Daily News Roundup, 10/31/07: Bush: "I Don't Need Congress"

President Bush has succeeded in once again hijacking a debate's news cycle. Following his most recent snit in front of the press going on about how he thinks Congress has gotten little done (a speech which Speaker Pelosi absolutely eviscerated — if you didn't see that, Keith Olbermann's Countdown has the video), the administration has decided that since Congress clearly isn't giving him his way, he's simply better off ruling by administrative order.

Supposedly, Bush blames congressional Democrats for holding up everything from Mukasey's confirmation (more on that later) to not including the White House in SCHIP discussions — you know, those discussions that led to a bipartisan bill that was overwhelmingly passed by Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate, but which Bush vetoed anyway and which came just shy of a veto override.

From the article:

"He sort of longs for those days, when both sides were genuinely interested in getting along and getting a deal," said Rep. Adam H. Putnam (R-Fla.), the chairman of the House Republican Conference, who helped organize yesterday's White House meeting, attended by about 150 Republicans.

Seeing as Bush has criticized Congress ever since Democrats regained the majority, it would seem that Rep. Putnam's "both sides" are congressional Republicans and White House Republicans.

Fortunately, it seems that even some notable congressional Republicans are getting sick of Bush's railroading of Congress' work. House Minority Leader John Boehner, asked if he could support an SCHIP bill that Bush didn't, said, "He has his position. House Republicans have theirs." That's not exactly the sycophantic response that Bush is used to.

In less frustrating and more productive news, another in the series of Democratic presidential candidate debates was held yesterday, hosted by MSNBC. I liveblogged it last night, and presented my analysis of the debate as well. Long story short: everyone seems to agree that it was a bloodbath. Clinton was besieged on all sides by folks taking swipes at her credibility — from Edwards, who came out as the aggressive attacker, to Obama, who mainly agreed but got in one blow of his own, to Tim Russert, co-moderating the debate, who seemed to have it out for the senator from New York, trying to bait her with leading questions. "Why do you have a public position and a private position" on Social Security? Not "do you," but "why do you?" (Of course, Clinton's answer was, "I don't.")

Clinton seemed unprepared for the extent of the onslaught, and started showing cracks about halfway through the debate, resorting to a sort of policy wonkiness that was too complicated for the debate format and opened her up to attacks from Edwards and Obama of expressing different messages when it is politically convenient. (It doesn't help that she seemed to have done that very thing within a few minutes of giving a complicated answer on New York Governor Pataki's comments about giving driver's licenses to undocumented workers in the state.)

Biden had a couple of golden moments in that debate when he took the focus of the attack from Clinton and directed it toward Rudy Giuliani. He called Giuliani "The least qualified person to run for President since George W. Bush," and stated that "all his sentences consisted of a noun, a verb, and 9/11." He also had some solid answers on Iran, and on the whole probably came across best out of the pack of non-frontrunners.

As I mentioned earlier, Mukasey's been getting himself in trouble in Congress lately. The once-presumptive appointee to the vacant attorney general's position has come under serious fire for refusing to say waterboarding is illegal. It's a bit surprising to see someone get such a clobbering after having come in originally with bipartisan support, but after having had to deal with Attorney General Gonzales, I can easily understand the efforts Congress is putting into rooting out any problems with Mukasey's appointment. That's what the process is for, after all.

In local news, a report from researchers at Johns Hopkins university identified 185 high schools in Texas as being "dropout factories," meaning that their attrition rate was 40 percent or higher. The Chron has a list of the 42 schools in the Houston area that fell under that category, and it reads like a hit list of the poorest schools in the least privileged areas of town. I haven't found a list like that from the Dallas Morning News or the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, but the FWST does have an ongoing series on the state of public schools in Tarrant County, and they note the same trends and the same correlations between area family income and quality of education.

Lastly today, it seems like Iraq isn't too happy about the immunity being granted to private contractors over there. Their Cabinet approved legislation yesterday that would rescind the U.S.-granted immunity given to private security contractors in the country. (It next goes to consideration by their parliament, and then must be approved by the president's council to become law.) Of course, contractors are complaining, saying that passing such legislature would effectively force them out of the country. I can't help but think that Iraqi legislators are well aware of that fact. I guess now their higher-than-the-military wages can finally have some sort of accountability attached to them. Won't that be something?