Ny Safidinao

WASHINGTON - President Bush signed a bill Friday to pay for military operations in Iraq after a bitter struggle with Democrats in Congress who sought unsuccessfully to tie the money to U.S. troop withdrawals. Bush signed the bill into law at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland, where he is spending part of the Memorial Day weekend. In announcing the signing, White House spokesman Tony Fratto noted that it came 109 days after Bush sent his emergency spending request to Congress. Bush had rejected an earlier bill because it contained a timetable for withdrawing troops. However, The New York Times reported Friday night that the Bush administration is working on ideas for cutting U.S. forces in Iraq by as much as half, to roughly 100,000, by mid-2008. Reframig the mission The mission Bush set for the U.S. military in January when he ordered it to regain control of Baghdad and Anbar province would also be greatly scaled back and would focus on training Iraqi troops and fighting ...

WASHINGTON - America’s lowest-paid workers won a $2.10 raise Thursday, with Congress approving the first increase in the federal minimum wage in almost a decade. President Bush was expected to sign the bill quickly, and workers who now make $5.15 an hour will see their paychecks go up by 70 cents per hour before the end of the summer. Another 70 cents will be added next year, and by summer 2009, all minimum-wage jobs will pay no less than $7.25 an hour. For years, the idea of increasing the minimum wage has been stalled by partisan bickering between Republicans and Democrats. Wrapped into Iraq funding bill That almost became the fate of this year’s proposal. Democratic leaders attached the provision to the $120 billion Iraq war spending bill, which was vetoed by the GOP-controlled White House on May 1 because Democrats insisted on a pullout date for American troops. But with the House passing a rewritten bill 280-142 and the Senate 80-14, the end is likely near for the longest stretch ...

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Under pressure from their rivals, the leading Republican presidential contenders defended their conservative credentials on abortion, gun control and tax cuts in a feisty debate Tuesday night. “Republicans should be uniting” to defeat the Democrats, implored former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, rather than stressing their differences with one another. Giuliani, a supporter of abortion rights, wasn’t the only contender to field pointed questions. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney conceded he had signed legislation banning assault weapons but added he is a supporter of the rights of gun owners under the Second Amendment. Arizona Sen. John McCain of Arizona said he would make sure that President Bush’s tax cuts are made permanent, even though he said he had voted against because they were not accompanied by spending cuts. “If we don’t make them permanent then every business farm and family will have to adjust their budgets to what is in effect a tax increase,” he said...

Gonzales v. Carhart Gonzales v. Carhart