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If your wondering where the Capitol Hill coverage is, it is here on my new blog.

Stay tuned to Townhall as well for big things in the blog world...  

All of these people are in DC today to speak at an event hosted by the Heritage Foundation. They will be covering the topic: "24" and America’s Image in Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction, or Does it Matter?

I will be at the event and will be covering it on my new blow TimChapmanBlog.com. Bookmark my new blog if you are so inclined, or if you use RSS grab my feed. I will be transitioning the bulk of my blogging to that space over the next few days. Expect similar Hill coverage on the new blog, as well as a variety of other topics. 

Today House Republicans opposed to the Senate McCain-Kennedy bill announced a set of five principles that immigration reform must adhere to. Those principles are:

Republicans strongly support strengthening enforcement and stiffening penalties for illegal immigrants who break our immigration laws.

Republicans support enforcing the law on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants and holding them accountable.

Republicans oppose efforts to reward the behavior of illegal immigrants who have made the choice to break our laws.

Republicans believe the success of our country depends on newcomers obeying the law, assimilating into American society by learning English, and embracing our common identity as Americans.

As it turns out, Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction:

Reading from a declassified portion of a report by the National Ground Intelligence Center, a Defense Department intelligence unit, Santorum said: "Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."

More from the AP:  

"This is an incredibly -- in my mind -- significant finding. The idea that, as my colleagues have repeatedly said in this debate on the other side of the aisle, that there are no weapons of mass destruction, is in fact false," Santorum said.

A Pentagon official who confirmed the findings said that all the weapons were pre-1991 vintage munitions "in such a degraded state they couldn't be used for what they are designed for."

The official, who asked not to be identified, said most were 155 millimeter artillery projectiles with mustard gas or sarin of varying degrees of potency.

Granted, these are not nukes and they are not necessarily the weapons we thought they had, but they are WMDs. FOlks saying Saddam had no WMDs are categorically wrong. 

Democrats in Congress are all over the map on the Iraq issue, and it could cost them this November. That is the subject of my column today:

Democratic National Committee Press Secretary Stacie Paxton attacked the President after a recent news conference in which Bush touted positive developments in the war. “The President’s optimism,” she declared, “is no substitute for a real plan for Iraq that will help the American people understand when the mission is successful and completed.”

But don’t ask Democrats for that “real plan.” As noted above, even their highest ranking leaders have admitted that they do not have one nor do they intend to come up with one.

Congressmen Jack Kingston and John Doolittle today conducted a conference call with conservative bloggers.

Kingston noted that the line item veto would be on the floor tomorrow. He granted that some appropriators would vote against it but said that he and Doolittle, both appropriators, would vote for it.

Regarding the House's plans for hearings on immigration, the plan is to come back after August and work on a bill that can pass Congress. Doolittle says the hearings are necessary to "understand what really is in the Senate bill."

John Hawkins asked if the hearings strategy meant the bill was dead for the year. Kingston said he "hopes not" and that he "sure as heck would not support this if this were just a way to let it die slowly." 

I asked the Congressmen if they were content with coming back from the summer and passing another tough border security bill even if it meant no final bill coming from Congress. They both appeared to be comfortable with the possibility and noted the political unpopularity of the Senate's amnesty bill. "I would hate to pin my reelection and the House majority on the Senate's [position]," said Kingston.

Kingston and Doolittle acknowledge there may be a need to "forcefeed the Senate" on the issue of immigration by swaying public opinion over the summer. "We also find seperating ourselves from the Senate is helpful," said Kingston. Doolittle noted the institutional difference between the House and Senate: only one third of the Senate is facing the voters in the fall, everyone in the House is. Kingston thinks that, "Seperating ourselves from the Senate the closer we get to November may be standard operating procedure."

