From Scripps
By M.E. Sprengelmeyer

WASHINGTON - Saying President Bush sometimes acts “like a king,” Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., warned Friday that he would vehemently oppose Bush’s next Supreme Court pick if it turns out to be one of two controversial U.S. Circuit Court judges or someone else he considers an unqualified ideologue.

During a conference call with reporters, Salazar said he would oppose Janice Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owen, two circuit court judges the Senate recently installed on the bench following a blistering confirmation process.

By singling out Brown and Owen, Salazar made his most specific warning to the White House yet, calling for more advance consultation before the president makes a nomination to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

“This president, frankly, sometimes acts like a king,” Salazar said. “He’s imperious. He believes he controls Washington and controls our country, and does so sometimes in a way that, it’s his way or the highway, and doesn’t take into account what other people are thinking…when they have a different point of view or are (from) a different party.”

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From The Progressive
By Ruth Conniff

Just so you don’t have to, I actually read …Rick Santorum’s entire new book, It Takes a FamilySantorum, the conservative, pro-life Republican from Pennsylvania, is up for reelection in one of the most closely watched Senate races of 2006. His opponent, conservative, pro-life Democrat Bob Casey, the Pennsylvania state treasurer, has pulled into a double-digit lead. But Santorum has a strong operation and has come from behind before. He is a national leader of the cultural conservative movement. Thus, his Senate race, his rumored Presidential ambitions, and his current book tour are a kind of barometer of rightwing Christian popularity.

In It Takes a Family (the title is a not-so-subtle jab at Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village), Santorum shows how, in his view, liberals have seized control of every facet of our national life. It’s illuminating to see the whole unified theory laid out.

Santorum describes what leftwingers used to call the Establishment–the people who run the nation’s universities, schools, cultural institutions, media, some big business, some big labor unions, and of course the biggest Big of all, the federal government–as one giant liberal cabal he calls the village elders or the Bigs.

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From The Guardian UK
By Sydney Blumenthal

President Bush has no adviser more loyal and less self-serving than Karen Hughes. As governor of Texas, he trusted the former Dallas television reporter-turned-press secretary with the tending of his image and words. She was mother hen of his persona. In the White House, Hughes devoted heart and soul to Bush as his communications director until, suddenly, she returned home to Texas in 2002, citing her son’s homesickness. There were reports that Karl Rove, jealous of power, had been sniping at her.

When two undersecretaries of state for public diplomacy resigned this year in frustration, in the face of the precipitous loss of US prestige around the globe, Bush found Hughes a new slot. She may be the most parochial person ever to hold a senior state department appointment, but the president has confidence she can rebrand the US.

This week, Hughes embarked on her first trip as undersecretary.

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From CounterPunch
By Winslow T. Wheeler

More than three decades ago, argument over the war in Indochina raged among the public and in Congress. Today, opinion polls show real popular dispute about the war in Iraq, but Congress shows no evidence of genuine debate, just some toothless carping.

In the early 1970s, I sat in the staff gallery of the Senate and listened as congressional leaders argued over the merits of bringing home the troops from the divisive war in Indochina. Senators from both parties broke away from the fabrications of the Johnson and Nixon administrations to oppose a war they deemed not in the national interest. They cauterized policies that sustained the calamity, while war advocates perceived endless lights at the end of the tunnel and an end to freedom if the country did not stay the course.

We hear the same rhetoric today, but in the past there was an important difference: then, the critics of the war did not just talk, they acted using the prerogatives the Constitution gave them as members of Congress to pursue their convictions in legislation. Their bills had teeth.

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From The Guardian UK
By Frank Bass

WASHINGTON (AP) - Despite promises of a swift response to Katrina, the U.S. Small Business Administration didn’t deliver any loan checks to companies in the disaster zone during the first month after the hurricane, according to records obtained by the Associated Press.

The SBA handed out 950,000 ‘applications for disaster loans, received 26,100 responses and approved just 142 loans without cutting any checks as of Monday - the one-month anniversary of Katrina’s first landfall, the records show.

SBA officials said they expect the pace of approvals to pick up and the first checks to begin arriving to businesses soon. They blamed the delay on damaged roads, continued flooding and other obstacles that has made travel in the Gulf region more difficult.

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About 250 police officers– roughly 15 percent of the force– will be investigated for leaving their posts without permission during Hurricane Katrina and the storm’s chaotic aftermath, a deputy police chief said Tuesday.

Deputy Chief Warren Riley said each case will be investigated individually to determine which officers were truly deserters and which had legitimate reasons for being absent.

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From CNN

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday he had no insider information when he sold stock this summer in HCA Inc., the hospital company founded by his father and brother.

The Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission are looking into the sales.

Also Monday, the chairman of the SEC, former Rep. Christopher Cox, said that to avoid a potential conflict he would take no part in the agency’s investigation. (Related story)

Questions have been raised about whether Frist had special information before the sale because insiders in HCA also sold stock during the first half of the year — and the stock price dipped soon after Frist sold his stock.

“I had no information about HCA or its performance that was not publicly available when I directed the trustees to sell the stock,” Frist said, referring to the sale by administrators of his blind trusts. (Related story)

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From The Washington Post
By Paul Farh

A leading Republican donor and fundraiser was elected chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting yesterday, tightening conservative control over the agency that oversees National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.

Cheryl F. Halpern, a New Jersey lawyer and real estate developer, won approval from the CPB’s board. She succeeds a close board ally, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, who stirred controversy earlier this year by contending that public broadcasting favors liberal views. Tomlinson’s term as chairman had expired, but he will remain a member of the board.

The board also elected another conservative, Gay Hart Gaines, as its vice chairman. Gaines, an interior decorator by training, was a charter member and a chairman of GOPAC, a Republican fundraising group that then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) used to engineer the GOP takeover of the House in 1994.

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From ABC News
By Lara Jakes Jordan

Former FEMA director Michael Brown blamed others for most government failures in responding to Hurricane Katrina on Tuesday, especially Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin. He aggressively defended his own role.

Brown also said that in the days before the storm, he expressed his concerns that “this is going to be a bad one” in phone conversations and e-mails with President Bush, White House chief of staff Andy Card and deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin.

His efforts to shift blame drew sharp criticism from Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike.

“I’m happy you left,” said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn. “That kind of look in the lights like a deer tells me you weren’t capable of doing that job.”

Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., told Brown: “The disconnect was, people thought there was some federal expertise out there. There wasn’t. Not from you.”

Read More “Heck of a job, Brownie”