News Roundup, 5/23/08: An Empty (Veto) Threat

The Bush White House can continue playing offense, but it is growing increasingly clearer that all his players are leaving the field.

The Iraq funding bill that passed the Senate yesterday was tied to a number of domestic programs for fighting wildfires, restoring levees in Louisiana and Mississippi, and boosting health research. Of course, this would fall subject to Bush's blanket veto threat on any military spending bill tied to domestic spending programs. Much to his chagrin, the bill passed the Senate by a 75-22 vote, well above the margin needed to override a veto. The large number of Republican defections come as the embattled party has to play defense to improve their chances of reelection in a cycle that is otherwise looking to be a big win for Democrats.

Even John McCain's having to play some defense, it turns out. Three months after controversial pastor John Hagee gave John McCain his endorsement — an endorsement McCain would not turn down, despite inflammatory statements by Hagee attacking the Catholic Church as "the great whore" — McCain has finally been forced to reject Hagee's support when audio began circulating from a Hagee sermon in the late 1990's saying that Hitler was sent by God to hunt European Jews into Palestine. It's nice to know there is some line of propriety that McCain won't cross to get an endorsement. I'm sure that comes as a disappointment to the folks at the American National Socialist Workers Party that were hoping to get another GOP candidate to speak for them.

House Judiciary Committee chair John Conyers is getting tough on Karl Rove. After long negotiations trying to get Rove to appear of his own volition in front of the committee, Conyers has issued a subpoena for Rove's appearance. The subpoena sets a July 10 deadline for his appearance. Bush has been using the tactic of trying to shield all his ex-employees under executive privilege, and Congress has answered in the past by voting to hold Bolten and Miers in contempt of Congress, allowing them to file a civil suit against the administration to force them to testify. It would seem that this may go the same direction; we'll see if Rep. Conyers has another trick up his sleeve.

In presidential news, it seems Senator Barack Obama has secretly started looking for a vice-presidential candidate. Shh! Don't tell anybody.

Will that candidate be Hillary Clinton? I personally don't think so. And neither does Jimmy Carter.

Bill White is going to bat for the environment, and is taking the fight to Austin. After a number of efforts challenging the permits of Houston-area plants for not lowering their benzene output, White has notified the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality that he would be publicly calling for the agency to establish overall limits on airborne benzene. The move met with great support from environmental groups, who decried the TCEQ's underwhelming efforts in the matter.

Josh interviews Larry Joe Doherty in yesterday's Who's Blue; they discuss his platform in his race for CD 10 and his opponent, Michael McCaul, as well as touch on his experiences on his court TV show, Texas Justice.

One last note: we have expanded the number of news articles we're showing on our front page, in anticipation of a snazzy new redesign of our site. Since we'll be showing all our recent stories on our front page now, we will no longer be putting roundups on the Web site. If you'd like to continue receiving these, join our mailing list where we'll send out digests of our most recent content. And as always, thanks for reading.