THE TENSION: Thursday News Open Thread

Hard on Bush, soft on terrorists:

AP reports the House approved a bill Thursday that would grant legal status to President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program with new restrictions. Republicans called it a test before the election of whether Democrats want to fight or coddle terrorists.

"The Democrats' irrational opposition to strong national security policies that help keep our nation secure should be of great concern to the American people," Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement after the bill passed 232-191.

President Bush suggested Thursday that Democrats don't have the stomach to fight the war on terror, battling back in the election-season clamor over administration intelligence showing terrorism spreading, according to AP reporter and liberal operative Jennifer Loven. President Bush made some important points:
"Five years after 9/11, the worst attack on the American homeland in our history, Democrats offer nothing but criticism and obstruction and endless second-guessing," Bush said at a Republican fundraiser.

"The party of FDR and the party of Harry Truman has become the party of cut and run," Bush told a convention-center audience of over 2,000 people. The event put $2.5 million in the campaign accounts of Alabama Gov. Bob Riley and the state GOP.

AP reports the Senate on Thursday endorsed President Bush's plans to prosecute and interrogate terror suspects, all but sealing congressional approval for legislation that Republicans intend to use on the campaign trail to assert their toughness on terrorism. The Washington Post tells us how the votes were cast.

Senator James Inhofe blasts CNN for their smearing coverage of Global Warming. Inhofe also said that ABC promotes "climate hysteria," concluding, "I hope my other colleagues will join me on the floor and start speaking out to debunk hysteria surrounding global warming. This issue is too important to our generation and future generations to allow distortions and media propaganda to derail the economic health of our nation."

Speaking of the Senate, the New York Times speculates six weeks before Election Day, the Democrats suddenly face a map with unexpected opportunities in their battle for control of the Senate. However, Democrats have so far been confident in their margins leading up so far to the election. If Dems now have new hope, does that imply the margins are not a sure thing?

Mort Kondracke, writing in Roll Call says, the 12th anniversary of the Republicans’ 1994 “Contract with America” came and went on Wednesday without a 2006 Democratic counterpart. And there won’t be one.

Liberal House Democrats are not lining up behind Rep. Jack Murtha’s (D-Pa.) leadership candidacy in the numbers he had hoped despite his outspoken stance against the Iraq war, writes Josephine Hearn in The Hill.

CBS MarketWatch reports Sen. Joe Lieberman has a 10-point lead over Democratic nominee Ned Lamont in the battle for Connecticut's U.S. Senate seat, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Thursday.

AP reports Sen. John Kerry is ready to join an exclusive club: prominent Democrats shunning three-term Sen. Joe Lieberman to campaign in Connecticut for his anti-war rival Ned Lamont.

Al-Qaida in Iraq's leader, in a chilling audiotape released Thursday, called for nuclear scientists to join his group's holy war and urged insurgents to kidnap Westerners so they could be traded for a blind Egyptian sheik who is serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison, reports AP.

"We are in dire need of you," said the speaker, who identified himself as Abu Hamza al-Muhajir - also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri. "The field of jihad can satisfy your scientific ambitions, and the large American bases (in Iraq) are good places to test your unconventional weapons, whether biological or dirty, as they call them."

And last but not least, Mark Goldblatt, writing in National Review says we have to stop blaming ourselves for being the cause of terrorism:

According to a National Intelligence Estimate composed last February but released just this week by the Bush administration, “The Iraq conflict has become the ‘cause celebre’ for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement.” Because of the war, “new jihadist networks and cells, with anti-American agendas, are increasingly likely to emerge.” On the other hand, the report finds that if the “jihadists leaving Iraq perceive themselves, and [are] perceived, to have failed . . . fewer fighters will be inspired to carry on the fight.”

It’s Muslim civilization, not America, that must change in order for Islamic terrorism to cease.