Don’t cry for Palmer, Venezuela
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on July 20th, 2011 4:35 am by HL
Don’t cry for Palmer, Venezuela
The long, occasionally nasty tussle over who’s going to be the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela is far from over. But Washington’s first choice, career diplomat Larry Palmer, doesn’t look to be going to Caracas anytime soon.
The latest word is that Palmer, whose nomination was accepted and then rejected by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, is going to be nominated instead to be ambassador to Barbados, and the administration is looking for another Foreign Service officer to send to Venezuela.
Some might see this as a victory for the ailing autocrat, though folks here are not looking at it that way, saying Palmer, in the end, wasn’t confirmable and wouldn’t have been a credible ambassador to Venezuela.
Post-ABC poll: GOP too dug in on debt talks; public fears default consequences
Majorities of Americans see both President Obama and congressional Republicans as not willing enough to compromise in their budget negotiations, but the public views the GOP leaders as particularly intransigent, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.
There is also growing dissatisfaction among Republicans with the hard-line stance of their congressional representatives: Fifty-eight percent say their leaders are not doing enough to strike a deal, up from 42 percent in March.
While Republicans in Congress have remained united in their opposition to any tax increases, the poll finds GOP majorities favoring some of the specific changes advocated by the president, including higher income tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.
One day after a report threw further doubt on the House Ethics Committee’s handling of its investigation into Rep. Maxine Waters, the California Democrat’s legal team is calling for the panel to dismiss the case – and is threatening to sue if the panel proceeds with the matter.
In a letter sent Tuesday evening to House Ethics Committee Chairman Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) and the panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Linda Sanchez (Calif.), Waters’s attorneys Stanley Brand and Andrew Herman write that in light of Monday’s Politico report, “any further action by this Committee would be irredeemably tainted and without legal foundation.”
Audits show health violations in drinking water
Environmental Protection Agency audits show that many states are failing to accurately note health violations such as elevated levels of arsenic and chlorine in drinking water, according to a new report .
The U.S. Government Accountability Office reviewed EPA audits of 43 states, including Virginia and Maryland, conducted between 2007 and 2009. In 2009, 84 percent of monitoring violations noted by states were not reported to the EPA. That same year, 26 percent of health violations were not reported or were inaccurately reported, undermining the reliability of data collected by the EPA under the Safe Drinking Water Act as well as its ability to conduct oversight, according to the GAO.
