Democracy In Doubt Update - 04-11-2007

Bush Invites Democrats to Talk, but Not Negotiate, About the Iraq Funding Bill
WASHINGTON — Two weeks after congressional Democrats invited President Bush to negotiate over timetables for withdrawing troops from Iraq, the president issued his own invitation Tuesday "to meet with me at the White House."

But he made it clear that he wouldn't compromise.

"At this meeting," Bush said in a speech at American Legion Post 177 in Fairfax, Va., "the leaders in Congress can report progress on getting an emergency spending bill to my desk. We can discuss the way forward on a bill that is a clean bill, a bill that funds our troops without artificial timetables for withdrawal."

Democrats didn't phone the White House for an appointment.

"I … prided myself on being a pretty good lawyer," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters half an hour after the president's speech. "I've settled lots and lots of cases. But you never settle a case going in saying, 'You can come and meet with me, but here's what the result's going to be before we meet.' That doesn't work." LINK
Bush treating Congress like wayward children. Pelosi and Reid to reign down reality on Bush's soft head.

Gingrich Drops Skepticism on Global Warming
But he and Kerry differ on solutions
By Alan Wirzbicki, Globe Correspondent | April 11, 2007
WASHINGTON -- In a Capitol Hill debate about global warming touted by its moderator as a "smackdown" between former House speaker Newt Gingrich and Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, Gingrich praised Kerry's recently released book about environmentalism, acknowledged that global warming is real, and offered what amounted to an unexpected apology for his party's inaction on curtailing greenhouse gas emissions.

"I'm not going to stand up here and defend our failure to lead," said Gingrich, who is considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and plans to release a book in the fall burnishing his environmental credentials. "There has to be a green conservatism."

The standing-room-only debate, staged yesterday in an ornate Senate hearing room, offered an indication that even diehard conservatives like Gingrich, who stepped down as speaker in 1998, are abandoning their skepticism on global warming. As recently as two years ago, Gingrich ridiculed the notion that humans are causing the earth to warm, but yesterday he said the evidence was "sufficient."

"We have now passed the tipping point of that argument," he said yesterday. The former Georgia congressman even allowed that he agreed with "about 60 percent" of "This Moment on Earth," a recently published book Kerry co wrote with his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. LINK
Gingrich is going to run. He's going to try to appeal to the only-slightly-less insane conservatives.

16 US Soldiers Wounded in Iraq Today
BAGHDAD - A raging, daylong battle erupted in central Baghdad on Tuesday and four Iraqi soldiers were killed, 16 U.S. soldiers were wounded and a U.S. helicopter was hit by ground fire in the fiercest fighting since a massive security crackdown began in the capital two months ago.

Sixty miles to the north, in the mostly Sunni city of Muqdadiyah, a woman with a suicide vest strapped beneath her black robe blew herself up in the midst of 200 Iraqi police recruits. The attack killed at least 16 men waiting to learn if they had been hired.... violence continues to flare periodically in Baghdad and has risen markedly in nearby cities and towns....

Several blocks from the battle, a rocket slammed into a schoolyard basketball court, killing a 6-year-old boy. AP Television News videotape showed children's backpacks and books still open on classroom desks, covered with shattered glass and debris. Blood was pooled on the dusty tile floor....

The resumption of violence was in stunning contrast to Monday, when a 24-hour driving ban left the capital eerily quiet on the fourth anniversary of its capture by American forces. LINK
Just who is benefiting from the Surge? Iraqis keep dying. Our troops keep dying. Must be Exxon.