U.S. Congress

How to End the War in Iraq? MoveOn Answers Its Critics

Submitted by John Stauber on

Alternet's Don Hazen interviews the founders of MoveOn. He writes, "For the first time ... members of Congress -- at least the new Democratic majority, along with a handful of Republicans -- finally caught up with the population" and "confronted Bush over the financing of the war and a real timeline for ending it. ... The ability to win this first victory was difficult and complex. It was achieved in part with the energetic and savvy support of millions of progressives and particularly MoveOn.org ...

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Main Source: 
Alternet, March 30, 2007
Topics: 
Iraq
U.S. Congress
War / Peace

Senate Upholds Call for Iraq Withdrawal in Spending Bill

A bill calling for the 2008 withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq is now one step closer to reaching President Bush’s desk.

On Tuesday, the Senate rejected a Republican-backed amendment to strip a timeline for withdrawal from a $122 billion supplemental spending bill, 48-50. Democrats were joined in opposing the amendment by two Republicans, Sens. Chuck Hagel (Neb.) and Gordon Smith (Ore.). One Democrat, Sen. Mark Pryor (Ark.), sided with the remaining Republicans and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.) in supporting the amendment. Hagel and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), both of whom supported keeping the withdrawal timeline in the spending bill, had just two weeks ago opposed a separate Senate resolution calling for an identical timetable.

A Talent for PR

Submitted by Judith Siers-Poisson on

It didn't take Former Republican Senator Jim Talent of Missouri long to take a spin through the revolving door between government and the private sector. Talent just lost the Senate seat that he had held since 2003 in November, but the public relations firm Fleishman-Hillard has already hired him as co-chairman of its Government Relations subsidiary.

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Main Source: 
Bulldog Reporter's Daily 'Dog, March 27, 2007
Topics: 
U.S. Congress
Politics
Public Relations
Think Tanks
U.S. Government

UPDATE: Be a Citizen Journalist - Help Find the Contact Information for Freshman Members of Congress

Submitted by Conor Kenny on

UPDATE: PRWatch and WeeklySpin readers have posted the contact information for all the new members from Texas, Virginia and New Hampshire. Help us finish the rest!

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Main Source: 
Congresspedia
Topics: 
Citizen Journalism
U.S. Congress
U.S. Government

TheWeekInCongress (March 19-23, 2007)

Capitol Hill was on center stage this past week, as Congress took on a number of high-profile issues. This week, as usual, we turn to Robert McElroy's TheWeekInCongress for a thorough look at the bills debated and passed since Monday. Follow the headlines below to the Congresspedia articles covering the respective issues, which in turn link to and heavily rely on McElroy's analyses.

Congress to consider spending bills calling for 2008 U.S. combat withdraw from Iraq

With the Iraq War now in its fifth year, both the House and Senate are (for the first time) poised to consider supplemental appropriations bills which would call on President Bush to remove U.S. combat troops from the country by 2008. In the House, a vote is expected soon on a $124 billion spending bill which includes a binding provision demanding withdraw by September 2008.

Congressional Corruption Cases at Issue in Attorney Firings

Guest poster: Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation:

The controversy around the firing of several U.S. attorneys in December has dominated the news coming out of Congress this week and Congresspedia’s staff and citizen editors have been busy tracking developments on our thorough page on the subject. Of central importance to the controversy is the issue of why those eight particular U.S. attorneys were fired. I’ve been looking into the analyses of the documents released by the Justice Department, and they show that the attorneys were at least partially judged by their willingness to toe-the-line — or, as one internal administration document put it, to be good “Bushies” — and were deemed expendable if they moved too far from administration priorities. In the case of some of the fired attorneys, it appears that the offense committed may have been their investigations into Republican officials, including members of Congress, in the lead-up to the 2006 congressional elections.

Here is a look at four of the attorneys at issue and their respective corruption investigations:

96% of MoveOn Members Did Not Show Support for the Pelosi Bill

(NOTE: See an update on this issue at: https://www.prwatch.org/node/6081 )

On Sunday, March 18, Sheldon Rampton and I wrote "Iraq: Why Won't MoveOn Move Forward?", an article now widely circulated online. It has helped to focus debate on whether the Democratic Party is really attempting to end the war in Iraq, or is content to simply manage the war for supposed electoral advantage in 2008.

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