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For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary February 17, 2006 President Discusses Global War on Terror Following Briefing at CENTCOM Port of Tampa Tampa, Florida 1:26 P.M. EST THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. Please be seated. Thanks for the warm welcome. Thanks for the warm weather. (Laughter.) It's nice to be back here. I just came from MacDill, where I was talking to General Abizaid and General Brown, and one of the things that's clear is folks there at MacDill really do appreciate the support that the citizens of the communities of Tampa and St. Pete and the...

WASHINGTON, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Mistakes in U.S. Middle East policy have made America less safe and aided the militant group Hamas's victory in Palestinian elections, Democratic and Republican lawmakers told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Wednesday. Hamas's win last month in the Palestinian territories and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood's rise in Egypt have fueled criticisms over U.S. President George W. Bush's strategy of pushing for democracy in the Middle East. "This administration seems to have a tin ear when it comes to the Middle East and that tin ear is making us less safe," Sen. Barbara Boxer, a...

WASHINGTON -- A chastised Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff sparred with senators of both parties on Wednesday as he acknowledged "many lapses" in his agency's response to Hurricane Katrina. Chertoff told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that he would do things differently if he had the chance. One thing he would not do: give overall responsibility for the relief effort to Michael Brown, who was director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency at the time. ... "It is completely correct to say that our logistics capability in Katrina was woefully inadequate. I was astonished to see...

Conservatives on and off Capitol Hill are urging Senate Republican leaders to renew the push to nominate and confirm right-wing jurists to the federal bench just two weeks after Samuel Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court. Three conservative members of the Judiciary Committee, Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), and conservative activists are growing impatient with the pace of judicial nominations. Sessions and Republican activists say that there is a backlog of vacancies and that the Bush administration needs to act more quickly in sending conservative nominees to the Senate for consideration. In addition, they...

A Somali native accused of plotting to blow up a Columbus area mall is now in a legal holding pattern. A judge has ordered a psychological exam for Nuradin Abdi, but it may take three months for the results to be released. It appears the FBI started paying close attention to Abdi five years ago. That's when court documents accuse him of taking part in terrorist training, just four months after landing on US soil. In January, 1999 Abdi entered the US from the United Arab Emirates. ... Abdi returned to the US nearly a year later, in March of...

Ever since media reports revealed the existence of a warrantless government eavesdropping program targeting U.S. citizens and residents, Bush administration officials have taken great pains to emphasize that the effort involves only international telephone calls and e-mails. The question from both Democratic and Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee at a hearing Monday was: Why stop there? Why not intercept domestic calls, as well? ... Some supporters of the NSA effort advocate a broader approach. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) urged the administration to consider expanding the program to allow eavesdropping without warrants for communications inside the United States. "There...

Mr. CHAMBLISS. Mr. President, several weeks ago, after a highly classified program was leaked to the media, the President described certain activities of the National Security Agency that he authorized in the weeks following our Nation coming under direct attack on our own soil by Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorists. As described by the President, the Vice President, the Attorney General, and experts from the Department of Justice and the intelligence community, the terrorist surveillance program at NSA targets very specific international communications of suspected and known al-Qaida operatives in a foreign country who are communicating with associates around the...

Mr. SPECTER. Mr. President, on Monday, the Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the administration's electronic surveillance program and we dealt solely with the issues of law as to whether the resolution to authorize the use of force on September 14 provided authority in contradistinction to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which flatly prohibits any kind of electronic surveillance without a court order. Then we got into the issue of the President's inherent powers under article II. It is difficult to define those powers without knowing more about the program and we do not know about the program. It was...

... The NSA surveillance debate truly deserves the overworked moniker, "historic." This is a fundamental test of the authority of Congress and the executive in wartime. It pits the president's power as commander in chief under Article 2 of the Constitution against specific legislative rules mandated by Congress in the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. A stable, legal foundation for the NSA program can come by placing it under FISA jurisdiction, or by amending FISA, or perhaps by a judicial review that might support the administration's argument that Article 2 trumps FISA. Instead, we have none of the above. ......

For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary February 8, 2006 Message To the Congress of the United States MESSAGE TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES: Consistent with subsection 204(b) of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 50 U.S.C. 1703(b)(IEEPA), and section 301 of the National Emergencies Act, 50 U.S.C. 1631 (NEA), I hereby report that I have issued an Executive Order (the "order") blocking the property of certain persons contributing to the conflict in Côte d'Ivoire. In that order, I declared a national emergency to deal with the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and...

A federal judge on Friday set a January 2007 trial date [jury selection starts on January 8, 2007] for a former top White House aide facing perjury and other charges in the leak of a CIA operative's identity, pushing the trial past November's congressional elections. The judge said jury selection would begin on January 8 in the case of Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. ... Afterward, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald declined to comment but defense lawyer Theodore Wells said he was happy with the trial date. ... Wells said in the next three weeks he...

