Republican Presidential Candidates Tv Ads 3:08 Republican Presidential Candidates Tv AdsThe cost to try to influence the 2008 election could exceed $3 billion, according to TNS Media Intelligence/Campaign Media Analysis Group, CNN's consultant on political television advertising.
This is nearly twice as much than what was spent in 2004 when political and issue-advocacy television advertising rang in at $1.7 billion. In 2006, $2.3 billion was spent on political and issue-advocacy TV commercials.
NOW talks to Congressman Ron Paul and his supporters across the country about Paul's surprisingly popular run for the Republican nomination, led in large part by people acting on their own without help from Ron Paul or his campaign.
Former Presidents are used to hecklers, but a robot? Bill Clinton was speaking in Iowa City Monday when a man dressed in a silver metallic suit made a scene.
The protester said he wanted Clinton to apologize for a comment he made in 1992 about a rapper named Sister Souljah and then threw colored cards into the air. As the protester was being escorted out of the room, Clinton told him he needed to find a more environmentally-friendly way to protest.
WH Press Briefing December 12 2007 Is Dana Perino married? Who is she dating? Dam Dana is so HOT. The nice thing about blogs is that simplistic editorial standards allow us to report what everyone else is thinking.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is attacking Mike Huckabee on his record of illegal immigration in a new TV ad, a move the latter labeled as "desperate."
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is upping the attacks on Mike Huckabee's immigration record.
Romney, who has lost his front-runner status in polls to Huckabee in Iowa, plans to air the ad on the issue he views as one of his rival's biggest vulnerabilities.
Iowa stations will begin broadcasting the spot, which attacks Huckabee by name, on Tuesday.
The Romney ad, titled "The Record," compares the candidates' conservative stands on social issues but draws a sharp contrast on their track records on immigration policy: "Mitt Romney stood up and vetoed in-state tuition for illegal aliens ... opposed driver's licenses for illegals," the ad's announcer says. "Mike Huckabee? Supported in-state tuition benefits for illegal immigrants. Huckabee even supported taxpayer-funded scholarships for illegal aliens President Campaign Ad
DES MOINES, Iowa (CNN) -- The 2004 election was about terrorism. The 2006 election was about Iraq.
As the stock market continues to suffer losses, the economy is now the top issue in the presidential race.
What's the big issue going to be for 2008?
Remember "the economy, stupid"? That was in 1992 -- the last time the U.S. had an economic election. Another Bush, another Clinton, and that year the nation experienced an economic downturn.
Now, for the first time in more than four years, a majority of Americans, 57 percent, believe the nation is in a recession, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Tuesday.
The poll's margin of error on that question was plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.
The economy is now the biggest issue in the presidential campaign. Twenty-nine percent of poll respondents said the economy was their top issue, compared with 23 percent who listed the Iraq war -- a reversal from October's results, when 28 percent listed the war and 22 percent pointed to the economy.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush granted pardons Tuesday to carjackers, drug dealers, a moonshiner and a violator of election laws, but not to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, his vice president's former top aide who was convicted in the case of the leaked identity of a CIA operative.
In all, Bush pardoned 29 convicts and reduced the prison sentence of one more, in the end-of-the-year presidential tradition.
Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said Bush has granted 142 pardons and commuted five sentences since taking office in 2001 -- lagging far behind the pace set by most modern presidents.
The list was issued with little fanfare Tuesday afternoon by the Office of the Pardon Attorney at the Justice Department. Bush was not expected to issue any more pardons this year.
In July, Bush commuted Libby's 2 1/2-year sentence, sparing Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff from serving any prison time after being convicted of perjury and obstructing justice. Libby, who recently dropped appeals to have his convictions overturned, has paid a $250,000 fine and remains on two years probation.
SAN FRANCISCO -- Ask.com unveiled Tuesday a "privacy switch" that lets users completely erase their search queries and related data from the search engine's servers.
The new feature, dubbed AskEraser, gives users control over whether their information is retained by the search engine. Company officials and privacy advocates hope the "privacy switch" will pressure other Internet companies to follow suit.
"Anywhere that you log into, anywhere where you put in personalized information, there should be a way - an easy way - to control how that information is used and retained," said Doug Leeds, senior vice president at Ask.com, a unit of IAC/InterActiveCorp. "We are giving users the ability themselves to take control of their privacy."
Huckabee's opinion on gay marriage is out there, but we should also be publicizing Huckabee's opinions on heterosexual marriage. Specifically, what he believes about a women's role in a marriage.
In August of 1998, Huckabee was one of 131 signatories to a full page USA Today Ad which declared: "I affirm the statement on the family issued by the 1998 Southern Baptist Convention." What was in the family statement from the SBC? "A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ."
The ad wasn't just a blanket, "we support the SBC statement," but rather highlighted details. The ad Huckabee signed specifically said of the SBC family statement: "You are right because you called wives to graciously submit to their husband's sacrificial leadership."
