Cheney may meet his match in Democratic Rep. Emanuel: This is a great little news story from McClatchy;
Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, on Wednesday will propose cutting all appropriations for Cheney's office from the bill that's needed to finance the executive branch.
It's a response to Cheney's assertion that he isn't bound by a presidential order on secrecy because he isn't really part of the executive branch. Cheney says the Constitution makes him unique in government: one foot in the executive branch as next in line to the presidency and the other foot in the legislative branch as presiding officer of the Senate.
The White House says the constitutional argument from Cheney is interesting, but moot. The president's order requires executive agencies to report data about their use of classified documents to the National Archives. Spokeswoman Dana Perino says Bush never meant to include Cheney in the order covering other executive department agencies and that the president is the "sole enforcer'' of his own orders.
But Emanuel is using the argument to ridicule and bludgeon Cheney.
First, Emanuel released a chart showing four branches of government: the executive, the legislative, the judicial and the Cheney.
Then he went to work picking apart Cheney's argument.
``If the vice president truly believes he is not a part of the executive branch, he should return the salary the American taxpayers have been paying him since January 2001, and move out of the home for which they are footing the bill,'' Emanuel said.
Emanuel's proposed amendment would withhold the $4.4 million for Cheney's office until the vice president admits he's in the executive branch or the Government Accountability Office determines which branch Cheney serves in.
It appears that Cheney has got himself tongue-tied here. By claiming that his office is neither a part of the executive branch, or the legislative branch, Cheney completely opened himself up to the congressional Democrats ridicule that Cheney should not receive American taxpayer funding for his office because Cheney claims he is not a part of any branch of the government. Cheney has only himself to blame here, since he is trying to circumvent the law in keeping his office completely secret from any form of oversight into the vice president's activities here.
Thompson, Clinton take leads in Nevada poll: This is also from a McClatchy story showing the Nevada poll results for the presidential contenders. According to this McClatchy story;
The poll showed Thompson with 25 percent support among Republicans who are considered likely to attend a nominating caucus, followed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney with 20 percent, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani with 17 percent, Sen. John McCain of Arizona with 8 percent and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee with 3 percent. The other Republicans had 1 percent support or less.
On the Democratic side, Clinton led with 39 percent, followed by Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois with 17 percent, former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina with 12 percent, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson with 7 percent and Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware with 2 percent. The other Democrats had 1 percent or less.
[....]
In contrast, Thompson has done nothing publicly to prepare for the nominating caucuses, which require significant organization to guarantee a good turnout at the time-consuming meetings.
"That shows that Republicans are really looking for a candidate. Nobody is, in a sense, grabbing the hearts of the Republicans," said Eric Herzik, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Reno. "It's really bad news for McCain. He's a Westerner. He's certainly not making any forward progress."
The independent polling firm interviewed 800 likely caucus goers - 400 from each party - on June 20-22. The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 5 percent.
What I find especially interesting about this story is the fact that Thompson hasn't done any type of campaigning at all--and he's in the lead for the Republican candidates. It really does show that the Republicans are looking for a candidate to win the hearts and minds of the GOP base, especially considering how the GOP is saddled with a sinking Bush presidency. It is fascinating how the GOP is searching for their "white knight" presidential candidate, while rejecting the current crop of candidates--McCain was too much of a presidential whore, Romney was a Mormon, Giuliani was pro-choice, and the rest of the GOP candidates just don't have the national exposure to improve their standing. Thompson has got his own presidential exploratory website up, so it is just a matter of what day on the Fourth of July weekend he is going to announce his candidacy.
How Low Can He Go? Bush job approval poll by Newsweek: This is just a big WOW! Newsweek is reporting that "President Bush’s approval rating has reached a record low;
In the new poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday nights, President Bush’s approval rating has reached a record low. Only 26 percent of Americans, just over one in four, approve of the job the 43rd president is doing; while, a record 65 percent disapprove, including nearly a third of Republicans.
The new numbers—a 2 point drop from the last NEWSWEEK Poll at the beginning of May—are statistically unchanged, given the poll’s 4 point margin of error. But the 26 percent rating puts Bush lower than Jimmy Carter, who sunk to his nadir of 28 percent in a Gallup poll in June 1979. In fact, the only president in the last 35 years to score lower than Bush is Richard Nixon. Nixon’s approval rating tumbled to 23 percent in January 1974, seven months before his resignation over the botched Watergate break-in.
Newsweek also reports that President Bush has scored record lows on just about every issue--the economy (34 percent approve, 60 percent disapprove), health care (28 percent approve, 61 percent disapprove), and immigration (23 percent approve, 63 percent disapprove). In addition, a 50-percent majority of Americans disapprove of Bush's handling on terrorism and homeland security, while only 43 percent approve. The only good news for this administration is the Democrats in Congress are polling even lower, at a 25 percent approval rating. We're talking only a 1 percent difference here in the job approval ratings between President Bush and the congressional Democrats. If the situation continues to sour in Iraq, more scandals continue to be revealed with the U.S. attorneys, torture of prisoners, Gitmo, immigration, GOP voting fraud, and whatever else comes up, I'm starting to wonder if Bush will end up dropping below President Nixon's approval ratings--or even into the teens. We still have a year and a half of this Bush presidency to go.
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