Democrats in the Senate are pursuing multiple amendments today that would create timetable for troop withdrawal or "redeployment." Senator John Cornyn today made the following remarks:

“We all want our troops to come home as soon as possible. But the debate today is about whether decisions in Iraq ought to be based on Iraq's ability to secure their nation—not on a political party’s ability to protect their electoral base.

“The Iraqis are moving forward, and the last thing we'd want to do is to jeopardize all of that by leaving precipitously and perhaps seeing it degenerate into a failed state and another platform for terrorists to export their attacks to the United States.

“So I really think our colleagues on the other side of the aisle should think a little longer, a little harder about these calls for withdrawals without consideration of the circumstances on the ground.”

This is why people are growing increasingly frustrated with Congress's third -- and biggest spending -- party:

Ted Stevens ($-AK), the Senate's welfare queen, is Chairman of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. In that capacity, Senator Stevens is seeking to undermine a previously agreed to $873 billion spending cap for fiscal year 2007, by cutting appropriations to the Department of Defense. But, it's not what you think. He's cutting the Pentagon's budget to increase domestic social spending, knowing that he can subvert the cap by getting the $9 billion he intends to cut put back in the budget later in the fiscal year. Senator

Stevens's $9 billion purported cut, is actually a raid on the budget. He gets to cut defense spending now, increase social spending, then do a supplemental later in the year to put the defense money back and add additional earmarks.

This gimmickry is intended to trick observers and to spend more taxpayer dollars. Pathetic...just another reason that the Appropriations process has got to be reformed... 

National Journal's Danny Glover thinks they are getting there:

Glover's whole post is very interesting and it is worth taking the time to read. 

Much hyped potential 2008 Presidential candiate Mark Warner may regret hiring a card carrying member of the liberal netroots. Conversly, it could be possible that the liberal netroots in the future will regret their touting of Warner's candidacy.

Red State has a must read post on this: 

Back on January 14, 2005, Suellentrop wrote about the longstanding relationship between Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (a/k/a "Kos") and Jerome Armstrong. Suellentrop and others noticed a suspicious pattern developing. When Armstrong would start working for a candidate, Kos would start pimping the candidate.

In the long series of candidates pimped, we now find ourselves at 2008 presidential contender Mark Warner, who hired Jerome Armstrong to work for his campaign. Quid. Shortly thereafter Kos, in an interview, mentioned that Warner was a candidate who needed to be watched - even though Warner has kept a decidedly low profile on the Iraq War, which has otherwise been the signature issue of Kos-backed candidates. Quo? It seems that Warner's payments to Armstrong worked out well - except that the judgment that had Warner hire Armstrong could be what does him in. At a minimum, it suggests a gross failure on Warner's part to handle an essential requirement for a prospective president - vetting your staff to keep out known miscreants.

You see, in 2003 the Securities and Exchange Commission charged Armstrong with a violation of the federal securities laws* for touting a newly-traded stock called BluePoint on the "Raging Bull" internet message board in 2000 (at the height of the tech stock craze) without disclosing that he was paid at least $20,000 by the promoters of BluePoint. And Suellentrop reports that the SEC got Armstrong to agree to a bar from the business

The whole thing is worth reading. 

Democrats in the Senate are unable to find consensus on the Iraq issue. As the Senate debates the Department of Defense Appropriations bill, some Democrats are offering withdrawal resolutions, others are offering non-binding sense of the Senate relosutions while still others write wholly different amendments that would seemingly undermine the effort.

Congress Daily AM ($):

Unable to reach a party-wide consensus, Senate Democrats plan today to introduce two amendments to the FY07 defense authorization bill that offer vastly different views on how and when the United States should pull combat troops out of Iraq.

Most, if not all, Democrats believe the Bush administration should begin to decrease the number of U.S. troops deployed to Iraq this year. But the party remains divided over whether to mandate a firm timetable for complete withdrawal.

One wonders who in the Democratic party decided stirring up the Iraq issue on the DoD bill was a good idea. The more this issue is debated the more apparent it becomes that the minority party has no direction on the biggest issue facing our country.

