmed over strong Democratic objections."
Bush May Use Recess Appointment The Los Angeles Times reports "there is speculation that Bush might install Mukasey during the congressional holiday break. That recess appointment would enable Mukasey to serve unconfirmed until a new Congress convenes, and Bush leaves office, in January 2009."
WPost Urges Mukasey's Confirmation The Washington Post editorializes that the Senate "should confirm Mr. Mukasey, who is far more independent and qualified than either of Mr. Bush's previous two nominees."
ABC World News reported, "At the Pentagon today, military officials gave one of the most upbeat assessments of the security situation in Iraq that we have heard since the opening months of the war." Though no one "is anywhere near ready to declare victory. But the military statistics tell an unmistakable story. Violence in Iraq is down. And down considerably. Baghdad's marketplaces are slowly coming back to life, as violent attacks in Iraq have fallen to less than half of what they were a year ago."
The CBS Evening News ran a far less upbeat report, "Two more notes about Iraq -- the Army's having a tough time attracting recruits. The Army hoped to attract 20,000 last month, but only got about 7,400. Meanwhile, inside Iraq, the military reports there were 39 American deaths last month, the lowest number in a year and a half. Overall, the US death toll since the 2003 invasion is 3,845."
The Washington Post runs a report titled "US Sees Decline In Bombs In Iraq," and Los Angeles Times, under the headline "Powerful Roadside Blasts Decline In Iraq," also note the diminished levels of violence in Iraq.
On its front page, the Washington Post also reports, "From store clerks selling cigarettes by generator power, to military commanders poring over aerial maps, Iraqis and Americans are striving to understand the sharp decrease in violence over the past several months and what it might herald for the future of Iraq." But "Iraq defies sweeping statements about safety or danger."
Gates: Iran Promises To Stop Weapons Flow The AP reports Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Thursday that Iran "apparently has assured the Iraqi government that it will stop the flow into Iraq of bomb-making materials and other weaponry that US officials say has inflamed insurgent violence and caused many American troop casualties."
The New York Times notes that Secretary Gates' remarks "came the same day the No. 2 American commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, said that the number of lethal roadside bombs suspected to have origins in Iran had declined in recent months." The Washington Post reports the number of explosively formed projectiles (EFPs) "that have been detonated or found in Iraq has dropped by nearly half in recent months, from a peak of 99 in July to 53 last month," according to Odierno. USA Today runs a similar report.
US To Start Pulling Out Of Tikrit The Christian Science Monitor reports from Tikrit, "The end of the US surge is in sight here. In two key central Iraqi provinces, American units will soon reduce their forces and modify their role in a region that is a microcosm of the fractured nation."
Allawi Says Iraqi Electoral System Flawed Ayad Allawi, the prime minister of Iraq from 2004 to 2005, writes in the New York Times that "neither Washington nor the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki seems to understand that reconciliation between Iraq's ethnic and religious groups will begin only when we change the flawed electoral system that was created after the fall of Saddam Hussein." The "paralysis that has afflicted the government in Baghdad, the sectarian disputes across the country and the failure to move toward reconciliation were all predictable outcomes of the senseless rush to hold national elections and put the Constitution in place."
In what the Washington Post calls "the opening salvo in a fight over the future of the US tax code in the twilight of the Bush presidency," the House Ways and Means Committee passed a "$76 billion measure to stave off the growth of the alternative minimum tax and provide new tax breaks to middle-income homeowners and poor parents, proposing to pay for it with hefty tax increases on business executives and Wall Street financiers." The Los Angeles Times also says the vote was the first step in "a struggle that will be played out in the coming days" and a "preview of conflicts over economic policy that will be heard in the presidential campaign and after next year's election."
In blunter language than the Post, the Wall Street Journal says the committee approved "tax increases hitting private-equity managers and others." However, the Journal says, much of the projected inflow "comes from policies unlikely to become law this year" due to divisions between the House and Senate on taxes. The Hill says the committee's 22-13 vote "could complicate the swift passage of an AMT patch in the Senate."
The conservative Washington Times leads its report by saying "economists from across the political spectrum agree that the Democrats' tax-relief plan for middle-class families comes with a hefty tax increase."
Specter Of Mondale Could Haunt Democrats The Los Angeles Times raises an unwelcome specter of the past for Democrats, saying that "more than two decades after Walter F. Mondale said he would raise taxes -- and lost his presidential bid in a landslide -- the Democratic Party is on the verge of a major political gamble: Some of its leading members are proposing an array of tax increases on wealthier Americans." Republicans "see the emerging debate on taxes as a political gift."
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Women In a flashback to her college days, Hillary Clinton campaigned at Wellesley College yesterday. A major theme of the coverage this morning is that Clinton is attempting use the attacks by her all-male opponents at Tuesday's debate to rally support among young women. The New York Times reports Clinton "reached out to the nation's young women in an emotional return on Thursday to her alma mater, Wellesley College, where she told students who had started lining up at 6 a.m. to see her that 'in so many ways this all-women's college prepared me to compete in the all-boys' club of presidential politics.'" It was Clinton's "first visit to the school as a presidential candidate, and she chose it as the place to set out on an ambitious drive to attract more women to what she is underscoring as her historic candidacy." Clinton "made no mention of her opponents' attacks on her in the Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, or of 'The Politics of Pile-on' video with clips from the debate that is now playing on her Web site. But her campaign condemned her rivals' actions in a new fund-raising appeal sent out on Thursday."
