Daily news digest 4/28-30/2007
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Today’s complete daily news: http://media.progressnowaction.org/digest/043007.htm
TOP STORIES
U.S. Rebuilding in Iraq Is Missing Key Goals, Report Finds
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/29/AR2007042901414.html
The U.S. project to rebuild Iraq remains far short of its targets, leaving the country plagued by power outages, inadequate oil production and shortages of clean water and health care, according to a report to be issued today by a U.S. government oversight agency. The 232-page quarterly review by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction presents a sobering picture of the challenges of reconstruction in a war zone. It also says the Army has asked Parsons Corp., one of the largest contractors in Iraq, to explain why it should not be barred from pursuing government contracts for up to three years.
RELATED: 4 U.S. soldiers killed, pushing April Iraq toll over 100
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2007-04-30-troop-deaths_N.htm
82 Inmates Cleared but Still Held at Guantanamo
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/28/AR2007042801145.html
More than a fifth of the approximately 385 prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been cleared for release but may have to wait months or years for their freedom because U.S. officials are finding it increasingly difficult to line up places to send them, according to Bush administration officials and defense lawyers. Since February, the Pentagon has notified about 85 inmates or their attorneys that they are eligible to leave after being cleared by military review panels. But only a handful have gone home, including a Moroccan and an Afghan who were released Tuesday. Eighty-two remain at Guantanamo and face indefinite waits as U.S. officials struggle to figure out when and where to deport them, and under what conditions.
RELATED: Lawyers oppose limits on detainee access
RELATED: Bar Criticizes Proposed Detainee Rules
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/30/washington/30gitmo.html?ref=washington
Did Justices' Catholicism Play Part in Abortion Ruling?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/29/AR2007042901270.html
Is it significant that the five Supreme Court justices who voted to uphold the federal ban on a controversial abortion procedure also happen to be the court's Roman Catholics? It is to Tony Auth, the Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. He drew Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. wearing bishop's miters, and labeled his cartoon "Church and State." Rosie O'Donnell and Barbara Walters hashed out the issue on "The View," with O'Donnell noting that a majority of the court is Catholic and wondering about "separation of church and state." Walters counseled that "we cannot assume that they did it because they're Catholic." And the chatter continues, on talk radio and in the blogosphere. In the latter category, no one has stirred it up quite like Geoffrey R. Stone, former dean and now provost of the University of Chicago's law school. He posted an item titled "Faith-Based Justices" on his school's blog and on Huffington Post. The post was mostly praised by liberal readers at Huffington Post, but set off a free-for-all back home in Chicago on the faculty blog.
Most Katrina Aid From Overseas Went Unclaimed
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/28/AR2007042801113.html
As the winds and water of Hurricane Katrina were receding, presidential confidante Karen Hughes sent a cable from her State Department office to U.S. ambassadors worldwide. Titled "Echo-Chamber Message" -- a public relations term for talking points designed to be repeated again and again -- the Sept. 7, 2005, directive was unmistakable: Assure the scores of countries that had pledged or donated aid at the height of the disaster that their largesse had provided Americans "practical help and moral support" and "highlight the concrete benefits hurricane victims are receiving." Many of the U.S. diplomats who received the message, however, were beginning to witness a more embarrassing reality. They knew the U.S. government was turning down many allies' offers of manpower, supplies and expertise worth untold millions of dollars. Eventually the United States also would fail to collect most of the unprecedented outpouring of international cash assistance for Katrina's victims.
