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Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Daily Democratic Wire 7-1-2009

George Wenschhof

Today, President Barack Obama will attend a town hall in Annandale, Virginia to discuss health care - He will also be answering some questions submitted via Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The Washington Examiner has more here.

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Vice President Joe Biden begins Rural American "Listening Tour" - today in Wattsburg, Pennsylvania Biden will be joined by Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsak. It is expected one of the areas to be discussed today is how to increase broadband services in rural areas. The NY Times has more here.

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Yesterday, the Minnesota Supreme Court declared Al Franken the winner in the U.S. Senate race - finally, eight months following the election in November 2008, the state of Minnesota will have two Senators on Capitol Hill. Republican Norm Coleman conceded shortly after the supreme court released their 5-0 decision. The election had approximately 2.9 million votes and Franken won by 312 votes. The Democrats now have a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. They reach the magic number of 60 by counting Independent Senators Joe Lieberman (Conn.) and Bernie Sanders (Vt.) who both caucus with the Democrats. TheHill.com has more here.

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McCain and Feingold place a hold on Obama nomination to Federal Elections Commission - the nomination of labor lawyer John Sullivan has been placed on hold by Senators Russ Feingold (D-Wisc,) and John McCain (R-Ariz.). They are the two Senators who teamed up for campaign finance reform and are unhappy with the current status of the FEC. Politico.com has more here.

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Time for Republican Governor Mark Sanford (SC) to resign? - he continues to step in his own .... as a AP interview yesterday revealed additional indiscretions by the Governor. Unfortunately for the Republicans, S.C. Lt. Governor Andre Bauer has his own issues. The Washington Post has more here.

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Interim Honduras President Roberto Micheletti says he will not step down - the United Nations and the Organization of American States are pressuring Micheletti to allow the return of President Manuel Zelaya. The Honduran constitution only allows for a single term for their President and it is alleged Zelaya added a last minute and illegal amendment to the ballot allowing him to run again. It was this action that led to his ouster from the country. Zelaya has vowed to return on Thursday. Stay tuned. MSNBC.com has more here.

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1 comment:

Unknown said...

"The Honduran constitution only allows for a single term for their President and it is alleged Zelaya added a last minute and illegal amendment to the ballot allowing him to run again."

Zelaya planned a vote for Sunday June 28, 2009 to probe the possibility of adding a referendum to the presidential election ballot in November 2009. The vote on Sunday (had it not been cancelled by the military and an inexplicable [and not covered by the media] piece of legislation recently passed not allowing any voting to take place within 180 days of a presidential election) would have served only to gauge public opinion about the possibilities of constitutional reform. There would have been absolutely NO legislative ramifications of the vote. He was not ousted for adding an illegal amendment to the ballot. He was ousted for wanting to hold a non-binding poll of the people concerning constitutional reform in general. Furthermore, Zelaya officially stated that his planned constitutional reform would NOT include extending term limits in Honduras. He stressed that his focus was on altering biased parts of the constitution that clearly favor oligarchs and the elite in one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere. Whether or not he was telling the truth is debatable. Either way, the media is flip-flopping en masse from having Zelaya pinned as a Chavez look-alike to condemning his ouster as undemocratic and illegal, although I suppose both could be true. They may or may not be right, but they certainly aren't allowing fair coverage of the issue.