Add "graciously submit" to his "Take back the nation for Christ" statement, and if the media does its job, he's well on his way to being toast.
A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident.
Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.
"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.
"It felt like prison," says Jones, who told her story to ABC News as part of an upcoming "20/20" investigation. "I was upset; I was curled up in a ball on the bed; I just could not believe what had happened."
Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case.
Legal experts say Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.
The Justice Department and the CIA's internal watchdog announced Saturday a joint inquiry into the spy agency's destruction of videotaped interrogations of two suspected terrorists as the latest scandal to rock U.S. intelligence gathered steam.
The review will determine whether a full investigation is warranted.
"I welcome this inquiry and the CIA will cooperate fully," CIA Director Mike Hayden said in a statement. "I welcome it as an opportunity to address questions that have arisen over the destruction back in 2005 of videotapes."
The House Intelligence Committee is launching its own inquiry next week. It will investigate not only why the tapes were destroyed and Congress was not notified, but also the interrogation methods that "if released, had the potential to do such grave damage to the United States of America," said Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, on Saturday.
"This administration cannot be trusted to police itself," Reyes said.
The Senate Intelligence committee is also investigating.
Bush Stealthily Authorizes Full Access to U.S. Roadsfor Even More Mexico-Based NAFTA Trucks
Statement of Joan Claybrook, President of Public Citizen
In a stealthy maneuver, the Bush administration has boosted the threat to the public by increasing the number of Mexico-based trucking firms allowed access to all U.S. roads as part of the reckless North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) trucking “pilot program.” The Department of Transportation recently revealed an increase in the number of NAFTA trucks permitted to all U.S. highways – now 10 carriers, sending as many as 55 trucks throughout the country.
The last time the Bush administration made a public announcement about the number of Mexico-based carriers allowed to participate in the NAFTA trucks pilot program, there were only three carriers.
It has long been the tradition by this administration to bury bad news like this by sending out press releases on Friday afternoon, but in this case, the Department of Transportation (DOT) reached a new low: not sending any press release at all, but simply updating a Web page.
The secret campaign was launched two years ago to undermine Tehran's nuclear program. It has persuaded a 'handful' of key officials to leave.
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON -- The CIA launched a secret program in 2005 designed to degrade Iran's nuclear weapons program by persuading key officials to defect, an effort that has prompted a "handful" of significant departures, current and former U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation say.
The previously undisclosed program, which CIA officials dubbed "the Brain Drain," is part of a major intelligence push against Iran ordered by the White House two years ago.
From CBS News' Joy Lin MIAMI -- “Fascist! Fascist!” shouted a handful of Ron Paul supporters at Rudy Giuliani as he left a hotel and got into his car.
Giuliani donned his signature grin while someone screamed at him and his staff, calling them “traitors to the constitution, all of you!” Another guy yelled, “Pathetic!”
“Sell-outs! Got to war, you hypocrites! Cowards! Where’s your support? You don’t have anybody!” one protestor continued.
Bulten asked why Americans should vote for Ron Paul.
“Lower taxes, less government, more protection for our borders, and um…get our troops home” she said.
It was former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s turn in Tim Russert’s hot seat Sunday, but the front-runner (in national polls) for the GOP presidential nomination managed to stay cool.
The host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” is inviting the leading presidential candidates for one-on-one hour-long interviews; Giuliani is the 10th to appear since the “Meet the Candidates” series started in January with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee.
Presidential mistresses were entitled to Secret Service protection
WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 — At a conference in El Paso in mid-August, Representative Silvestre Reyes of Texas, the Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, heaped praise on a man whose exploits, he joked, had been the inspiration for the television show “24.”
WASHINGTON (AP) --Congressional Democrats Friday demanded a full Justice Department investigation into whether the CIA obstructed justice by destroying videotapes that documented the harsh 2002 interrogations of two alleged terrorists.
A day after CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden told agency employees the tapes were destroyed in 2005, members of Congress, human rights groups and lawyers for accused terrorists said the tapes may have been key evidence that the U.S. government had illegally authorized torture.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 — The first of the so-called high-value Guantánamo detainees to have seen a lawyer claims he was subjected to “state-sanctioned torture” while in secret C.I.A. prisons, and he has asked for a court order barring the government from destroying evidence of his treatment.
Lawyers for the detainee, Majid Khan, a former Baltimore resident, released documents in his case on Friday. They claim he “was subjected to an aggressive C.I.A. detention and interrogation program notable for its elaborate planning and ruthless application of torture” to numerous detainees.
The documents also suggest that Mr. Khan, 27, and other high-value detainees are now being held in a previously undisclosed area of the Guantánamo prison in Cuba he called Camp 7.
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WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush granted pardons Tuesday to carjackers, drug dealers, a moonshiner and a violator of election laws, but not to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, his vice president's former top aide who was convicted in the case of the leaked identity of a CIA operative.
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