Senate passes short-term government-funding measure that includes some easy cuts

The Senate approved another stopgap budget bill Thursday that would keep the federal government open until April 8. The measure, which had already passed the House, is expected to be signed by President Obama on Friday.
The bill would cut $6 billion in federal spending. That makes twice this month that lawmakers from both parties have agreed to slash billions from the budget.
But the measure did not get Democrats and Republicans any closer to agreeing on a larger deal to fund the government through September, the end of the fiscal year.
It just puts three more weeks on the clock.
“Patience is wearing thin on both sides with these stopgaps,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), the Senate’s No. 3 Democrat. “All signs point to this being the last one. Three weeks should be enough to negotiate a final deal.”
On Thursday, however, there were reasons to think it would not be.
For one of those three weeks, Congress will be on recess. And the two sides began their key negotiations with an argument — over how they should negotiate.
Schumer said that House Republicans should make the next move, by offering a proposal that’s closer to what Democrats will accept.
Republicans said the opposite.
“I again implore the president and Senate Democrats to give us an offer,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) said in a statement. He continued: “We cannot continue to fund the government with a series of band-aids.”
There was one sign of progress Thursday: Senate Democratic leaders said that White House staff members and aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) held a late-afternoon meeting on Wednesday to talk about the budget.
It is considered the opening round between Democrats — who have tried to use government spending to spur the economy — and tea party-minded Republicans who think that government spending is holding the economy back and that the answer is deep cuts.
Democrats and Republicans alike seem determined to avoid a government shutdown: There is a high risk that the public will view that as incompetence. And, when under deadline pressure, both sides have shown that they can agree on billions in reductions. The last short-term measure, passed this month, would cut $4 billion from the budget.
“If you’ve got $10 billion [in cuts] in six weeks, we’ve been over-spending . . . since this took, really, no effort,” said Thomas A. Schatz of the watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste. Of the cuts, he said, “these are things that they should have been doing all along.”
Among the cuts:
l $1.74 billion from the U.S. Census Bureau. This was money that had been allotted to fund the 2010 Census. Because there won’t be another census until 2020, the money is not needed this year.
l $48 million from an “emergency steel loan” program. This Commerce Department program was established in 1999 to provide loans to steel manufacturers during a time of trouble in the industry.
But the industry recovered, and the program hasn’t made a loan since 2003. In past years, President George W. Bush and Obama requested that the program give back some or all of the millions it had in the bank.
l $19 million from public telecommunications facilities and construction. This program, another arm of the Commerce Department, mainly helped public television stations convert to digital broadcasting.
The conversion was complete in 2009. “There is no further need for [this] program,” according to the president’s 2010 budget. But Congress allotted $20 million anyway.
l $14.8 million from the National Park Service’s Save America’s Treasures program. This began in 1999, to provide grants for restoring historic buildings and collections as part of millennium celebrations.
The program was supposed to last two years.
Last year, the administration proposed shutting it down because the program had “not demonstrated [it contributed] to national historic preservation goals.” The budget said the program lacked “rigorous performance metrics and evaluation efforts, so benefits remain unclear.”
The stopgap measure would eliminate it.
Although no senators spoke on its behalf, the program has been defended by nonprofit parks and preservation groups. Previous grants had gone to restore the Washington National Cathedral and the Star-Spangled Banner flag, now on display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.
“It’s not like fairies and elves come out at midnight at some of these historical sites,” said Alan Spears at the National Parks Conservation Association. “We need money.”

