News and Notes before Rest
A few small bits on not so small items in the news.
ANWR in the works... Perhaps. Senate Republicans are signaling that they'll include opening ANWR to drilling in the budget reconciliation process, where a filibuster is not permitted, just as the President requested. It's also good to see Senator Thune among those heading to Alaska this weekend to show their support for the measure.
Senator Salazar, D-CO, has requested that President Bush withdraw the 12 judicial nominees that the President resubmitted to the Senate. Republican Senators, and I, had hoped that Salazar would support an up or down vote on the nominees and help end the Democratic practice of filibustering nominees. His letter says the "decision to renominate these individuals will undoubtedly create the animosity and divisiveness ... that is not helpful to our nation and will sidetrack our collective efforts to work on other crucial matters." Salazar has not stated how he will vote on any nominee or on efforts to prevent a vote.
Senator Ted Stevens is wrong to want to apply the FCC's decency standards to cable and satelite communications, as is Congressman Barton. More later.
Syria should be aware that the ducks are being aligned. "We do have firm evidence that the bombing in Tel Aviv was not only authorized by Palestinian Islamic Jihad leaders in Damascus, but that Islamic Jihad leaders in Damascus participated in the planning," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.
Russia boasts of a new missile - "there is not and will not be any defense against these missiles." Sergei Ivanov, Russian Defense Minister, added that "Russia is stretched across 10 times zones, we have many neighbors, and not all of them are as predictable as European states" and that the weapons would be based on the Russian Topol-M ICBM and Bulava, a sea based missile. Of course, he didn't mention U.S. efforts to develop anti-ballistic missile defense systems specifically.
Iran has denied a request by the IAEA to revisit Parchin. In January when the IAEA inspection team visited Parchin, after a seven month wait, they requested to return to visit areas of Parchin not inspected during their initial visit. The denial was announced at a briefing by Pierre Goldschmidt to the IAEA's Board of Governors. Mr. Goldschmidt's report will be covered in a post tomorrow and is available here.
More tomorrow...
