Daily News Roundup, 12/04/07: Iran, Iran Into Foreign Relations Trouble

The White House ran into a difficult issue yesterday on Iran: despite all of the saber rattling and mushroom-cloud style rhetoric from the US swearing up and down that Iran has a robust nuclear weapons program, a National Intelligence Estimate, partially declassified yesterday, shows that Iran hasn't had a nuclear weapons program since 2003.

Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, portrayed the assessment as “directly challenging some of this administration’s alarming rhetoric about the threat posed by Iran.” He said he hoped the administration “appropriately adjusts its rhetoric and policy,” and called for a “a diplomatic surge necessary to effectively address the challenges posed by Iran.”

For all the hollering and mentions of World War III, the assessment says it would be a long time before Iran could develop a nuclear weapon, as in 6-8 years. I will be curious to see how the conversation on Iran changes now, if at all. This is the sort of news I expected to see a year after having invaded Iran or something similar, so I'm happy to have it now before the wheels are off the wagon.

The Bush administration has been busying itself elsewhere, though. There's been plenty to do in obstructing the Valerie Plame investigation. Congressman Henry Waxman revealed the unsurprising news just recently, and it is the usual activity — hanging on to documents that Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald generated during his probe into Plame's case, and more generally being uncooperative. Waxman complained to new Attorney General Mukasey, so we'll see how the new guy handles it. I don't expect to be surprised, but I guess you never know.

Yesterday was the first day candidates could file for office in Texas, and State Representative Rick Noriega kicked things off in Austin as he filed to run for Senate. Over the next month, candidates will be putting in to run for as many offices as are available, including Noriega's Democratic primary challenger. Ray McMurrey, a teacher from Corpus Christi, has made his intention to run known. You'll see plenty of filings packed with message on plenty of issues from here to January.

Here's some disturbing news. We all know the National Debt is ever climbing, we've all seen the big clock in Time Square that measures it and how giant the number has been forever. However, new reports indicate that the rate at which the national debt is expanding has accelerated:

Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It's expanding by about $1.4 billion a day _ or nearly $1 million a minute.

One economist in the story says that the debt could reach 350% of GDP by 2050 if changes aren't made. That's the kind of number that makes economists break out in a cold sweat, because it represents a hole a country can almost never climb out of. So relate this to the next story you see about the total cost of the Iraq War.

Finally, watch out for Bush's press conference today. This will be hard for him since he hasn't addressed the media in almost two months, He criticized Congress yesterday for everything he could think of, and he's likely to continue along that path of twisted logic today, although he'll have to deal with the added difficulty of dealing with people and answering questions. In a struggle to stay relevant, stomping the ground in public is Bush's weapon of choice.