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John Kerry’s name is rarely mentioned in the media without the phrase “decorated war hero” somewhere in close proximity. The only pictures shown of the Massachusetts senator in his youth feature him in his Navy whites receiving a ribbon, tramping through the jungle or standing alongside his “band of brothers” on a swift boat. Kerry enlisted in 1966, long before the Vietnam conflict became “Nixon’s War.” It was still the noble defense of freedom begun by President John F. Kennedy, a man he idolized and sought to emulate. It was also still fashionable at the time for children of privilege...

(Talon News) -- If President Bush were feeling the least bit threatened by the controversy surrounding his military service record it didn't show Tuesday as he stood before thousands of National Guardsmen and their families at Fort Polk, Louisiana. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan told a skeptical reporter that the visit had been planned in advance of Democrat attacks on the president's military history. Fort Polk is home to members of the Second Calvary now deployed in Iraq. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the post has trained and deployed more than 10,000 troops to fight the...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Last April, the House of Representatives passed the Social Security Protection Act of 2003. A Senate amended version of that bill that will close a loophole in the Government Pension Offset (GPO) will soon come up for a vote. The legislation will prevent some retiring teachers from "double dipping," where they would collect a government pension as well as social security. The GPO reduces Social Security benefits that a person receives as a spouse if he or she also has a government pension and did not pay into Social Security. The intent of GPO is to...

(Talon News) -- One day after the raucous White House press briefing during which her name was mentioned, the actress who became known as "Hanoi Jane" emerged to defend Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). The briefing centered on questions about President Bush's service record with the Air National Guard, but Talon News raised the issue of John Kerry's anti-war activism and his involvement with Fonda. Likely spurred on in part by the question at the briefing that was broadcast live on cable news networks as well as a photograph circulated widely on the Internet showing her and Kerry at Vietnam antiwar...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- After a contentious press briefing the previous day, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan denounced the "gutter politics" that he said is behind the inquisition into President Bush's National Guard service 30 years ago. On Wednesday, without identifying anyone by name, McClellan stated, "Instead of talking about the choices we face in addressing our highest priorities, some are more interested in trolling for trash for political gain." He added, "I think that you expect the garbage can to be thrown at you in the 11th hour of a campaign, but not nine months before Election Day."...

JEFF GANNON (Talon News): In 1992, John Kerry stood on the Senate floor and said, "I am saddened by the fact that Vietnam has yet again been inserting into the campaign and that it has been inserted in what I feel to be the worst possible way." And he went on to say later on, "We do not need to divide America over who served and how." Are you going -- is this White House and this candidate, President Bush, going to hold him to those remarks and put an end to this now? MR. McCLELLAN: First of all, this...

This was the exchange at today's White House press briefing, much of which focused on George W. Bush's service records with the National Guard. JEFF GANNON (Talon News): Since there have been so many questions about what the President was doing over 30 years ago, what is it that he did after his honorable discharge from the National Guard? Did he make speeches alongside Jane Fonda, denouncing America's racist war in Vietnam? Did he testify before Congress that American troops committed war crimes in Vietnam? And did he throw somebody else's medals at the White House to protest a war...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Democrats are hoping to make the controversy over intelligence failures a political liability for President Bush. But the appointment of a presidential commission to investigate intelligence failures may prove troublesome to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), the likely Democratic nominee, when the panel begins its work. Responding to a question from Talon News, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan suggested that the commission's investigation would be looking backward as well as forward. "If you're doing a broad assessment of your intelligence capabilities, you want to make sure you look at where we've been and where we're headed,"...

Former Rep. John Thune took his case against Sen. Tom Daschle to a Washington, D.C., talk show last week. During his interview on "Jeff Gannon's Washington," Thune labeled Daschle as an obstructionist and antagonist to President Bush, one who can't throw stones about lobbying, and unable to get things done for the state as a member of the minority party. Thune talked about the White House role in his decision to run for Senate again, saying,"clearly the White House was encouraging." But he added, "They sort of let me make my own decision on my own time." Controversy over lobbying...

