The House of Representatives today rejected the Republican-sponsored bill that would have required notice to women getting abortions that the fetus might feel pain.

In the House, Republican leaders gave its anti-abortion base one final shot at abortion legislation before Democrats take over control of the agenda.

The House rejected a proposal that would have required abortion providers to inform women at least 20 weeks pregnant that abortions cause pain to the fetus. The vote was 250-162, short of the two-thirds majority needed under a procedure that limited debate.

The bill defined a 20-week-old fetus as a "pain-capable unborn child." That's a controversial threshold among scientists, who don't agree on whether a fetus at that stage of development feels pain or reflectively draws back from stimuli. Abortion has been legal in the United States since a 1973 Supreme Court ruling.

Two worth noting:

Sen. Russ Feingold on Countdown (Crooks and Liars has the video):

The fact is this commission was composed apparently entirely of people who did not have the judgment to oppose this Iraq war in the first place, and did not have the judgment to realize it was not a wise move in the fight against terrorism. So that's who is doing this report. Then I looked at the list of who testified before them. There is virtually no one who opposed the war in the first place. Virtually no one who has been really calling for a different strategy that goes for a global approach to the war on terrorism. So this is really a Washington inside job and it shows not in the description of what's happened - that's fairly accurate - but it shows in the recommendations. It's been called a classic Washington compromise that does not do the job of extricating us from Iraq in a way that we can deal with the issues in Southeast Asia, in Afghanistan, and in Somalia which are every bit as important as what is happening in Iraq. This report does not do the job and it's because it was not composed of a real representative group of Americans who believe what the American people showed in the election, which is that it's time for us to have a timetable to bring the troops out of Iraq.

Al Gore on the Today Show:

Apprentice 6 will be filmed in LA instead of New York this year. That's not the only change. It will focus on the haves vs. haves nots:

In a compelling social experiment of haves and have nots, contestants this season will have to earn the right to live like Trump.

Each week, the contestants on the winning team will get to live in a luxurious mansion. But contestants on the losing team will have to sleep outside in tents in the back yard of the mansion with outdoor showers and port-a-potties, giving contestants more incentive than ever to win their tasks each week.

By a vote of 95 to 2, Robert Gates was confirmed Wednesday as our new Defense Secretary.

Senate Democrats and Republicans lauded Gates's frankness after a day of testimony Tuesday in which he acknowledged that the United States is not winning in Iraq, and said that historians would have to judge whether the decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 was correct. He also pledged to take a fresh approach to Iraq in which "all options are on the table."

Who voted against him? Two Republicans, Jim Bunning (Ky.) and Rick Santorum (Pa.)

One of the many examples of Right Wing distortion and disingenuousness comes when the concept of church-state separation is discussed. You have all heard this one -- "The separation of Church and State does not appear in the Constitution." The argument is that Thomas Jefferson invented the concept in an 1802 letter to a church group. This is, in a word, false. The First Amendment states expressly that the State can not be involved in religion:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .

Did anyone miss that? Congress (which means all government through the incorporation doctrine of the Fourteenth Amendment) shall make NO LAW respecting establishment of religion. One more time, NO LAW. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Any ambiguity there? Is the plain meaning of the text in doubt?

But where does it say church/state separation? Repeat and rinse. NO LAW. The fact that the State can make no law on establishment of religion separates the State from religion absolutely and entirely. That is what the text plainly and unmistakably says. Now we all know the Supreme Court, in acts of activism that please the Right, decided that NO LAW did not really mean NO LAW. And we live with the Lemon test, more or less, today. But make no mistake, the First Amendment expressly separates that State from religion by prohibiting all laws regarding establishment of religion.

More.

A federal indictment has been handed down in Miami against former Liberian Chief Charles Taylor's son, Chuckie Taylor, also known as Charles McArthur Emmanuel.

The son of former Liberian President Charles Taylor was indicted Wednesday on U.S. charges of committing torture as chief of a violent paramilitary unit during his father's regime, marking the first time a 12-year-old federal anti-torture law has ever been used, U.S. officials said.

