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Friday, April 15, 2011
The Morning Scoop - Democrats' Disgust With Obama
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The budget deal, angrily rejected by Nancy Pelosi as it passed Thursday, was the last straw for the left. The Daily Beast's Patricia Murphy on why some liberals are now pushing for a primary challenge to the president. "We don't have enough time to talk about the ways it violates our values," Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, told The Daily Beast.
President Obama, Prime Minister David Cameron, and President Sarkozy issued a joint statement Friday that NATO operations will continue until Gaddafi is out of power. "So long as Gaddafi is in power, NATO must maintain its operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds," read the statement, published in European newspapers as an opinion column. While it's the most direct link between the NATO mission and Gaddafi's departure so far, the statement does not specify what sort of operations are going to continue. U.S. officials said they hope the threat of a prolonged NATO campaign would pressure members of Gaddafi's inner circle to force him out. The joint statement could also increase pressure on NATO allies who have so far been reluctant to contribute to the airstrikes. Meanwhile, no NATO members have volunteered the aircraft requested by U.S. Adm. James Stavridis for the NATO campaign.
This doesn't bode well for the next few weeks of negotiations. The budget may have passed Congress, but it didn't get as many votes as Speaker John Boehner wanted it to, as 59 House Republicans defected at the last minute. Twenty-seven of the 59 who broke ranks were freshmen. The vote has the effect of a warning shot from Boehner's right flank as the party heads into negotiations on the debt ceiling and the deficit. "I think my leadership needs to probably sit down and have a come-to-Jesus with themselves," said Representative Allen B. West, a freshman Republican from Florida who criticized the cuts for being too small. "My guess is that he's not going to be sleeping all that well tonight," said Stan Collender, a budget analyst with Qorvis Communications in Washington." Still, some say the split within the party might actually strengthen Boehner's hand in talks with Democrats by making him drive a harder bargain in order to unify his party.
Maybe it doesn't take an invasion to bring democracy to the Middle East: A small group of government-financed democracy-building organizations had a bigger role in sparking the uprisings across the region than previously known. Compared to the billions of dollars the Pentagon has poured into the Middle East in support of American policy, these groups had almost no funding, but they played an outsize role in training pro-democracy dissident leaders in campaigning, social media organization, and election monitoring. Two groups, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute, are loosely affiliated with their namesake political parties, and Freedom House is a Washington-based non-profit human-rights group. All receive grants from Congress or the State Department, and trained leaders in Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen. Young Egyptians active in the uprisings this spring also attended a technology conference in New York sponsored by Facebook, Google, MTV, Columbia Law School, and the State Department. "We didn't fund them to start protests, but we did help support their development of skills and networking," said the director of another D.C.-based democracy group. "It was their revolution."
A powerful storm tore through Oklahoma and Arkansas late Thursday night and early Friday morning, killing at least five people before moving south. The storm system produced a large tornado in the tiny southeastern Oklahoma town of Tushka, killing at least two people, injuring dozens more, and leaving about 350 homeless as it tore off roofs, shattered windows, and knocked over power lines and trees. The storm then moved to Arkansas, where two people were killed when a tree fell on a house, and another person was killed when a tree was blown onto his vehicle.
The former governor's ratings have jumped five points as he hits the stump with a message of fiscal austerity, God, and tough action in Libya. But the 2012 GOP candidate is still a second choice behind Romney, Gingrich and others. Howard Kurtz reports from New Hampshire.
Who's Cheating on Their Taxes by The Daily Beast Elected officials are among the defendants in more than 3,000 federal tax crimes referred for prosecution in 2010. With Tax Day coming up, The Daily Beast scours the records to find whether Democrats or Republicans have the worse tax problem.
Scream's Star Victims & Survivors by Marlow Stern The Ghostface killer has been dormant for more than a decade, but Scream 4 hits theaters Friday and introduces the horror series to a new generation. From Drew Barrymore's legendary shriek to the trifecta of survivors, catch up on Scream's biggest names and bloodiest moments!
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