After learning that more than 17 veterans per month commit suicide while under the care of the Veterans Affairs Department, senators accused VA of withholding information about suicide rates and demanded the removal of its mental health chief.
“The culture of the VA has to change,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., after a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday.
To restore credibility, she said VA must take responsibility and dismiss Dr. Ira Katz, deputy chief patient care services officer for mental health.
“He clearly knew information and was holding it from us here in Congress,” Murray said.
Deputy VA Secretary Gordon Mansfield said he shared Murray’s concerns, but stopped short of taking responsibility for them.
“I apologize for the implications here,” he said, adding that he does not believe VA is engaged in a concerted campaign to withhold information.
Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the committee, backed the call for Katz’s resignation.
Given Senator John McCain ’s signature stance on campaign finance reform, it was not surprising that he backed legislation last year requiring presidential candidates to pay the actual cost of flying on corporate jets. The law, which requires campaigns to pay charter rates when using such jets rather than cheaper first-class fares, was intended to reduce the influence of lobbyists and create a level financial playing field.
But over a seven-month period beginning last summer, Mr. McCain’s cash-short campaign gave itself an advantage by using a corporate jet owned by a company headed by his wife, Cindy McCain , according to public records. For five of those months, the plane was used almost exclusively for campaign-related purposes, those records show.
Mr. McCain’s campaign paid a total of $241,149 for the use of that plane from last August through February, records show. That amount is approximately the cost of chartering a similar jet for a month or two, according to industry estimates.
The senator was able to fly so inexpensively because the law specifically exempts aircraft owned by a candidate or his family or by a privately held company they control. The Federal Election Commission adopted rules in December to close the loophole — rules that would have required substantial payments by candidates using family-owned planes — but the agency soon lost the requisite number of commissioners needed to complete the rule making.>>>>
Two candidates not named John McCain got a combined 219,913 votes in the Pennsylvania Republican primary Tuesday, and one of them is still in the race.
Sort of.
“I’m a real candidate, but I try to keep everybody living in the real world,” Ron Paul said in an interview, alluding to the exuberance of his supporters.
Despite posting a video on his website last month conceding that he couldn’t win and indicating that he was winding down his campaign, Paul continues to be a presence in the GOP contest. He aired a radio ad before the Pennsylvania primary, is still traveling the country to appear at campaign events and, as of the end of March, had more than $5 million in the bank.
New York Times | April 26 2008 Retired officers have been used to shape terrorism coverage from inside the TV and radio networks.
The Pentagon announced on Friday that it was suspending its briefings for retired military officers who often appear as military analysts on television and radio programs.
On Sunday, The New York Times reported that since 2002 the Pentagon has cultivated several dozen military analysts in a campaign to generate favorable coverage of the administration’s wartime performance. The retired officers have made tens of thousands of appearances for television and radio networks, holding forth on Iraq, Afghanistan, detainee issues and terrorism in general.
Records and interviews show that the Bush administration worked to transform the analysts into an instrument intended to shape coverage from inside the major networks.
SAN DIEGO -- Military security contractor Blackwater Worldwide is not giving up on a training facility in San Diego County, according to company officials.
The company is planning to open an indoor facility in Otay Mesa. It would be housed in a 61,600-square-foot building on Siempre Viva Road, just south of Brown Field. The news comes one month after Blackwater abandoned a controversial proposal to build a training center in the far East County.
Blackwater applied for the permit in February, shortly before announcing that it would drop plans to develop an 800-acre ranch near Potrero into a training camp for law enforcement. The city of San Diego approved a permit for the indoor facility on March 19.
The announcement that General David Petraeus is to take over at US Central Command VLOGZ.TV | April 24 2008 Defense Secretary Robert Gates's announcement Wednesday promoting General David Petraeus from his current post running the war in Iraq to head up U.S. Central Command triggered both political and military unease. That response may be inevitable, coming on the downside of an unpopular war and in the waning months of the tenure of the unpopular President who launched it.<What the Petraeus Promotion Means>
Romney gave his Top 10 reasons why he got out of the race at the TV and Radio Correspondents Dinner.
