The Daily Background
| Stem Cell Research bill passes Congress; Headed for veto fate
Filed at 3:10 pm, Thursday June 07th 2007
by Arlen Parsa
by Arlen Parsa
The House of Representatives passed the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act Thursday afternoon, setting the stage for another “veto showdown.” The measure passed 247-176, overwhelmingly but not veto-proof. The corressponding Senate legislation passed with a similar margin weeks ago in the Senate, also not veto-proof. President Bush has vowed to kill the legislation as soon as it reaches his desk.
Giuliani, who once suggested making English an official language was “offensive” and exclusionary, didn’t seem to have a problem with it during Tuesday night’s Republican debate on CNN when Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates if anybody had objections to it. Read on for the video.
In Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney claimed he initially thought Clinton’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy “sounded silly.” But a 1994 letter to the Masachusettes Log Cabin Republicans shows he supported “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as step to give gays and lesbians equal rights.
Tuesday night is the second formal televised Republican debate. Many will be watching Rudy Giuliani to see how he handles the issue of abortion.
Special to The Daily Background, blogger Dylan Matthews reports on the energetic scene outside Sunday’s Democratic debate in Manchester, New Hampshire. Read on to find out which campaign “planted two staffers with large signs in front of a large segment of Obama people, to render us invisible to cameras…”
Some bloggers have been digging around and researching Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul’s history, and it may come as a surprise to find that he’s not the person a lot of supporters on the internet thought he was. New information dug up by bloggers reveals that Congressman Paul has had ties to White Supremacist organizations and has published fringe racist rants in the past.
At a tech conference yesterday, John McCain said he is against Net Neutrality, and also said he would hire Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer for a cabinet-level position if he is elected as president. “When you control the pipe you should be able to get profit from your investment,” the Republican presidential hopeful said.
When Americans turned out in unusually high numbers last November to vote in a non-presidential election, they sent an unexpectedly strong signal to those in Washington. Republicans were kicked out of control of both the House and Senate, and exit polls consistently showed that voters wanted to start withdrawing some or all troops from Iraq.
It’s about 78 degrees outside and sunny today, so the crowd was pretty hot. There seemed to be several thousand people there, and Hanover is a pretty small town. I had heard beforehand that there might be as many as 5,000 people expected to attend, although I don’t know if that’s right or not. The Obama campaign is just saying the rather vague “thousands” at the moment. Read on for more…
I interviewed a minimum wage McDonalds worker recently about the surprising lack of training they received on the job. Read on for an excerpt of some questions and answers from the full interview.
The Democratic National Committee today announced the locations and media sponsors of the final six sanctioned debates of 2007 among Democratic primary contenders for the presidency.
After becoming the butt of criticism from possible Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson, filmmaker Michael Moore has swung back at the former Senator turned television star, and challenged him to a public debate about health care. Thompson declined to debate publicly, saying he was “too busy.”
Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore has made a secret “backup” copy of his next film should the original masters be seized by the Bush Administration. The film, “SiCKO,” is expected to blast the US health care system as well as the Administration for failing to take care of American citizens.
Well, the Congressional investigation into the politicization of the Department of Justice took another big step forward today with the DoJ signaling it would let Monica Goodling testify under oath before the House and or Senate Judiciary Committees. Read on for more information about this coup by Congress in its efforts to get to the bottom of the current US Attorney purge scandal.