Sarah Palin losing more ground among Republicans, Post-ABC poll finds

Sarah Palin’s ratings within the Republican Party are slumping, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, a potentially troubling sign for the former Alaska governor as she weighs whether to enter the 2012 presidential race.
For the first time in Post-ABC News polling, fewer than six in 10 Republicans and GOP-leaning independents see Palin in a favorable light, down from a stratospheric 88 percent in the days after the 2008 Republican National Convention and 70 percent as recently as October.
In one sense, the poll still finds Palin near the top of a list of eight potential contenders for the GOP nomination. The former vice presidential candidate scores a 58 percent favorable rating, close to the 61 percent for former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and 60 percent for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, and better than the 55 percent that onetime House speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) received.
But Palin’s unfavorable numbers are significantly higher than they are for any of these possible competitors. Fully 37 percent of all Republicans and GOP-leaning independents now hold a negative view of her, a new high.
In another first, fewer than 50 percent of Republican-leaning independents — 47 percent — hold favorable views of Palin.
She has given almost no indication of how seriously she is considering a 2012 bid.
Some have suggested that Palin and Huckabee, both of whom work for Fox News Channel, might need to decide before a May 5 presidential debate in South Carolina, which is being sponsored by the network.
It has long been clear that Palin is a polarizing figure amid the overall electorate — she typically receives negative reviews from Democrats — but this poll indicates that she may have a similar effect among some of the voters she would need to win the nomination.
Overall, 17 percent in this sample have “strongly unfavorable” opinions of her (among GOP-leaning independents, the number rises to 28 percent). At the same time, the percentage of Republicans and leaners with “strongly favorable” views is at a new low, 26 percent.
In contrast to Palin’s dip, Romney has solidified his standing in this group.
At the beginning of voting in the 2008 primaries, 36 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents held unfavorable views of him; now that number has dipped to 21 percent. Three years ago, as many held strongly unfavorable as strongly favorable views of Romney. In the new poll, he has a 3-to-1 advantage on intensity.

Others frequently mentioned as possible candidates remain largely unknown to broad swaths of the Republican electorate.
Large numbers of those polled offered no opinion about Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (57 percent no opinion), former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty (58 percent), Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (66 percent) and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. (68 percent), who is wrapping up his service as the Obama administration’s ambassador to China.
This telephone poll was conducted March 10 to 13, and included interviews with 414 self-identified Republicans and GOP-leaners. The margin of sampling error is five percentage points.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/post-abc-poll-shows-sarah-palin-losing-more-ground-among-republicans/2011/03/15/ABRtiNb_story.html?wpisrc=nl_politics

United Russia dominates regional elections

Residents of 74 of Russia’s 83 regions and republics went to the polls in local elections on March 13. Sunday’s turnout was higher than in the last year’s regional elections, while the number of violations reported was lower. Preliminary results show the dominant United Russia continuing to hold most regional legislatures.

The United Russia leadership stressed that Sunday’s vote was the beginning of a campaign that would carry it to victory in the State Duma elections, scheduled for Dec. 4. Party chairman Boris Gryzlov said that the Mar. 13 poll showed that United Russia resonated with voters and he advised other parties not to complain about supposed violations but“to calmly prove their position in court.”

The Communist Party (KPRF), which came in second during the elections, has already accused United Russia of using “dirty tricks” during the campaign and on election day. “There has never been such an outrage like this before,” said party leader Gennady Zyuganov.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), has noted “positive changes” during the spring campaign. But LDPR also reported violations during elections in Saratov, Orenburg, Stavropol, Kursk and Tver.

Officials from the Central Election Commission (CEC), however, declared that the election day “proceeded smoothly.” The number of complaints did not exceed those during previous elections, said Leonid Ivlev, a deputy chairman of the CEC. About 20 complaints regarding irregularities came from State Duma deputies, and more than 30 from political parties. More than 60 cases of violation during the elections were reported to police.

Prime Minister and United Russia head, Vladimir Putin said the results of the elections were “more than satisfactory for United Russia members and have demonstrated Russians’ confidence in the authorities.”


Prior to elections, the political struggle heated up, taking radical forms in some cases. On Friday, on the last day before the official 24-hour quiet period on campaigning, politicians continued to exchange blows. A deputy from the Liberal Democratic Party speaking in the Duma accused “unknown persons” of numerous violations, such as distributing fake leaflets with his party’s symbols and using planted data in campaign material. The deputy did not directly blame the parliamentary majority, United Russia, but implied its involvement.

United Russia also accused its opponents of using dirty tricks. Deputy Alexander Khinshtein said that while the sad facts of wrongdoings are a reality in many Russian regions, the blame lies not with United Russia, but with its opponents, first of all the Just Russia party. Khinshtein went on to accuse a Just Russia candidate of having mafia connections, but the party’s deputies dismissed these claims as groundless.

