Daily News Channel
The United States is rushing emergency aid to Pakistan — an initial $5 million — to help people uprooted by the fighting against extremists, according to the State Department. The United States urged the Pakistanis to launch the military action that in recent days drove hundreds of thousands of people from their villages.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is disputing a CIA account sent to Congress that raises questions about her insistence she was never told explicitly that waterboarding had been used on terrorist suspects. The CIA-prepared memo, provided to CNN by Republican sources, lists 40 briefings for members of Congress from September 2002 to March 2009. The first briefing on the list — on September 4, 2002 — was for then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss and Pelosi, then the ranking Democrat on the committee
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, is giving up his chairmanship of the Crime and Drugs Subcommittee and giving it to Sen
Political junkies who weren’t thrilled at the prospect of a relatively staid confirmation process for President Barack Obama’s as yet unnamed Supreme Court nominee can rest easy. This week Senate Republicans named perennial bomb thrower Jeff Sessions, 62, of Alabama to be the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, promising to bring at least a few sparks to a confirmation process that — if Minnesota’s Al Franken is seated — was bound to be relatively easy. While Sessions alone can’t change the basic legislative math that promises whomever Obama picks to replace retiring Justice David Souter a fairly easy path to confirmation, he can certainly liven up the proceedings
As Pakistani forces continue to battle an advancing Taliban, the leading senators on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee introduced legislation Monday tripling aid to the country. The Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009, introduced by Sens. John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, and Dick Lugar, R-Indiana, authorizes $7.5 billion in non-military aid to Pakistan over the next five years to foster economic growth and development, and another $7.5 billion for the following five years.
After passing the 100 days benchmark, President Obama pushes on with a daunting task ahead of him: Tackling foreign and domestic issues while dealing with a Republican Party opposed to nearly all his major economic initiatives.
President Obama said Wednesday that a recent uptick in violence in Iraq won’t affect his plan for a phased military withdrawal.
Reaction on Tuesday to Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s switch from the Republican to the Democratic Party ranged from barely concealed glee to dismay among Senate colleagues and elites from both parties.
Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter turned the 111th session of Congress upside down on Tuesday by announcing that he will switch parties and become a Democrat. The move was the product of weeks of intensive negotiation between Specter and Democrats in the Senate and White House, and it favorably alters the balance of power for President Obama as he is facing tough votes in the months ahead on health care, energy and budget bills
Veteran Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter told colleagues Tuesday that he switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party, Sen