Today’s complete national news
Colorado
Siding with Republicans, Suthers stokes partisan fire
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5510100,00.html
Attorney General John Suthers on Friday added fuel to a partisan fire that's been building for weeks over Gov. Bill Ritter's school funding plan. Suthers came down on the side of fellow Republicans, who say the plan is a tax increase that must be approved by voters. State Republican Party Chairman Dick Wadhams characterizes the plan as a "massive, $1.8 billion property tax increase." Wadhams already has said he'll use the plan to bludgeon Democrats in the 2008 election. Some Democrats saw Wadhams' hand in Suthers' opinion. "There's a mean-spirited snake in the grass, and there's no secret to any of us who it is," Rep. John Soper, D-Thornton, said, referring to Wadhams. In a statement, Ritter said, "This debate has been going on for weeks. . . . The attorney general's argument, issued in an unsolicited and 12th-hour opinion, is flawed, and his timing is suspect." Suthers' spokesman, Nate Strauch, said the attorney general's opinion reflects a nonpartisan assessment of how a court is likely to rule on Ritter's plan. Wadhams said Democrats have their own leadership to blame for marching them into a political firestorm. "They know their own governor is sending them down a plank that voters are going to cut off behind them next year," he said. "Am I going to spend every day, all day between now and 2008 reminding voters what they did this week? You're darn right I am," Wadhams added.
RELATED: AG calls schools plan a tax
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5510098,00.html
RELATED: Suthers says school-tax plan must go to voters
RELATED: Suthers challenges tax freeze
http://www.denverpost.com/politics/ci_5766401
RELATED: School funds bill passes on to Senate
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5775500
RELATED: Attorney general says property-tax freeze needs voter approval
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1177740000/10
Sex-ed bill on Ritter's desk
http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070430/NEWS01/704300323/1002
A bill passed by the Colorado Legislature, if signed by Gov. Bill Ritter, likely will force Fort Collins charter schools to modify their sex-education courses from abstinence-based curriculum to one that includes "science-based" facts about sexually transmitted diseases and contraceptives. If House Bill 1292 becomes law, all Colorado school districts, charter schools and institute charter schools that offer curriculum on human sexuality will have to include the advised standards. The only exception in the state is the Center Consolidated School District, which receives a $39,500 grant from the federal government to teach abstinence-based education under the clause that the money can not be used to teach or promote the use of contraceptives. Charter schools might be able to opt out by petitioning the state Board of Education.
Strife at state AFL-CIO risks labor's political gains
http://www.denverpost.com/business/ci_5770941
When the state's unions powered a Democratic takeover of the legislature in 2004, union leaders expected the victory to reinvigorate a flagging labor movement. Instead, internal strife at the state AFL-CIO threatened those political gains and led to a takeover of the organization by its national leadership. Earlier this month, the Colorado AFL-CIO said it would terminate chapter president Steve Adams and his second in command, secretary-treasurer Paul Mendrick. Adams settled with the union and agreed to resign, while Mendrick continues to appeal the takeover by national leadership. "I want (the national) to leave town and let the Colorado labor movement run the Colorado labor movement without any outside involvement," Mendrick said. "We are capable, we're successful, and we're willing to do it. We get the job done for working people." But union officials say that before the national stepped in, board members and affiliated unions were taking sides in a feud between Adams and Mendrick. They said that board meetings had become verbal shootouts where little was accomplished, and heads of some affiliated unions found the stalemates so frustrating they threatened to leave the AFL.
GOP panel agrees: Warnings of global warming overdone
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5509916,00.html
The 12 or so people, lawmakers included, who showed up to hear the Republican Study Committee of Colorado discuss global warming Friday found politics to be just as hot. The gathering in a Capitol hearing room opened with Rep. Kevin Lundberg, R-Loveland, telling the group that, when it comes to climate change, the public has heard "much less hard sciences . . . (than) political science." Sen. Ted Harvey, R-Highlands Ranch, described efforts to slow global warming as "an attack on the free-market system, an attack on capitalism and an attack on countries that have progressed to the point where their economies are excelling far beyond other countries'." "I believe there is a concerted effort by many environmentalists in the world to do us harm because they don't want to have the greatest country in the world be the United States," he said. Harvey was followed by William Gray, the respected hurricane forecaster, Colorado State University professor and global warming skeptic. Gray has become a favorite among those who believe environmentalists, Democrats, Al Gore and John McCain & Co. are overdoing it on global warming.
RELATED: Gray blames ocean currents for global warming
http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070428/CSUZONE01/70428003/1002/NEWS17
Today’s complete Colorado news
Today’s complete daily news: http://media.progressnowaction.org/digest/043007.htm
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