In his closed door meeting with House Democrats this evening, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama delivered a real zinger. According to a witness, he was waxing lyrical about last week’s trip to Europe, when he concluded, “this is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for.”
The 200,000 souls who thronged to his speech in Berlin came not just for him, he told the enthralled audience of congressional representatives.
“I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions,” he said.
Humble he is not. The world awaits . . . a disaster if this man is elected President.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) today launched a new Web site, BarackBook.
The site parodies the social networking website FaceBook and Obama’s own website. BarackBook highlights some of Barack Obama’s notable associations throughout stages of his career, including his relationships with Tony Rezko, Nadhmi Auchi, and Alexi Giannoulias. Leveraging the popularity of social networking sites, BarackBook allows voters to explore Obama’s connections with these individuals as well as their connections to one another using video and news articles.
The Republican National Committee went to Berlin on Obama’s trail and had a few candid conversations with Europeans about Obama. This spot is Internet-only and was paid for by the RNC. It’s a bit amateurish if you ask me.
A Federal Grand Jury in Washington DC returned an indictment charging Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the longest serving Republican Senator, with seven counts including failing to disclose gifts to making false statements to Federal investigators from 1999 through 2007. Prosecutors said Stevens received more than $250,000 in gifts and services from VECO Corp., a powerful oil services contractor, and its executives. From May 1999 to August 2007, prosecutors said, the 84-year-old senator concealed “his continuing receipt of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of things of value from a private corporation.” The indictment, however, does not allege a quid quo pro.
Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the longest-serving Republican senator in United States history and a figure of great influence in Washington as well as in his home state, has been indicted on federal charges of failing to report gifts and income.
Mr. Stevens, 84, was indicted on seven felony counts related to renovations on his home in Alaska. The charges arise from an investigation that has been under way for more than a year, in connection with the senator’s relationship with a businessman who oversaw the home-remodeling project.
“I am innocent of these charges and intend to prove that,” Mr. Stevens said several hours after the indictment was announced. He said in a statement that he had temporarily relinquished his Senate leadership positions “until I am absolved of these charges.”
The indictment will surely reverberate through the November elections. Mr. Stevens, who has been in the Senate for 40 years, is up for re-election this year. Mark Begich, a popular Democratic mayor of Anchorage, hopes to supplant him.
The Justice Department announced the charges at a news conference on Tuesday afternoon. The document says that, from the spring of 1999 through the late summer of 2007, Mr. Stevens failed to report “things of value” that he received in connection with his home in the ski resort city of Girdwood, about 40 miles south of Anchorage.
