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TOP STORIES
Failures
at FBI Acknowledged
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032700471.html
Angry senators accused
FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III yesterday of management failures that
resulted in the dispatch of hundreds of national security letters and
intelligence surveillance warrants containing erroneous information, and
Mueller said he accepted that characterization. Both Republicans and Democrats
at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing said the abuses have undermined the
FBI's reputation and its authority to continue using such letters and warrants
under conditions that Congress eased in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks. The letters allow the FBI to request information from businesses
without a warrant, subpoena or judicial review. "We're going to be
reexamining the broad authorities we've granted to the FBI under the Patriot
Act," the committee chairman, Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), said after
decrying what he described as "widespread illegal and improper use"
of the national security letters. "It seems to me the FBI is again at a
crossroads."
RELATED: FBI Provided Inaccurate Data for Surveillance Warrants (3/27)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/26/AR2007032602073.html
RELATED: FBI has some
explaining to do
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-mueller28mar28,1,7307018.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
RELATED: Senators Cite
F.B.I. Failures as Chief Promises Change
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/washington/28fbi.html?ref=washington
RELATED: FBI chief
lobbies for national security letters
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-03-27-fbi-senate_N.htm
Senate
Backs Pullout Proposal
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032700463.html
Senate Democrats
scored a surprise victory yesterday in their bid to force President Bush to end
the Iraq war, turning back a Republican amendment that would have struck a
troop withdrawal plan from emergency military funding legislation. The
defection of a prominent Republican war critic, Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, sealed the Democrats' win. Hagel, who opposed identical withdrawal language two
weeks ago, walked onto the Senate floor an hour before the late-afternoon vote
and announced that he would "not support sustaining a flawed and failing
policy," adding: "It's now time for the Congress to step forward and
establish responsible boundaries and conditions for our continued military
involvement in Iraq."
RELATED: Foreign Relations at Center Stage
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032701956.html
RELATED: Senate
retains Iraq war timeline
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-warvote28mar28,1,4873002.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
RELATED: Senate
Supports a Pullout Date in Iraq War Bill
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/washington/28cong.html
Blair
Prepares to Show Iran Broke Law in Seizing 15 Britons
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032700535.html
Barring a surprise
early release, British Prime Minister Tony Blair is preparing to go public in
Parliament as soon as Wednesday with concrete evidence that Iran violated
international law in seizing 15 British military personnel, after
behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts failed, according to British and U.S.
officials. Tensions over the incident escalated Tuesday, with oil prices
hitting a six-month high following suggestions by officials in Tehran that the
15 sailors and marines captured Friday by Iranian Revolutionary Guard naval
units might be put on trial. Adding to the atmospherics, two U.S. aircraft-carrier battle groups began two days of military maneuvers in the Persian Gulf.
RELATED: Latest talks fail in Iran-Britain standoff
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-sailors28mar28,0,7539336.story?coll=la-home-headlines
RELATED: U.S. Is Open to a Deeper Iran Dialogue, Gates Says
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032702224.html
RELATED: Britain
Escalates Dispute With Iran Over Seized Sailors
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/28/world/europe/28cnd-britain.html
Edwardses'
News Brings Flood of Online Support
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032701917.html
The emotional news
conference Democrat John Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, held last week to
share word that her cancer has returned brought them an outpouring of more than
24,000 e-mails in 24 hours. It also appears to have unleashed a torrent of
online contributions to his presidential campaign. In the past five days, the
campaign received more than 5,000 donations totaling half a million dollars --
about 50 percent of the total it raised online in the previous three months,
according to postings on ActBlue.com, the Web site that tracks Edwards's
Internet fundraising.
RELATED: Edwards moves in 'uncharted territory'
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-edwards28mar28,1,3576055.story?coll=la-headlines-nation
Today’s complete national news
Colorado
Ritter
signs solar, wind, biomass energy bill
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/energy/article/0,2777,DRMN_23914_5446747,00.html
Gov. Bill Ritter signed a
bill into law Tuesday that requires Colorado utilities to get more electricity
from the sun, wind, or plant and animal waste. House Bill 1281 sailed smoothly
through the state legislature, clearing the House and Senate, both with
Democratic majorities, in about five weeks before landing on Ritter's desk last
month. He promised during his election campaign to promote the generation of
more electricity from renewable sources and reduce the use of fossil fuel such
as coal or natural gas, an agenda supported by environmental activists,
utilities and rural electric co-operatives except Intermountain Rural Electric
Association.
RELATED: Using Mother Nature's power
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5534704
RELATED: Energy double play
http://coloradodaily.com/articles/2007/03/27/news/c_u_and_boulder/news1.txt
RELATED: Ritter signs
renewable energy bills
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1175091501/11
Senate
to debate bill expanding stem-cell studies
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5534705
Legislation to lift limits on
federal embryonic stem-cell research is headed back to the Senate floor, and
possibly back to President Bush. Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday
said senators will debate stem-cell legislation in early April. They'll
consider a bill similar to the one sponsored by Denver Democratic Rep. Diana
DeGette, which passed the House in January. Senate backers say they have enough
votes for passage. That would send the bill to Bush for the second time. The
president has promised to veto it again, as he did last summer after it passed
Congress. "The American people in the last election overwhelmingly
supported expanding embryonic stem-cell research," DeGette spokesman
Brandon MacGillis said, referring to the success of candidates backing the
science.
Coloradan
takes union plea to Congress
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5534264
A Colorado man who says he
was fired after trying to form a labor union urged Congress on Tuesday to pass
legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize. Appearing at a
U.S. Senate hearing, Errol Hohrein, a 57-year-old Greeley boilermaker,
testified in support of the bill. "What the Employee Free Choice Act does
is restore the choice to bargain for a better life for people like me who have
been robbed of that choice," he testified. The bill would allow a majority
of workers at a company to form a labor union by signing cards. Under current
law, employers can force workers to hold a secret-ballot election. Hohrein said
his employer, Front Range Energy, fired him after he prodded co-workers to
unionize in December. He alleges there were dangerous working conditions and
inadequate wages at the company. In a statement, Front Range Energy company
manager Dan Sanders Jr. said Hohrein is offering an "inaccurate"
story and litigating the matter "in the press."
Bureau
deal for Aurora irks Udall
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1175091501/1
A Colorado congressmen is
upset with a decision to issue a contract to Aurora to store and exchange water
in Lake Pueblo without a full environmental impact statement. U.S. Rep. Mark
Udall, D-Colo., Tuesday criticized a decision by the Bureau of Reclamation to
issue a 40-year contract to Aurora that would allow the city of 300,000 east of
Denver to move Arkansas Valley water to the South Platte basin. The water
would come from water rights Aurora purchased on the Rocky Ford Ditch and Colorado Canal, as well as from future leases. Aurora would use an excess capacity account
in Lake Pueblo to physically exchange water and make paper trades of water to
Turquoise and Twin Lakes, where it pumps water out of the basin through the
Otero Pumping Station and Homestake Pipeline. “I’m more than just
disappointed,” said Udall, who called for a full environmental impact statement
just days before Reclamation released a “finding of no significant impact” on
the Aurora deal.
RELATED: Aurora report relies on old information
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1175091501/2
RELATED: Rejected ideas: Paths
not taken in Bureau’s decision
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1175091501/9
Today’s complete Colorado news
Today’s complete daily news: http://media.progressnowaction.org/digest/032807.htm
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