UPDATE: The Note ponders: 

Could it be that the Democrats' inability to come up with a consensus 'anti-war' position is more of a midterm problem for them than HarrietMiersDubaideficits -Katrinaearmarksimmigrationgasprices is for the Republicans? After all the private meetings (including just endless ones in the Senate caucus), Democrats remain united in their disunity, defensiveness, and distraction.

H/T: Instapundit 

A friend on the Hill sends this report from a press conference today in which the Democrats called for a timetable for pull out of Iraq:

Sen. Reed: I've tried, and I Carl has tried, too, not to reflect simply the current moods of the people, but look on the ground to see what will allow us to finish this mission as successfully as possible. And that, in our view, is a phased redeployment of our forces out of Iraq in the most timely fashion; the timing to be determined on the ground by military commanders based upon the conditions on the ground.

Sen. Levin: Except that it would begin before the end of this year.

Sen. Reed: This year. I think it's important to do it this year.

Apparently not content with the drubbing they took last week, Democrats will continue this week to offer amendments in the Senate that would put a timeline on troop withdrawal. Last week in the Senate a John Kerry amendment to withdraw the troops garnered only single-digit support. This week an amendment craftet by Jack Reed and Carl Levin to begin a phased troop withdrawal will likely attract more support from Dems.

Republicans will welcome the effort. Hugh Hewitt thinks its a good thing:

Good for them. Honesty as to the Democratic Party's intent should it win a majority in either House is exactly what the electorate needs for November.

Congressional leaders agree. The feeling on the Hill is that this is as good a time as any to continue this debate. As Michael Barone points out, Republicans stand unified on Iraq whie the Democratic caucus is in disarray:

In the meantime, Republicans are trying to make this a comparative election between Republicans and Democrats, not just an up-or-down vote on Bush. Senate and House Republicans last week staged debates over whether to pull out of Iraq now or stay on. Democrats complained that these were meaningless debates aimed (as they said the debates on the constitutional amendment to ban same sex marriages were) at dividing voters. But on these issues it is the Democrats -- their officeholders and their voters -- who are divided, while the Republicans, with a few exceptions, are all on one side.

The Democrats have profited politically from bad news in Iraq. Good news puts things in a different light and raises the question of just what Democrats would do if in power. For the moment, they are, as ranking House Armed Services Democrat Ike Skelton said, "absolutely" divided. That's not a good posture from which to face the voters.

Meanwhile, The Democrats de facto leader on the Iraq issue, John Murtha, is tripping all over his own arguments. True to Democratic form, Murtha has done a 180 on his old opinion that withdrawal would be devastating and now wants all of our troops to set up camp in Okinawa, even though he can't muster a good argument as to how a strike force so remote could have a timely impact on developments in Iraq.

UPDATE: Much more criticism of the Murtha Okinawa plan here. 

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist today writes an Op-Ed for NRO in which he makes the case for giving the President a line item veto:

Partly as a result, Congress has a hard time eliminating unnecessary spending. The Office of Management and Budget, indeed, reports that over a quarter of all federal programs either do not work or can’t show any evidence that they do. Another 28 percent receive “adequate” ratings (indicating problems) while a mere 15 percent set and achieve the ambitious goals needed to earn OMB’s highest rating.

Michael Barone points out some encouraging news for Republicans:

The Democrats failed to win the special election in the 50th congressional district of California June 6. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed on June 7. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald announced he would not seek an indictment of chief Bush adviser Karl Rove on June 12. Bush made a dazzling surprise trip to Baghdad on June 13 and followed up with a confident press conference the next day. The Senate voted 93-6 on June 15 and the House 256-153 on June 17 against U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

A turning point in the president's political fortunes? Maybe. But I'm inclined to think that Bush and the Republicans were not in quite as much trouble as most in the press thought, and I'm not sure these developments will produce an immediate surge in Bush's poll ratings.