Tenet Addresses Growing Intelligence Concerns WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Central Intelligence Agency Director George Tenet spoke out Thursday after questions about pre-war intelligence and the calls for his ouster had grown too loud to ignore. In a speech at Georgetown University he tried to explain how the United States intelligence community evaluated Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs over the past decade, leading to a National Intelligence Estimate in October of 2002. The NIE formed the basis of President Bush's argument to wage war against Iraq, in which he cited "a growing, gathering threat." Tenet clearly refuted claims that anyone...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- An investigation by the Senate sergeant-at-arms into strategy memos from the Judiciary Committee that Democrats claim were illegally accessed and released to the press continues to expand. Miguel Miranda, an aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, has been placed on leave pending the outcome of an investigation into whether Democrat committee members' computers were illegally accessed. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) also placed an aide on leave last year for his involvement in the matter. The unnamed aide has reportedly left government work. Hatch has been apologetic about the leak of the memos,...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- After nearly three years of political wrangling over the nomination of Judge Charles W. Pickering, President Bush exercised his prerogative to put him on the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals while the Senate was in recess. Senate Democrats stymied Pickering's nomination through procedural obstacles when they were in the majority and finally resorted to a filibuster when faced with the certainty of confirmation if a floor vote were taken. In a statement Friday, Bush said that he was using his constitutional authority to appoint Pickering because "a minority of Democratic Senators has been using unprecedented obstructionist...

(Talon News) -- Rep. Pat Toomey (R-PA) continues to keep the pressure on incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) in the Pennsylvania Republican primary. The Lehigh Valley conservative is running an ad that recounts what he calls Specter's "three decades of liberalism." In the ad, Toomey points out that during the 1980s, the man he is seeking to replace in the Senate voted against Ronald Reagan's position 65 percent of the time, and in the 1990s, Specter voted for the largest tax increase in history. Toomey adds that Specter opposed the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. The most recent example of...

(Talon News) -- Sparks began to fly shortly after former Rep. John Thune (R-SD) announced his intention to challenge Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) in November. But it wasn't the candidates or their staffers taking shots at each other. Thune didn't even mention his opponent's name in a recent speech at a Sioux Falls restaurant. Daschle's statement on Thune's long-anticipated entry into the race was equally civil. Media figures, however, have tapped into the acrimony that has continued to simmer since the contentious 2002 election between Thune and Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD). South Dakota's largest newspaper, the Sioux Falls...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- In a recent exclusive interview, nationally syndicated radio talk show host and author G. Gordon Liddy told Talon News that he thinks President Bush is doing an "outstanding job with respect to foreign policy." Liddy cited recent successes in the war on terror as vindication of the president's policies that his opponents call "unilateral." Liddy observed that Bush has not been "seduced by the multilateral U.N. worshippers." He listed the State Department and the Rockefeller Foundation among those who hold the international body in such high esteem. Liddy believes the U.N. is a useless organization save...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Nationally syndicated radio talk show host and author G. Gordon Liddy recently released his annual "Stacked and Packed" calendar amidst controversy over its content. Despite this year's edition being the 10th in a series, the reaction to this one has been stronger than in previous years. The calendars feature scantily clad women with weapons and motorcycles. In an exclusive New Year's Day interview Liddy told Talon News he was motivated to create the calendar to raise money for charity and "put a stick in the eye of the liberals who were upset that I was on...

HOUSTON (Talon News) -- The Washington Post reported Friday that according to their sources, the Central Intelligence Agency believes people in the Bush administration are continuing to release classified information to damage figures at the center of the Niger "yellowcake" controversy. According to the Washington Post story, the CIA has alleged that one or more senior administration officials revealed the name of a covert operative to columnist Robert Novak. The complaint has led to an FBI investigation of the White House to determine circumstances surrounding the release of the identity of Valerie Plame to the media. Plame's husband, former Ambassador...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- Last week Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, questioned the commitment of the administration and the Justice Department to pursue the investigation into the alleged leak of a CIA officer's identity earlier in the year. In a letter to Attorney General John Ashcroft, the pair asked that he provide "an overall status of the investigation, including the number of people the Justice Department has interviewed, the number of briefings you have received, the general types of information you are briefed on, what conditions...

(Talon News) -- A Gallup Poll of Baghdad residents conducted last August and September indicates that Saddam Hussein's regime may have murdered as many as 61,000 citizens of the Iraqi capital. It was well known that Kurds in the north and Shiites in the south were the primary targets of the dictator's brutality, but this new poll reveals that even those living within the "Sunni Triangle" were not spared. Gallup surveyed 1,178 Baghdad residents asking whether a member of their household had been executed by Saddam's regime. An astounding 6.6% said yes. The new data suggests that previous estimates based...