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Vice President Kamala Harris clarified remarks she made Sunday apparently demanding an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza, adding that she was simply calling for a proposed six-week truce as part of a deal to release Israeli hostages. The Times of Israel reported: “Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate ceasefire,” Harris begins, causing the crowd in Selma to erupt in applause, before she can finish her sentence, when the seemingly thrown off vice president adds: “for at least the next six weeks, which is what currently is on the table,” Harris continues, barely heard over...

A Democratic lawmaker Wednesday clarified his opinion on the new head of the Democratic National Committee after some interpreted it as criticism. Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) said he has full confidence that Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) will perform well and that he did not intend for his comments to be seen as critical of the party's choice or the congresswoman. He did reiterate that she will likely experience stress, because neither role is a "part-time job." "Clearly, some of the press would like some kind of fight in the Democratic Party,

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan issued a directive on Wednesday that could facilitate use of air strikes but also called on troops to do everything possible to avoid putting civilians at risk. General David Petraeus, who took command of the nine-year-old war in Afghanistan in July, did not rewrite the rules guiding the use of force in his new "tactical directive." But U.S. officials said he clarified them in a way that may address concerns that some troops -- erring on the side of caution -- had avoided calling in air power...

WASHINGTON — Rep. Collin Peterson’s office today clarified his weekend comments printed in the Marshall Independent that suggested he would now support the health care reform legislation he voted against last week. Peterson’s comments came at a DFL fundraiser in Morton, where he spoke alongside such gubernatorial candidates as R.T. Rybak, Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Matt Entenza and Paul Thissen. Here’s the relevant text: "I'm aware people are very much disappointed in my vote," Peterson said, citing thousands of phone calls and e-mails at his office. "There are reasons for it," although he said it would take more time than he...

Commander of the United States Military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) Gen. David Petraeus telephoned IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi on Wednesday night to reassure Israel that comments attributed to him regarding supposed Israeli intransigence were spun out of context. Last week, Petraeus gave testimony before the Senate’s Armed Services Committee. A 56-page report which CENTCOM had submitted alongside Petraeus’s verbal testimony caused a storm after it claimed that Israeli intransigence was a problem for the US military and was fomenting conflict in the Middle East. “The enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges...

In his speech before Congress last week, President Obama attempted to win Republican support for his health care overhaul by agreeing to consider including medical malpractice reform in his plan. In an interview that aired on CBS' "60 Minutes" on Sunday the president shed some more light on what he meant -- and in which form he will not accept tort reform. (Read the transcript of the president's interview here.) ...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 21, 2007 – Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has long believed that removing Saddam Hussein was “the right thing to do,” a top Defense Department spokesman said yesterday. In a news briefing, Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell countered media reports that suggest Gates did not agree with the president’s view that it was necessary to topple Saddam’s regime. In an interview Sept. 17 with a newspaper reporter after a speech in Williamsburg, Va., the secretary was asked: “Now, do you think in retrospect, knowing what we know about (weapons of mass destruction), it was worth doing?” Morrell said...

BOSTON - Officials in the four states where Mitt Romney has lived say the Republican presidential contender, who calls himself a lifelong hunter, never took out a license. Romney says that is because he seldom has hunted where he needed one. Questions about his hunting activities trailed Romney this past week after he remarked at a campaign stop that he has been a hunter nearly all his life. The next day, his campaign said Romney had gone hunting just twice — once as a teenager in Idaho and last year with GOP donors in Georgia. That was wrong, Romney said...

WASHINGTON, March 31, 2006 – A controversial weekend raid in Baghdad was expertly executed several blocks from the nearest mosque, a U.S. general said yesterday. Reports in Arabic media charge U.S. soldiers killed innocent civilians in a mosque during the raid. At his weekly news conference in Baghdad, Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, a spokesman for Multinational Force Iraq, said those reports are false on several fronts. U.S. forces advised on the operation but did not take an active part, and the nearest mosque was six blocks away, he said. "The U.S. advisers were there purely in an advisory role;...

WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, breaking ranks with the president on domestic eavesdropping, says he wants a special court to oversee the program. But less than a day later, a top aide to Sen. Pat Roberts (news, bio, voting record), R-Kan., sought to clarify his position. Roberts told The New York Times that he is concerned that the secret court established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act could not issue warrants as quickly as the monitoring program requires. But he is optimistic that the problem could be worked out. "You don't want to have a situation...

NEW YORK - New York Times reporter Judith Miller has addressed an issue that raised eyebrows in the journalism community: her statement that she had "clearance to see secret information" while covering the invasion of Iraq. In a first-person piece last weekend, Miller wrote that because of that status, "I was not permitted to discuss with editors some of the more sensitive information about Iraq." The statement led some to charge that the Times had allowed Miller to become compromised by the military. But Miller told the paper for a story published Thursday that her "clearance" was akin to the...

NEW YORK Stung by a quote attributed to him in Friday's New York Times, author and historian Douglas Brinkley issued an unusual clarification this afternoon. In a news analysis titled "Truth Be Told, the Vietnam Crossfire Hurts Kerry More," Jodi Wilgoren quoted Brinkley commenting on recent attacks against both Kerry and Bush relating to their Vietnam era service: "Every American now knows that there's something really screwy about George Bush and the National Guard, and they know that John Kerry was not the war hero we thought he was." This "not the hero we thought he was" had to raise...

SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday said his opposition to tax increases is based on the public's distaste for them, and if polls showed voters had changed their minds about taxes, he might consider raising them. For now, however, taxes are off the table. Schwarzenegger remains committed to a series of spending cuts along with a constitutional limit on future spending growth as well as a $15 billion bond package he hopes to put before voters in March. He has begun a weeklong campaign to drum up support for his bond and spending-cap measures, visiting Democratic districts and urging...