State of the Union Address by the President 9:12 P.M. EST THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. Mr. Speaker, Vice President Cheney, members of Congress, members of the Supreme Court and diplomatic corps, distinguished guests, and fellow citizens: Today our nation lost a beloved, graceful, courageous woman who called America to its founding ideals and carried on a noble dream. Tonight we are comforted by the hope of a glad reunion with the husband who was taken so long ago, and we are grateful for the good life of Coretta Scott King. (Applause.) Every time I'm invited to this rostrum,...

NATIONAL SECURITY -- (Senate - January 30, 2006)    Mr. INHOFE. Mr. President, I am not here, people will be glad to know, to talk about Judge Alito. I am here as an assignment. Serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee, as is the keeper of the chair, I have been there for quite a number of years. I have taken the assignment of giving a grade as to what President Bush, prior to his State of the Union Message tomorrow night, has done in the way of national security and national defense. I am proud to say that I am...

WASHINGTON - A ranking Louisiana health official turned down federal offers to help move or evacuate patients as Hurricane Katrina bore down on New Orleans, a newly released document shows. But the state's top medical officer said Louisiana coordinated with the federal Health and Human Services Department in evacuating hospitals and nursing homes after Katrina hit. Two days before the Aug. 29 storm, HHS was told by the state's health emergency preparedness director that the help was not needed, according to an e-mail released Monday by a Senate panel investigating the government's response to Katrina. The state official, identified in...

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, I take this opportunity to offer a few observations on the manner in which the Senate has conducted its inquiry into the qualifications of Judge Samuel A. Alito, Jr., to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Regardless of any Senator's particular view of Judge Alito, I think we can all agree that there is room for improvement in the way in which the Senate and, indeed, the Nation have undertaken the examination of this nominee. Let me be clear. I mean no criticism of the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee or any particular member of...

Below, two Federalist Society members (David B. Rivkin, Jr., partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Baker & Hostetler LLP, Contributing Editor to the National Interest and National Review magazines, and Member of the UN Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Robert Levy, Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute) pose and then answer questions about the administration's policy on domestic surveillance. We begin with five questions by David Rivkin, with answers by Robert Levy and a rebuttal by David Rivkin at the end of this section: Q1. Rivkin: Why can't the President's use...

HEARINGS BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE TO STUDY GOVERNMENTAL OPERATIONS WITH RESPECT TO INTELLIGENCE ACTIVITIES OF THE UNITED STATES SENATE NINETY-FOUR CONGRESS FIRST SESSION VOLUME 5 THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY AND FOURTH AMENDMENT RIGHTS OCTOBER 29 AND NOVEMBER 6, 1975 TESTIMONY OF LT. GEN. LEW ALLEN, JR., DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY, ACCOMPANIED BY BENSON BUFFHAM, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, NSA; AND ROY BANNER, GENERAL COUNSEL, NSA ... Between 1967 and 1973 there was a cumulative total of about 450 U.S. names on the narcotics list, and about 1,200 U.S. names on all other lists combined. What that amounted to was that at...

29. Judicial Activism: Please discuss your views on the following criticism involving "judicial activism." The role of the Federal judiciary within the Federal government, and within society, generally, has become the subject of increasing controversy in recent years. It has become the target of both popular and academic criticism that alleges that the judicial branch has usurped many of the prerogatives of other branches and levels of government. Some of the characteristics of this "judicial activism" have been said to include: a tendency by the judiciary toward problem-solution rather than grievanceresolution; a tendency by the judiciary to employ the individual...

Below, two Federalist Society members (David B. Rivkin, Jr., partner in the Washington, D.C. office of Baker & Hostetler LLP, Contributing Editor to the National Interest and National Review magazines, and Member of the UN Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Robert Levy, Senior Fellow in Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute) pose and then answer questions about the administration's policy on domestic surveillance. [In the coming days, rebuttals by each will be posted on this page.] We begin with five questions by David Rivkin, with answers by Bob Levy: Q1. Rivkin: Why can't the President's...

"Uncertainty," the Nominee There was an interesting exchange during the "Round Table" segment of Fox News Sunday talk show, of October 16, 2005. The gist of the discussion was that, assuming Miers gets through Committee hearings, doesn't lay an egg, and is seen as a "mainstream conservative jurist", the Senators still face great uncertainty as to how she will turn out. The discussion was in terms of how each Senator's vote will look in hindsight. This illustrates the problem I have with the nomination. Senator's votes and public vision should not be undertaken in an environment of this much uncertainty....