Four at Four is an afternoon briefing of four, yes only four, news items that are important. Please look for it Monday-Friday at around 4 p.m. Eastern.
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The Los Angeles Times has a good story today on Jon Soltz, Iraq war veteran and founder of votevets.org. The portrait of Soltz is Soldier answers a new call to battle:
But in a little more than a year since he launched VoteVets. org, Soltz has helped transform the war debate in Washington by channeling the raw anger and frustration of many Iraq vets into a political campaign both sophisticated and visceral. Soltz, 30, and his band of mostly twenty- and thirtysomething veterans have shaken the GOP’s claim to be the pro-military party. They accuse Republicans of recklessly sending troops to war without the right equipment and failing to care for thousands of wounded and traumatized vets…
“Jon Soltz seems to be exactly what progressives need,” said Paul Begala, an influential Democratic strategist who worked on Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr.’s successful 2006 campaign against Santorum. “He has a pair of fists, and he knows how to use them.”
…Soltz said the organization would remain on the offense throughout the 2008 campaign. “Everything else VoteVets has done has been warm-up,” he said. “We’re going to play in the big leagues.
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According to The Hill, the AFL-CIO is “unlikely to throw its support behind a candidate during the primary season. Under current rules, a candidate would need the support of two-thirds of the union’s membership, making it difficult to see how an endorsement could be offered anytime soon”.
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Alberto Gonzales will soon be out of a job, but his words will live on in infamy. According to the Washington Post, the soon to be Gonzales-free Justice Department is Investigating Gonzales’s Testimony:
The Justice Department is investigating whether departing Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales gave false or misleading testimony to Congress on a broad range of issues, including the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program and the removal of nine U.S. attorneys last year, the lead investigator said today.
The disclosure by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine shows that internal investigations that began with the prosecutor firings have widened substantially to include a focus on Gonzales’s actions and statements.
Senate Judiciary Chair Pat Leahy (D-VT) is looking forward to the findings.
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The Sahara isn’t the only desert that is slowly creeping and expanding. In China, the Badain Jaran desert is expanding. From The Independent, Great Wall could be lost to sands of the desert: “Sandstorms in northern China are reducing large sections of the Great Wall to rubble. Archaeologists say whole chunks of one of the seven wonders of the world could be gone in 20 years”. The CS Monitor had a story about China’s desertification problem recently too. China loses about 950 sq miles to desertification each year.
So, what else is happening?