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TOP STORIES
Bush Told War Is Harming The GOP
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050902461.html
House Republican moderates, in a remarkably blunt White House meeting, warned President Bush this week that his pursuit of the war in Iraq is risking the future of the Republican Party and that he cannot count on GOP support for many more months. The meeting, which ran for an hour and a half Tuesday afternoon, was disclosed by participants yesterday as the House prepared to vote this evening on a spending bill that could cut funding for the Iraq war as early as July. GOP moderates told Bush they would stay united against the latest effort by House Democrats to end U.S. involvement in the war. Even Senate Democrats called the House measure unrealistic. But the meeting between 11 House Republicans, Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, White House political adviser Karl Rove and presidential press secretary Tony Snow was perhaps the clearest sign yet that patience in the party is running out.
RELATED: Moderates in G.O.P. Warn Bush on Iraq
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/washington/10cong.html?ref=washington
RELATED: Bush Threatens Veto of New Iraq Bill
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050900797.html
Guard equipment levels lowest since 9/11
The Pentagon, bearing the brunt of criticism for shortfalls in National Guard supplies after last week's devastating tornado in Kansas, acknowledged Wednesday that Army National Guard units had only 56% of their required equipment. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told a Senate hearing that equipment levels were the lowest since the Sept. 11 attacks. He said that the Bush administration's defense budget request, which asks for $22 billion for the Army National Guard over the next five years, would take Guard units up to 76% of their authorized equipment levels. "There's no question that there's been a drawdown of equipment in the National Guard," Gates said, adding that even before Sept. 11, Guard units normally were equipped at about 75%. "Clearly we need to follow through with this program to rebuild the stocks of equipment that are available to the National Guard." At the hearing, a bipartisan group of senators confronted Gates with pointed questions on Guard readiness. The lawmakers argued that repeated deployments to Iraq were causing shortages in equipment needed for domestic security and national disaster response.
RELATED: Gates rejects emergency command proposal
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-05-09-gates-iraq_N.htm
Pressure grows to prosecute Cuban exile
Three months before the 1976 midair explosion of a Cuban plane off the coast of Barbados, CIA covert operative Luis Posada Carriles cabled his U.S. minders from Venezuela to report that the plot was in motion and asked for Washington's "assistance." Recently declassified CIA communications confirm that a U.S. agent got back to Posada within a few days. Other internal communications obtained by the National Security Archive research project put Posada in regular contact with Washington handlers from the time of his arrival here just before the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion through the late 1990s, when he allegedly masterminded a series of Havana hotel bombings in an effort to crush Cuba's budding tourism business. The 79-year-old anticommunist, who turned up two years ago in Miami, has never been charged by U.S. justice officials with participating in a violent act, not even the hotel bombings purportedly financed by fellow Cuban exiles in New Jersey and about which Posada has boasted. On Tuesday, the sole prosecution brought by Washington against the Cuban-born Posada, an immigration fraud charge, was quashed by a federal judge in Texas, leaving a man branded by the U.S. Justice Department as "a dangerous criminal and an admitted mastermind of terrorist plots" free to roam a country he entered illegally and from which another court has ordered him deported.
RELATED: Legal Victory by Militant Cuban Exile Brings Both Glee and Rage
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/us/10miami.html
Giuliani to Support Abortion Rights
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/us/politics/10giuliani.html?ref=us
After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.
RELATED: Yankee Rings Become Issue for Giuliani
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/us/politics/10rings.html
Today’s complete national news
Colorado
Ritter sticks up for tax plan
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5529501,00.html
Gov. Bill Ritter Wednesday came out fighting on behalf of his property tax plan to finance schools. Republicans call the plan a tax increase and have vowed to make it a central issue in 2008 elections. Addressing a crowd of supporters moments before signing the plan into law, Ritter, referring to Republicans, said, "We'll fight you tooth and nail because we believe it (the plan) was the right thing to do." On Tuesday, the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank, announced its intention to sue to halt the tax plan. The Independence Institute argues the plan would raise taxes for property owners in more than 100 of the state's 178 school districts and therefore violates the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights.
RELATED: Governor signs tax-rate freeze
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5858650
RELATED: Ritter bill set to add to PSD funds
http://coloradoan.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070510/NEWS01/705100412/1002
RELATED: Court fight may be next
http://www.gazette.com/articles/gazette_22150___article.html/tax_thursday.html
RELATED: Ritter signs school finance bill despite threat of lawsuit
http://pueblochieftain.com/metro/1178806647/4
RELATED: Tax rate freeze means more money for Moffat County
http://craigdailypress.com/section/localnews/story/26511
RELATED: Mill-levy freeze signed into law
http://www.gjsentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/05/10/5_10_mill_levy_freeze.html
RELATED: Ritter signs School Finance Act into law
Coffman demotes, reassigns elections division worker
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5529154,00.html
Secretary of State Mike Coffman has demoted an elections worker and longtime political ally who operated a side business selling voter information for mainly Republican interests. Coffman's office announced Wednesday that Dan Kopelman has been moved to a new job in the elections division and is no longer a supervisor. In addition, his $85,000 salary was cut by $9,240. "Mike is certainly disappointed by all of this," said secretary of state spokesman Jonathan Tee. "We wanted to get to the bottom of this because it's best for the office and best for Dan that it is resolved accurately and thoroughly and quickly." But Sen. Ken Gordon, a Denver Democrat who ran against Coffman last year for secretary of state, said Kopelman should not be allowed to work anywhere in the elections division because he is too partisan.
RELATED: Election worker's salary docked (News briefs)
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5857677
Plea for Amend. 41 injunction now in judge's hands
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_5858545
Elected officials, public employees and nonprofit agencies challenging Colorado's new ethics law are reading it out of context to the point of absurdity, a deputy attorney general argued Wednesday. Amendment 41's ban on gifts to government workers applies only when there is a breach of public trust, Maurice Knaizer said during closing arguments of a hearing on whether to block the law's enforcement. Knaizer rebutted the claims of about a dozen witnesses who testified that Amendment 41 infringes on their rights. One woman said she resigned as a Fire stone planning commissioner because she thought her children would lose their college scholarships. And a University of Colorado police officer said the ethics law prevented him from collecting more than $50 a person for a co-worker whose son died. Amendment 41, passed by voters last year, bans lawmakers from taking anything from lobbyists and prohibits government workers and their families from receiving gifts worth more than $50, except on special occasions.
RELATED: Ethics-law backers keep their papers from public view
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/government/article/0,2777,DRMN_23906_5529166,00.html
RELATED: Ethics group persuades judge to seal some of its campaign records
http://www.summitdaily.com/article/20070509/NEWS/105090082
Coloradan faces charge of dereliction
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5529210,00.html
A Colorado Marine officer is among seven Marines facing criminal hearings that began this week at Camp Pendleton, Calif., into the 2005 killings of 24 Iraqi civilians in Haditha. Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, 42, of Rangely, is tentatively set to face an Article 32 hearing May 30. Chessani and three other officers are charged with dereliction of duty in failing to report and investigate the deaths. An Article 32 hearing is equivalent to a preliminary hearing in civilian court to determine whether sufficient evidence exists to try the defendant. Chessani commanded the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, which included the platoon whose troops are charged with the Nov. 19, 2005, killings, although Chessani himself was not there. Three enlisted Marines are charged with murdering the Iraqis in a sweep through a Haditha neighborhood following an ambush that destroyed one of their vehicles and killed a fellow Marine.
Today’s complete Colorado news
Today’s complete daily news: http://media.progressnowaction.org/digest/051007.htm
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