Sumber:http://rbth.ru/articles/2011/03/14/united_russia_dominates_regional_elections_12553.html

Candidates emerge to replace Mueller at FBI

The jockeying over who will replace FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has begun, with the FBI agents’ association urging that President Obama select the former head of the bureau’s Washington field office for the critical position.
Mueller, 66, is facing a mandatory 10-year retirement in September after a tenure in which he oversaw the crackdown on terrorism after Sept. 11, 2001, and the bureau’s ongoing transformation into an intelligence agency focused on preventing attacks.
In a letter sent Monday to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., the FBI Agents Association recommended Michael A. Mason, a longtime FBI agent and supervisor who is now security chief for Verizon Communications. Mason, a former assistant director in charge of the Washington Field Office, would be the FBI’s first African American director.
Law enforcement sources said other possible candidates include Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago who investigated the leak of the identity of former CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson; New York Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and John S. Pistole, administrator for the Transportation Security Administration and Mueller’s former deputy. All three declined to comment Monday, as did Mason.
The sources, who declined to be identified because the search is not public, said that contenders also include James B. Comey, who was deputy attorney general in the George W. Bush administration, and Frances Fragos Townsend, a top Bush terror adviser who was a confidante of then-Attorney General Janet Reno in the Clinton administration. Townsend declined to comment; Comey did not return e-mails seeking comment.
White House officials declined to comment, but law enforcement sources said the search for Mueller’s successor is being led by Vice President Biden, who chaired the Judiciary Committee in the Senate. Among those advising Biden are Holder and Louis J. Freeh, who was FBI director in the Clinton administration, the sources said. President Obama will make the decision.
It is unclear if any front-runner has emerged or precisely what qualities the administration is seeking in a nominee, though sources said counterterrorism experience is considered especially important.
Experts said that Mueller, a low-profile former Marine and federal prosecutor with a no-nonsense style, will be difficult to replace. Mueller started a week before Sept. 11, and his agency has successfully led the government’s efforts to prevent another terror attack on U.S. soil. It has also been criticized by some civil liberties advocates and Muslim leaders for tough anti-terrorism tactics.
“Mueller was there on the ground when we went through all this, when we had the Sept. 11 attacks, when we had the response and when he had to change the agency,’’ said Stephen A. Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University and former Justice Department official.
The agents association, which represents more than 12,000 active and retired FBI agents, is arguing that Mason fits the profile. A native of Obama’s home town of Chicago, Mason spent nearly 23 years with the FBI, rising to become executive assistant director for the Criminal Investigative Division before leaving in 2007.
His nomination would be a symbol of how far the agency has come from the days of longtime director J. Edgar Hoover, when African American agents faced difficulties and Martin Luther King Jr. was hounded by government investigations.
In an interview with The Washington Post in 2006, Mason said he was struck as a child by the heroism and intelligence of the bureau’s fabled G-men and that by seventh grade he was faithfully watching the weekly television show “The F.B.I.”
Konrad Motyka, president of the FBI agents association, said there was a “groundswell” of support for Mason’s candidacy among agents. “They said that throughout his entire career, he put agents first, had tremendous integrity and was very frank with everyone,’’ Motyka said.
Mason would be a somewhat unusual pick, however, in that he was an FBI lifer before moving to the private sector. FBI directors in recent decades have tended to come from outside the agency. Of the four directors since 1978, only Freeh worked as an FBI agent, and that was for just six years.
A possible outsider choice is Kelly, who has the backing of Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.). Schumer said at a news conference Monday that he would press Kelly’s nomination with the administration.
“He understands terrorism, which obviously is at the forefront of the FBI’s mission these days,’’ Schumer said. “He has great community relations, he’s been known for outreach, and how to deal with all the disparate communities here in New York. ... I think there could be nobody better than Commissioner Kelly.’’[www.washingtonpost.com]

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say Afghan war isn’t worth fighting