NBC Nightly News reported Clinton "today made perhaps her strongest and most emotional appeal yet to young women voters, referring to her candidacy in terms of a long line of men who have run for the American presidency." NBC added, "Hillary Rodham, Wellesley, class of '69, came back to her alma mater today as Senator Clinton and the first woman to be a leading candidate for president." The AP adds that given Clinton's "rocky debate performance," Thursday's event "had a decidedly 'You go, girl' flavor, with reminders of the pioneering nature of her candidacy."
The potential for the Bush administration to use force against Iran has been a major issue in the Democratic primary for the last month, with Barack Obama and John Edwards blasting Hillary Clinton for voting for voting for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment condemning Iran's Revolutionary Guard. The New York Times reported on its politics blog that Clinton has joined 29 other Democratic Senators in signing a letter admonishing the White House for it's Iran strategy, noting that she "has been under fire" from her Democratic rivals, who have said that her vote for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment could "embolden" President Bush to attack. However Clinton "has said that nothing in the resolution grants the Bush administration any authority to take military action against Iran. The letter today makes that point: 'We wish to emphasize that no congressional authority exists for unilateral military action against Iran.'" In a blog posting on the website of the Washington Post, Shailagh Murray notes that the letter was released by Virginia Sen. Jim Webb (D) and "warns Bush not to take military action in Iran without Congress's consent." Obama did not sign the letter.
Obama, meanwhile, is looking to keep the Kyl-Lieberman vote in the spotlight. The AP reports Obama is "offering a Senate resolution that says President Bush does not have authority to use military force against Iran, the latest move in a debate with presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton about how to respond to that country's nuclear ambitions." Spokesman Bill Burton said Obama "will introduce the measure Friday in an effort to 'nullify the vote the Senate took to give the president the benefit of the doubt on Iran.'"
The Wall Street Journal reports the Federal Election Commission said yesterday that John Edwards is eligible for federal matching funds for his campaign. To get the money, "candidates must abide by spending limits in each primary state and to an overall spending limit of about $50 million. Republican candidates Tom Tancredo and Sen. John McCain have also been declared eligible." However, "Mr. McCain hasn't said whether he will participate." The AP adds, "The step acknowledges that Edwards has met the minimum requirements to obtain money from the Presidential Public Funding Program, which is financed by taxpayers who set aside $3 for the fund in their tax returns. The decision means Edwards can now supplement his fundraising with millions of dollars from the presidential fund. The maximum available to a candidate this year would be about $21 million."
The Washington Post reports, "The downside for Edwards will be the spending caps imposed in exchange for taking the funds. For example, the most he will be permitted to spend in Iowa will be about $1.5 million." Edwards has "spent more than $1.3 million there in the first nine months of the year. After the recent television buy he made there -- estimated by one rival to be upwards of $800,000 -- it would seem he is close to hitting the ceiling, if not shattering it."
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Rudy Giuliani picked up the backing of a pair of GOP senators yesterday. The Kansas City Star reports that Missouri Sen. Kit Bond is expected to endorse Giuliani this morning, calling the announcement "a coup for Giuliani, who leads in national GOP preference polls despite his support for abortion rights. And it explains the transfer last week of two of Bond's top aides in Missouri - Van Eaton and Matt Roney - to the senator's political team."
Meanwhile, the AP reports that Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman said yesterday that he is backing Giuliani, "throwing his support behind a fellow moderate Republican and former mayor." Coleman said, "The shared vision as mayor of getting things done, tied in with his strong stance on security, Rudy gets that. So you tie those two together and it's a pretty powerful combination." Coleman also "called Giuliani 'ultimately electable,' a pitch that Giuliani has made throughout the campaign."
A new Winthrop University/ETV poll of 534 likely Democratic primary voters taken October 7-28 shows Hillary Clinton leading Barack Obama 33%-23%. John Edwards, who was born in the state, places 3rd with 10%. On the GOP side, the poll surveyed 522 likely GOP primary voters and shows a tight 3-way race. Fred Thompson leads with 18%, followed by Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney tied at 16%. John McCain places 4th with 9%, followed by Mike Huckabee with 2%. The State (SC) reports on the poll this morning.
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Jay Leno: "And tensions are very high between Iraq and Turkey. You see, this is where President Bush, I don't think he understands these issues, you know? Like today, he warned the American people we could be in for a rough Thanksgiving."
Jay Leno: "And Hillary Clinton's meltdown during the debates the other night continues to be the big story. Even Bill Clinton said it was Hillary's worst performance since their honeymoon."
David Letterman: "Anybody see the Democratic debate last night on television? Tough night for candidate Bill Richardson. During the entire debate the only question Tim Russert asked him was, 'And you are? And your name is?'"
Conan O'Brien: "Political experts are criticizing Senator Hillary Clinton's performance during the debate this week, calling it her worst performance of the year. Yeah. Yeah, after hearing this, Bill Clinton said, 'That's what you think.'"
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