10. There weren't as many Osmonds as I thought.
9. I got tired of corkscrew landings under sniper fire.
8. As a lifelong hunter, I didn't want to miss the start of the varmint season.
7. There wasn’t room for two Christian leaders. 6. I was upset that no one had bothered to search my passport files. 5. I needed an excuse to get fat, grow a beard and win the Nobel Prize. 4. I took a bad fall at a campaign rally and broke my hair. 3. I wanted to finally take off that dark suit and tie and kick back in a light-colored suit and tie. 2. Once my wife, Ann, realized I couldn't win, my fundraising dried up. 1. There was a miscalculation in our theory: "As Utah goes, so goes the nation.”
It was met with wild applause, hearty laughter and that rare form of acceptance, a standing O. This is the kind of inside jokes we’re talking about.
McCain Won't Rule Out Pre-Emptive War AP | April 10 2008
WESTPORT, Conn. (AP) - Republican Sen. John McCain refused Wednesday to rule out a pre-emptive war against another country, although he said one would be very unlikely.
The likely Republican presidential nominee was asked Wednesday at a town-hall style meeting if he would reject "the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war," a reference to Bush's decision to invade Iraq without it having attacked the United States.
"I don't think you could make a blanket statement about pre-emptive war, because obviously, it depends on the threat that the United States of America faces," McCain told his audience at Bridgewater Associates Inc., a global investment firm.
"If someone is about to launch a weapon that would devastate America, or have the capability to do so, obviously, you would have to act immediately in defense of this nation's national security interests."
McCain said he would consult more closely and more carefully "not with every member of Congress, but certainly the leaders of Congress
Director Oliver Stone has set James Cromwell to play George Herbert Walker Bush and Ellen Burstyn to play former first lady Barbara Bush in "W," a drama about the formative years of their son, President George W. Bush.
Josh Brolin is playing the title character, and Elizabeth Banks will play first lady Laura Bush.
Stone will direct from a script by his “Wall Street” co-writer Stanley Weiser. Moritz Borman is producing with Bill Block and Jon Kilik.
Block's QED International is financing the film, which will begin shooting Shreveport, La., at the end of April.
ABC's Jennifer Duck reports: Clearly choked up, and at times wiping away his own tears, President Bush awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously at the White House Tueday to Navy SEAL Petty Officer Michael Monsoor, who was killed in Iraq in September of 2006 when he fell on a grenade to save comrades during fighting in Ramadi.
Monsoor was the fourth service member to receive the nation's highest award for valor in the 6 1/2 years of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Bush awarded the medal in the White House's East Room Tuesday to Monsoor's parents.
The Democratic race could well come down to the first contested convention in years.Lessons on how to prevail.
Rule #1: Control the Convention Mechanism. If you set the rules, decide who votes, organize the event and control what is said, it's almost impossible to lose. Rule #2: Watch the Platform. Party platforms were once the most important statement of the presidential campaign. No more. Rule #3: It's All About Delegates. Delegates are political junkies. This is their moment in the spotlight. Don't take them for granted. Make every effort to attend to their every legitimate (and legal) need. Rule #4: Have a Strategy to Win. Whatever combination of endorsements, announcements, policy statements and stagecraft you can engineer to create a sense of momentum going into the convention, do it. Rule #5: Focus on Staging. Conventions are elaborate made-for-TV productions. We live in a culture of the visual. Every moment and every event should be scripted.
There used to be an organization for people who believed in a truly limited government — limited taxes, limited spending, limited interference in individual lives and limited intervention in foreign affairs. That organization was known as the Republican Party. But the only one of those beliefs that still motivates the G.O.P. establishment is limited taxes. In 2008, people who still hold all of them joined the Ron Paul Revolution.
But now the revolution is ebbing. Congressman Paul's new campaign finance report shows that he's raised nearly $35 million, including more than any other Republican candidate in the fourth quarter of 2007, and he's inspired remarkable passion among the kind of diehards who hold up campaign signs on highway overpasses and post irate comments on obscure blogs. But the presidency isn't decided on YouTube or Technorati. Paul didn't win any Republican primaries, and he recently conceded that "victory in the conventional sense is not available."
Of course, nothing in Paul's world is ever done in the conventional sense, so he has refused to drop out of the race and endorse the presumptive G.O.P. nominee, Senator John McCain. Instead he argues that all Republicans should have "the right to vote for someone that stands for traditional Republican principles." And he's got a point.
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