New Jersey’s highest court issued a mixed ruling on gay marriage. It decided that homosexual couples are entitled to the same rights as heterosexual ones, but it avoided a conservative backlash (for now) by giving the state legislature time to ponder whether this constitutes “marriageâ€. Other news at the Economist.
….While there is no reported intelligence for Iraqi insurgents trying to sway the current election, the CIA did conclude that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda tried to manipulate the 2004 elections with the release of a videotaped message. But the intelligence indicated that terrorists were trying to help Bush win re-election — not aid his opponents. Media Matters, citing Ron Suskind’s One Percent Doctrine, notes that CIA analysts concluded that bin Laden’s message in the days before the Nov. 2004 contest “was clearly designed to assist the President’s reelection.” Read it all.
“The administration’s North Korea policy has not worked. By virtually every measure, Bush’s North Korea policy has been a failure. Diplomatic efforts have broken down and Norht Korea has resumed plutonium production. When Bush took office, North Korea had produced enough plutonium under George H.W. Bush for 1-2 nuclear weapons. Today, the country posses material for 4-13 nuclear weapons.  If North Korea unloads another batch of fuel, it may have enough nuclear material for 8 to 17 nuclear bombs by 2008. Sunday’s test was simply the culmination of the ‘Bush administration’s haphazard diplomacy in Northeast Asia over the past six years,’ noted the Center for America Progress’s Joseph Cirincione. The Bush administration ramped up the rhetoric, including North Korea in the ‘axis of evil’ in his 2002 State of the Union address and talking about possible need to take preemptive military action against the regime in the 2002 National Security Strategy Statement. But when North Korea responded by expelling international inspectors and unsealing its nuclear facilities, the Bush administration had no effective response.”
“Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK), the Senate’s king of pork, “killed a requirement for the Defense Department to evaluate unauthorized earmarks imposed by members of Congress on the Pentagon,” Bob Novak reports. See the Progress Report here.
“George Bush signed a homeland security bill that provides funds to construct 700 miles of fencing along the border with Mexico. Congress rushed through the measure before it adjourned last week.”
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“The inability of the besieged Hamas-run Palestinian Authority to pay civil servants or the security forces resulted in violent clashes between Hamas and Fatah militia in Gaza and the West Bank. Some 12 people were killed.” Read the article here.