Senator Sanders
Pollina Sheds Progressive Party Label Anthony Pollina, the Progressive Party's highest-profile candidate, will drop the party's label in this fall's election and run for governor as an independent, he announced Monday…Pollina invoked the names Bernie Sanders and Jim Jeffords, current and former
The First Debate “With Pollina in the race, Symington may think back with a measure of worry to an election from 1988. In that race, Peter Smith was the Republican running for Congress against independent Bernard Sanders and Democrat Paul Poirier. Sanders was the popular iconoclast, and Poirier was a legislative insider. Smith won, and Poirier finished a distant third. Symington is a stronger, more persuasive candidate than Poirier was, and Anthony is no Bernie. Still, the election of 1988 showed that when a legislative insider competes with an impassioned outsider for votes on the left, the winner may be the moderate Republican,” the Rutland Herald said in an editorial. LINK
Hart Building Suicide Averted A man who was precariously perched atop the protective wall that surrounds the atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building for hours last night and early this morning came down safely, U.S. Capitol police said, and the building will be open as usual today. The man, who police said had limited command of English but spoke Mandarin, climbed onto the wall and stood near its edge about 5:45 p.m. yesterday…"Let's hope it turns out okay," Sen. Bernard Sanders told The Washington Post as he headed home shortly before 10 p.m. LINK
International
Bosnian Serb Under Arrest in War Crimes Radovan Karadzic, one of the world’s most wanted war criminals for his part in the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, was arrested Monday in a raid in
National
Wachovia Posts Huge Loss Moving quickly to put an end to the constant spill of red ink, the Wachovia Corporation, the banking giant, booked an $8.9 billion loss and slashed its dividend its first quarter under new leadership, The New York Times reported. LINK
Bush Prods Congress, as Financers Are Inspected Bank examiners from the Federal Reserve and the Comptroller of the Currency are inspecting the books of the nation’s two largest mortgage finance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as the Bush administration prods Congress to approve a plan that would enable it to inject billions of dollars into the companies. Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., in a meeting on Monday with reporters and editors of The New York Times, said the Fed and the comptroller’s office began combing the books of the two companies after their declining stock prices caused widespread anxiety in the market. LINK
Congress Is Set to Limit Down-Payment Assistance Mortgage programs that helped nearly 79,000 people buy homes using government-insured loans last year would be eliminated as part of a broader housing package that Congress expects to pass this week, key lawmakers said. Under these programs, nonprofit groups provide buyers with money for down payments. Home sellers then reimburse the organizations and pay an administrative fee. More than half a million people -- including many first-time home buyers, minorities and single mothers -- have bought homes this way in the past decade using loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, according to The Washington Post. LINK
Women Are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy They had piled into jobs in growing numbers since the 1960s. But that stopped happening this decade, and as the nearly seven-year-old recovery gives way to hard times, the retreat is likely to accelerate. Indeed, for the first time since the women’s movement came to life, an economic recovery has come and gone, and the percentage of women at work has fallen, not risen, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, according to The New York Times. LINK
Hearing Will Tackle 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Democrats in Congress hope to ignite a drive to reverse the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy Wednesday with the first hearing on the subject since 1993, when President Clinton said gays could serve in uniform if they kept quiet about their sexual orientation, USA Today reported. LINK
New (and Unlikely) Tell-All Jason K. Burnett, Washington’s environmental whistle-blower du jour, is an example of a once rare, now almost common, phenomenon: a political appointee willing to tell much of what he knows of the inner workings of the formerly opaque Bush administration…More will be offered Tuesday when he appears before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, The New York Times reported. LINK
McCain VP Pick This Week? “Sources close to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign are suggesting he will reveal the name of his vice presidential selection this week while Sen. Barack Obama is getting the headlines on his foreign trip. The name of McCain's running mate has not been disclosed, but Mitt Romney has led the speculation recently,” according to the Evans and Novak (a.k.a. Errors and No Facts) Political Report. LINK
Nuclear Board Convenes Yankee Hearings A federal panel Monday started to tackle nagging questions about the safety of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant and whether it can operate safely for another 20 years. The Atomic Safety Licensing Board, a quasi-judicial arm of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, started hearing evidence Monday on key safety issues raised by the New England Coalition, which were formally seconded by the Vermont Department of Public Service, according to the Rutland Herald. LINK