The decision-makers at CNN must be disappointed to learn that appealing to right wing extremism hasn't helped the Headline News ratings:

As mentioned last week, six months ago Headline and MSNBC were running neck and neck, now it isn’t even a horse race. The addition to Headline’s primetime lineup of the outrageous Nancy Grace and the slightly demagogic Glenn Beck has done nothing to close the gap.

Slightly?

Perhaps the ratings will force CNN to notice that viewers would rather enjoy a mix of rationality, humor, and solid reporting than vicious attacks and unsubstantiated innuendo.

The bad news from Iraq keeps coming:

Ten American service members were killed from improvised explosive devices in Iraq on Wednesday. The news came hours after a mortar attack killed at least eight people and wounded dozens in the Sadr City Shiite district of the capital, police said.

In the 10 American deaths, five troops were killed in the north, and five were killed in Anbar province, a U.S. military official told NBC’s Jim Miklaszewski. No further details were immediately available.

In the days and weeks following Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans, it’s understandable that FEMA would give a higher priority to helping the needy than to assuring that they really were needy. It’s more difficult to excuse wasteful payment of fraudulent claims that came months after the hurricane dissipated.

A GAO audit shows that FEMA has an ineffective oversight process and therefore continues to pay fraudulent claims. FEMA has wasted or been cheated out of at least $1 billion. At the same time, it hasn’t always put the money where it’s really needed, resulting in a recent court order “to resume housing payments for thousands of people displaced by Katrina.”

Not all of the loss resulted from fraudulent claims. FEMA can’t seem to keep track of the equipment that its employees purchased:

Remember Operation Trick or Treat, a drug sting that netted 33 arrests in Texas over Halloween?

Grits for Breakfast reports the cases have been dismissed. The probable cause for arrests was based on a single snitch, and, big surprise, it turns out he lied.

Harrison County District Attorney Joe Black has dropped charges against 33 people arrested this past October in Operation Trick or Treat.

"Information came forward to our office that the informant utilized in this undercover operation had possibly misled and lied to officers during the investigation," Black said. "Secondly, my office nor any local law enforcement agencies want to participate in the prosecution of any individual based upon evidence which may have been illegally or fraudulently obtained."

About 20 percent of the cases were compromised, Black said, but a shadow was cast over the entire operation.

Did they learn nothing from Tulia?

Credit to David Ignatius and John Harris of the Washington Post for admitting mistakes and rededicating themselves to truthtelling.

Ignatius admitted:

In a column last week, I praised Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel for his prescient early warnings about the risks of U.S. involvement in Iraq. Some readers complained that for all his prescience, Hagel still voted to support the war, and that I was ignoring the many Democrats who were similarly wary of Iraq -- and who voted against war funding. These readers are right. Hagel took political risks expressing his concerns back in 2003, but so did Democrats who voted against the Iraq mission despite a vitriolic barrage from the administration.

I have been very hard on Mr. Ignatius. Fairness requires we acknowledge and thank Ignatius for this correction.

Similarly, and more importantly, John Harris accepts some critiques that have been levelled at the Media:

In my experience, the vast majority of political reporters approach ideological questions with what you might call centrist bias. . . . It took me a while to realize how this instinct for rationalist, difference-splitting politics can itself be a form of bias. . . Who needs a bunch of reporters popping off with their views? It is hard enough—and honorable enough—to aim to report and analyze politics fairly and with a disciplined effort to transcend bias. That is what we will do in this new venture.

Good for you and your new venture Mr. Harris. Credit to you for acknowledging mistakes. I look forward to seeing your future work.

Bump and Update: The report is out. WaPo coverage is here. The Wall St. Journal has the Executive Summary. (pdf) Excerpts are here.

Bush and Robert Gates say it's not the last word, just one of many ideas the Administration will consider.

****
Original Post:

With the precision of a swiss timepiece, the Iraq Study Group Report will be released today.

From the U.S. Institute for Peace:

A PDF version of the ISG report will be available for download after 11:00 AM EST on the websites of the U.S. Institute of Peace (www.usip.org), the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University (www.bakerinstitute.org), the Center for Strategic and International Studies (www.csis.org), and the Center for the Study of the Presidency (www.thepresidency.org).