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Monday, April 30, 2007
Gingrich, Hagel Meet With Union Officials
Organized labor has long been a political ally of the Democratic Party, but that didn’t stop two potential candidates for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination from meeting with one of the more influential unions Monday.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska met privately in Washington with the executive committee of the Service Employees International Union, a 1.8 million member union that endorsed Democrat Howard Dean during the 2004 presidential contest.
The SEIU’s executive committee has already met with the Democratic candidates seeking the party’s 2008 nomination and has invited the Republican candidates to meet with them as well. But so far, none of the declared GOP candidates has accepted the union’s invitation.
“We hope that today’s conversations were the first of many that we will be having with Republican presidential candidates before the election,” said Roger Roeder, an SEIU member from Iowa who is also a member of the union’s Republican Advisory Committee. “Working people need to know where all of the pesidential candidates stand on health care, jobs and retirement with dignity,” said Roeder, who participated in the meeting.
SEIU includes 300,000 Repubicans nationwide, according to the union. SEIU is the fastest growing union in the United States and is concentrated within the health care, food and hospitality industries. It claims to represent the most immigrants of any union and is heavily involved in promoting immigration reform.
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Yellow Cake at White House
The White House press corps broke out the rum cake today to toast the return of Press Secretary Tony Snow.
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Royal Dinner
President Bush, an informal kind of guy whose idea of a royal dinner is Burger King (rim shot!), will don white tie for an upcoming state dinner honoring Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh.
First Lady Laura Bush’s office today confirmed that the administration’s first - and probably only - white-tie state dinner will be held May 7 in honor of the visiting royal couple.
Britain’s royalty arrives in the U.S. on Thursday for a visit that includes May 7-8 in Washington, as well as trips to the Kentucky Derby and the 400th anniversary of the settlement at Jamestown, Virginia.
The Bushes have hosted several black-tie state dinners, but none of the white-tie variety. Word from the White House is the president was not too enthusiastic about going white tie for the dinner but was overruled but those who thought it appropriate.
Here’s what modernetiquette.com tells us about white-tie dinners: “This is the most formal of evening attire. The gentleman wears a long black dinner jacket with tails. A white pique vest is worn over his formal shirt and a white pique bow tie is also worn. Only formal black shoes with a spit shine should be worn with this attire. White gloves are sometimes carried which a gentleman may wear when he dances with a lady. If he is a diplomat, he may wear his pins with the colors of his country on his dinner jacket.”
A show of hands please among those eager to see President Bush in white gloves?
107 Ways To Mark It Secret
There are now 107 unique ways to remove documents from the public by marking them “Sensitive But Unclassified” and 131 different handling procedures, according Thomas E. McNamara, the federal official in charge of improving the government’s information sharing networks in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
And that figure is probably low since it is based on a survey of just 20 agencies, a fraction of the overall number of agencies.
“We lack a national unclassified control framework that enables the rapid and routine flow of information across federal agencies to and from our partners in state, local, tribal and private sectors,” said McNamara speaking at a little-noticed House subcommittee hearing on intelligence, information sharing and terrorism risk assessment.
The lack of a standardized way of handling sensitive information leads to improper handling, overclassifcation and an unwillingness to share information that could be crucial to prevent another terrorist attack, he said.
“This is a national concern because the terrorist threat to the nation requires that many communities of interest, at different levels of government, share information,” McNamara said.
Here’s one example to show how confusing all the markings are:
SSI means Sensitive Security Information to the Department of Homeland Security; Department of Transportation, Agriculture Department, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
But SSI also means Source Selection Information to the EPA. So, within one agency the acronymn means two different things.
Confusing? You bet!
“These types of inforamtioin are completely different and have vastly different safeguarding and dissemination requirements, but still carry the same SBU marking acronym,” according to McNamara.
McNamara suggests that the federal government start over with a new acronyms and procedures that are uniformly adopted by federal agencies.
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst: GOP challenger for Cornyn?
Dewhurst
Is it possible Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, will face a major Republican primary challenger next spring?
Texas’ left-leaning political blogs like Capitol Annex are eagerly stirring those waters — but so far the Dewhurst camp isn’t biting.
Although Dewhurst spokesman Rich Parsons didn’t reject a Dewhurst run, either.
“He is focused on the session,” Parsons said Monday. “I have no idea where these rumors are coming from.”
Parsons said Dewhurst focused finishing the legislative sesssion, and “working on a balanced budget and passing Jessica’s Law.”
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Snow’s Return
He’s back. He’s grateful. And he’s already feeling the heat at the podium.
White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, back in the briefing room for the first time since announcing in late March that he has cancer again, began today with a routine recitation of the president’s daily schedule.
And then he choked up (see photo above) as he offered thanks to those - including reporters in the room - who have voiced their concern for his condition.
“I’m a very lucky guy,” Snow said, noting he will begin chemotherapy on Friday that will span four months. He plans to do the daily briefings throughout the treatment.
“The design is to throw it into remission and transform it into a chronic disease,” Snow said. “If cancer is merely a nuisance for a long period of time, that’s fine with me.”
“I won’t tell you how it’s going to work out because I don’t know. But we obviously feel optimistic. And faith, hope and love are a big part of it,” Snow said.
Snow had colon cancer in 2005. He said today the chemotherapy will attack “some small cancers in the peritoneum” (the thin membrane that lines the abdominal and pelvic cavities.)
Snow had colon cancer in 2005. He said today the chemotherapy will attack “some small cancers in the peritoneum (the thin membrane that lines the abdominal and pelvic cavities.”
He recently underwent surgery to remove a tumor attached to his liver.
After talking about his cancer, Snow fielded questions about the topics du jour, including the resignation of a deputy secretary of state whose name turned up in escort service records, the White House vs. Congress battle over war funding and a query about whether the U.S. is winning the war in Iraq.
“Yeah, exactly, welcome back,” he said about the winning-the-war question.
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