Nearly two-thirds of Americans now say the war in Afghanistan is no longer worth fighting, the highest proportion yet opposed to the conflict, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll
The finding signals a growing challenge for President Obama as he decides how quickly to pull U.S. forces from the country beginning this summer. After nearly a decade of conflict, political opposition to the battle breaks sharply along partisan lines, with only 19 percent of Democratic respondents and half of Republicans surveyed saying the war continues to be worth fighting.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans say Obama should withdraw a “substantial number” of combat troops from Afghanistan this summer, the deadline he set to begin pulling out some forces. Only 39 percent of respondents, however, say they expect him to withdraw large numbers.
The Post-ABC News poll results come as Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, prepares to testify before Congress on Tuesday about the course of the war. He is expected to face tough questioning about a conflict that is increasingly unpopular among a broad cross section of Americans.
Petraeus will tell Congress that “things are progressing very well,” Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said Monday. But because of battlefield gains made by U.S. and coalition forces since last year, Morrell told MSNBC, “it’s going to be heavy and intensive in terms of fighting” once the winter cold passes.
The poll began asking only in 2007 whether the Afghan war is worth fighting, but support has almost certainly never been as low as it is in the most recent survey.
The growing opposition pre­sents Obama with a difficult political challenge ahead of his 2012 reelection effort, especially in his pursuit of independent voters.
Since Democrats took a beating in last year’s midterm elections, Obama has appealed to independents with a middle-of-the-road approach to George W. Bush-era tax cuts and budget negotiations with Republican leaders on Capitol Hill. He called a news conference last week to express concern about rising gasoline prices, an economically pressing issue for many independent voters.
But his approach to the Afghan war has not won over the independents or liberal Democrats who propelled his campaign two years ago, and the most recent Post-ABC News poll reinforces the importance of Republicans as the chief constituency supporting his strategy. The results suggest that the war will be an awkward issue for the president as he looks for ways to end it. Nearly 1,500 U.S. troops have died since the fighting began in 2001.

During his 2008 campaign, Obama promised to withdraw American forces from the Iraq war, which he opposed, and devote more resources to the flagging effort in Afghanistan, which he has called an essential front in combating Islamist terrorism targeting the United States.
After a months-long strategy review in the fall of 2009, he announced the deployment of an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan — taking the total to more than 100,000 — and a July 2011 deadline for the start of their withdrawal.
The number of respondents to the Post-ABC News poll who say the war is not worth fighting has risen from 44 percent in late 2009 to 64 percent in the survey conducted last week.
Two-thirds of independents hold that position, according to the poll, and nearly 80 percent said Obama should withdraw a “substantial number” of troops from Afghanistan this summer. Barely more than a quarter of independents say the war is worth its costs, and for the first time a majority feel “strongly” that it is not.
Obama, who met with Pe­traeus on Monday at the White House, has said he will determine the pace of the withdrawal by assessing conditions on the ground.
At the same time, U.S. and NATO forces have come under sharp criticism from the Afghan government. Over the weekend, after a NATO bombing killed nine children, Afghan President Hamid Karzai demanded that international troops “stop their operations in our land,” a more pointed call than previous ones he has made following such deadly NATO mistakes.
The telephone poll was conducted March 10 to 13 among a random national sample of 1,005 adults. Results from the full poll have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
The survey also asked respondents to assess Obama’s performance in managing the political changes sweeping across the Middle East and North Africa. Overall, 45 percent of respondents approve of his handling of the situation, and 44 percent disapprove.
In Libya, where Moammar Gaddafi is battling a rebel force seeking to end his 41-year rule, Obama is under increasing pressure to implement a no-fly zone over the country to prevent the Libyan leader from taking back lost territory and to protect civilians from government reprisals.
Nearly six in 10 Americans say they would support U.S. participation in a no-fly zone over Libya, the poll found, despite recent warnings from Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates that doing so would be a “major operation.”
But the survey found that American support dips under 50 percent when it comes to unilateral U.S. action, as Democrats and independents peel away.
When told that such a mission would entail U.S. warplanes bombing Libyan antiaircraft positions and “continuous patrols,” about a quarter of those initially advocating U.S. participation turn into opponents.
After a meeting Monday with Danish Prime Minister Lars Loek­ke Rasmussen, Obama said, “We will be continuing to coordinate closely both through NATO as well as the United Nations and other international fora to look at every single option that’s available to us in bringing about a better outcome for the Libyan people.”
In general, Americans do not think thatthe changes in the Middle East and North Africa will prove beneficial to U.S. economic and security interests.
More than seven in 10 respondents said demonstrators are interested in building new governments, although not necessarily democratic ones. Almost half of those surveyed view the turmoil as undermining the United States’ ability to fight terrorist groups in the region.[www.washingtonpost.com]
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