Archive for May, 2005

May 19, 2005

Republicans replace women-in-combat plan (USATODAY.com) »

Elaine Donnelly, head of the conservative Center for Military Readiness based in Michigan, said the Army has violated Pentagon policies by placing women in the new units. “What Congress is doing, and what I hope they will do, is say that the American people have a stake in this. The Army doesn’t get to make these decisions on their own,” Donnelly said.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist told graduates of the Medical University of South Carolina on Friday that the most dangerous threat to the American people is biological.

“Total fiction.” Democrats, of course, see it differently. Vermont’s Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, says Republicans are willing to destroy the Senate in an effort to pack the courts. “The effort to appoint loyalists to courts in the hope that they will reinterpret precedents and overturn the very laws that have protected our most fundamental rights as Americans is base and wrong,” he said. “The American people deserve better than … a majority willing to sacrifice the role of the Senate as a check and balance in order to aid a president determined to pack the federal courts.”

“My job is to pick people who will interpret the Constitution, not use the bench from which to write laws,” Bush said at the White House. “And I expect them to get an up or down vote, that’s what I expect. And I think the American people expect that as well — people ought to have a fair hearing and they ought to get an up-or-down vote on the floor.”

But, he said, “Let me make sure that you all know that that does not reflect on the American people.”

“The American people want this — their electedrepresentatives want it on both sides of the aisle want it,” hesaid.

The White House hopes there will be other bipartisan agreements “on other priorities before Congress,” now that the filibuster showdown has been averted, presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said Wednesday. “There are a lot of importrant priorities before the American people and we want to see Congress move forward on those priorities.”

“The American people cannot afford to wait any longer for our top scientists to realize the full potential of stem cell research,” said Harkin.