House Democrats, drunk on power, tried their hardest to pass another withdrawal bill last night, but they only got as far as passing the one that says they'll withhold the President's allowance until he finishes his homework and sends them an essay this July about what he's learned and why he won't do it again.
Also: benchmarks! Benchmarks benchmarks benchmarks!
In a prime-time speech to the nation in January, Bush laid out the same benchmarks that the Democrats have been including in their war funding measures. Vice President Cheney, in Baghdad yesterday, scorned the Democrats' demand that Bush's benchmarks be linked to penalties if the Iraqis do not meet them, dismissing that as "Washington talk" irrelevant to reality.
As soon as Cheney gets back to America (wait, is he back? Is he ever coming back? Can one of the new interns check on this?) the President and he will have to get their stories straight. They can't effectively ignore congress without paying plausible lip service, and this is just a mess of poor message coordination.
Meanwhile US airstrikes in Afghanistan succeeded in killing between 21 and 80 unarmed civilians insurgents, but Los Angeles seems to still be on fire, so let's go to Chuck with the weather.
