The leaders of both the Senate and the House announce that Congress is now in session, on YouTube. You can now find your Representatives and Senators’ YouTube channels on two new special platforms:
Here’s a sample from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ YouTube channel, an exchange between Senator Sanders and Thomas Daschle at the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee Hearing.
As President-elect Obama meets with Mexican leader Felipe Calderón, Carol Wise of the University of Southern California discusses how the incoming Obama administration can work to combat escalating drug violence in Mexico that claimed over 4,500 lives in 2008.
Al Jazeera examines the impact on countries including Iceland and the future consequences of the economic downturn in the US, Europe and beyond.
I have to wonder about his sanity given these comments.
SCARBOROUGH: Yes I do. Yes I do. And I know for a fact that waterboarding brought our interrogators, brought Americans, probably about 70-75 percent of what they get. What they got from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed opened doors that we are still going through. Waterboarding has produced and given so much evidence to our people in the CIA and in the other intelligence agencies. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed by himself has done more to crush al Qaeda than Dick Cheney or George Bush because of waterboarding.
We do not torture.
It appears that former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris will be the next junior US Senator from the state. Senate Democrats say Burris’ paperwork meets Senate requirements and he will likely be seated by the end of the week. The law was followed, in the end, that is all that matters. Blagojevich won this round. He won’t win many, if any, more.
It is a sad day for Israel and for democratic societies in general. From Haaretz:
The Central Elections Committee on Monday banned Arab political parties from running in next month’s parliamentary elections, drawing accusations of racism by an Arab lawmaker who said he would challenge the decision in the country’s Supreme Court.
The ruling, made by the body that oversees the elections, reflected the heightened tensions between Israel’s Jewish majority and Arab minority caused by Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip. Israeli Arabs have held a series of demonstrations against the offensive.
Knesset spokesman Giora Pordes said the election committee voted overwhelmingly in favor of the motion, accusing the country’s Arab parties of incitement, supporting terrorist groups and refusing to recognize Israel’s right to exist. Arab lawmakers have traveled to countries listed among Israel’s staunchest enemies, including Lebanon and Syria.
The 37-member committee is composed of representatives from Israel’s major political parties. The measure was proposed by two ultranationalist parties but received widespread support.The decision does not affect Arab lawmakers in predominantly Jewish parties or the country’s communist party, which has a mixed list of Arab and Jewish candidates. Roughly one-fifth of Israel’s 7 million citizens are Arabs, and enjoy full citizenship rights.
Arab lawmakers Ahmed Tibi and Jamal Zahalka, political rivals who head the two Arab blocs in the Knesset, joined together in condemning Monday’s decision.
“It was a political trial led by a group of Fascists and racists who are willing to see the Knesset without Arabs and want to see the country without Arabs,” said Tibi.
Together, the Arab lists hold seven of the 120 seats in the Knesset.
Tibi said he would appeal to the high court, while Zahalka said his party was still deciding how to proceed.
Pordes remarked that the last time a party was banned it was the late Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach Party, a list from the 1980s that advocated the expulsion of Arabs from Israel.
Let’s hope the Israeli Supreme Court overturns this affront to democracy.
As the war in Gaza has progressed, Israel’s military strategy has moved from an air campaign in the early days of this conflict to a ground offensive — and now, to deeper penetration into densely populated urban areas like Gaza City.
Anthony Cordesman, an expert on the Middle East, terrorism and defense policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, joins Martin Savidge to discuss Israels consideration of a phase three in its war against Hamas and the smuggling of weapons into Gaza from Egypt.
In a tribal area of northwestern Pakistan near Afghanistan, Taliban militants have launched a major offensive. Officials say about 600 militants, most of them from Afghanistan, attacked a paramilitary camp in Pakistan on Sunday, sparking a major battle that left six security troops and 49 insurgents dead. The Associated Press reports the raid reflected sophisticated cross-border coordination and the continued strength of the Taliban.
Vikram Singh, a specialist on Afghanistan and Pakistan with the Center for a New American Security, joins Martin Savidge to discuss this latest Taliban offensive, the timing of the attack and the deaths of two high-level al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan last week.
More from the New York Times:
Hundreds of Taliban militants poured into northwestern Pakistan in a large frontal attack on a paramilitary base late Saturday and Sunday that left at least 40 militants and 6 Pakistani soldiers dead, according to Pakistani security officials.
The attack, on an outpost of the Frontier Corps paramilitary force in the Mohmand district, appeared to be the heaviest assault on Pakistani troops in months. And in a reversal of usual patterns, it involved a large number of Taliban forces from Afghanistan attacking into Pakistan, signaling coordination among militants on both sides of the border.
At the same time, a separate and equally deadly battle played out just 60 miles to the south. Gangs of Sunnis and Shiites fought each other, rampaging through the villages of the Hangu district over the weekend, destroying dozens of homes and leaving at least 40 people dead between the rival groups, according to reports from authorities carried by Pakistani news media and accounts from local residents. Hundreds of Taliban fighters rushed in to support Sunni gangs, as government attack helicopters hovered overhead, trying to intimidate gunmen into withdrawing.
If all it takes is singing a little Bananarama to the President-elect, we should do this more often because it worked. Via Politico tonight comes word that the President-elect and his economic team have agreed to “make changes to its stimulus proposal based off of concerns senators raised last week at a meeting with the president-elect’s senior aides.”
The Obama team told about 35 Senate Democrats gathered at Sunday’s meeting that it would grow the size of an energy-tax incentive package and modify proposed tax credits for individuals and for businesses that hire new employees, according to meeting attendees. Also, with lawmakers raising concerns that the first half of the $700 billion of the financial rescue law was badly mismanaged, Obama’s team signaled it would lay out precisely how it would spend the second half of that package, which Congress is expected to consider as soon as this week.
Below the fold some rather happy Democratic legislators.