:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 11.19.2005 ::
:: "House Erupts in War Debate" ::
From Los Angeles Times
By Maura Reynolds
Lawmakers launch personal attacks as Republicans force a vote on whether to pull out of Iraq immediately. The measure is rejected.
WASHINGTON — House Republicans forced a vote Friday over a proposal to begin the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, sparking a raw and raucous debate during which lawmakers hurled insults and jeered each other.
The GOP-sponsored proposal, intended to fail and aimed at embarrassing war critics, was overwhelmingly defeated shortly before midnight, 403 to 3.
But the debate vividly exposed the widening rifts between Democrats and Republicans over the course of the war — a disagreement that increasingly has dominated congressional proceedings.
The resolution grew out of a proposal made Thursday by Rep. John P. Murtha of Pennsylvania — a Democrat, a decorated Marine Corps veteran of the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and one of the House's most respected military hawks — that the United States start pulling out of Iraq.
Republicans responded Friday by introducing a simplified version of his plan — a move Democrats denounced as a political stunt designed to force the hand of Murtha and his fellow Democrats.
But Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), who sponsored the resolution, responded: "This is a legitimate question."
Explaining his demand for a vote, Hunter said the escalating debate over the war had left the impression around the world "that Congress is withdrawing support of the mission in Iraq."
During the debate, House members frequently spoke out of turn. The presiding officer repeatedly called for order.
At one point, Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee and other Democrats surged toward the Republican side of the chamber, after Rep. Jean Schmidt, an Ohio Republican, suggested that Murtha — the senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee's defense subcommittee and the recipient of two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star — was a coward.
Read the entire story here.
posted by me
:: 6:59:00 AM [+] ::
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