[Pollinator] NPW - Pollinator Briefing In Washington

[ladadams at aol.com]

  From The Caucus - The Political Blog of the New York Times - 3rd 
paragraph from the bottom!

The Early Word: House Energy Vote
By Bernie Becker
A major test for part of President Obama’s agenda may occur today as 
the House is expected to take up the big energy bill. The president, 
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, other White House officials and advocates like 
former Vice President Al Gore have been lobbying mightily to persuade 
members to vote for the bill.

Democrats on the Hill are cautiously optimistic that the bill will make 
it through the House, but, as our John Broder found, “senior lawmakers 
acknowledge that they have not yet lined up the 218 votes needed for 
passage.”

Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who has helped 
shepherd the bill to this point, has negotiated with moderate and farm 
belt Democrats to capture some of their votes. Republicans remain 
opposed to the bill, labeling it an energy tax for consumers.

Mr. Obama called the energy bill a boon both for the environment and 
the economy. In his remarks, the president conceded the vote would be 
tight, “in part because of the misinformation that’s out there that 
suggests there is somehow a contradiction between investing in clean 
energy and our economic growth.”

In addition to tackling energy on Thursday, the president invited a 
bipartisan group of 30 lawmakers to the White House to discuss20
immigration reform – the first such conversation in Mr. Obama’s five 
months in office.

The Times’s Jeff Zeleny and Ginger Thompson report that, at the 
meeting, Mr. Obama said “some heavy-lifting” would be required to get a 
comprehensive reform package through Congress. For his part, Rahm 
Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, admitted the votes to pass 
immigration legislation had not been secured yet.

“It’s going to require a victory of practicality, common sense and good 
policymaking over short-term politics,” Mr. Obama said.

But, as Ms. Thompson and David Herszenhorn indicated earlier in the 
week, it still seems more likely than not that immigration reform will 
have to wait for another year. Not only is the schedule in Congress 
packed for the rest of 2009, but lawmakers on both sides of the aisle,
“politically burned over the issue in the recent past, remain divided 
even within their own parties over how to fix it.”

But if and when immigration does pass, Republicans, including Senator 
John McCain, have firmly declared that it would have to expand guest 
worker programs, an idea far from popular with labor unions.

Obama’s Friday: Looking to Friday, the president meets with Angela 
Merkel, the German chancellor, before the two hold a joint press 
availability. After a working lunch, the German chancellor departs from 
Washington. Later on in the d
ay, the president and his wife end the 
work week in style by hosting a picnic on the South Lawn for White 
House employees.

Sanford: Another day, another revelation in the increasingly weird 
story surrounding South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford. On Thursday, Mr. 
Sanford, a Republican, agreed to reimburse his state for a 
taxpayer-sponsored trade mission to Argentina last year, a trip in 
which he also visited his mistress. Estimates of the cost may be about 
$12,000. The Times’s Jim Rutenberg and Robbie Brown report that several 
leading Republicans in the Palmetto State believe Mr. Sanford cannot 
survive as governor.

Sotomayor: Senator Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Senate 
Judiciary Committee, unleashed perhaps his sharpest criticism yet of 
Judge Sonia Sotomayor, saying the president’s nominee for the Supreme 
Court too frequently utilized international law in crafting her 
opinions.

With the judge’s confirmation hearings set to tip off in just over two 
weeks, The Times’s David Herszenhorn reports that the Alabama 
Republican took to the Senate floor to say:

“The novel idea that foreign law has a place in the interpretation of 
American law creates numerous dangers and a number of academics and 
even federal judges are, I would say, seduced by this idea. Judge 
Sotomayor clearly shares in that.”

Earlier in the week, Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas became the third 
Senate=2
0Republican to announce he would vote against Judge Sotomayor’s 
confirmation. Mr. Brownback’s fellow Kansan Pat Roberts and James 
Inhofe of neighboring Oklahoma are the other two public no votes so far.

State Confirmation: Speaking of international law, the Senate confirmed 
Harold Hongju Koh as legal adviser for the State Department. Mr. Koh 
has also been criticized as too deferential to international law. The 
vote breakdown.

Final Decisions: And speaking of the Supreme Court, it seems its 
decision in the Ricci case – which Judge Sotomayor ruled on as an 
appeals court judge – will not get announced until the court’s final 
day. (The Ricci case, for those who may have forgotten, was the suit 
brought by white firefighters after the city of New Haven, Conn., threw 
out a promotional test because few minorities scored well on it.)

The high court did release two important decisions on Thursday, ruling 
in one that, for crime lab reports to be admissible in criminal trials, 
the lab analysts who created the reports must also testify. In the 
other, the court ruled that school officials had gone too far in 
strip-searching a 13-year old they suspected of possessing 
prescription-strength ibuprofen.

Health Care: It wouldn’t be an Early Word without a health care update  
 from our own Robert Pear, who reports that Senate Democrats say they 
have cut a $1 trillion from one of their health car
e bills and still 
believe it will cover practically all Americans. But, as Mr. Pear also 
reports, Democrats are well short of where they hoped to be heading 
into the weeklong July 4th break.

Debt: The Congressional Budget Office released its latest national debt 
projections earlier this week. In short, they’re not good: “The 
country’s projected debt is growing so quickly that it would exceed the 
size of the economy in 2023,” The Times’s Jackie Calmes reports.

Impeachment: The Senate looks to have avoided its first impeachment 
trial in a decade. Judge Samuel B. Kent, the federal district judge  
 from Texas currently in jail for obstructing justice, has suddenly 
resigned, effective June 30. Mr. Kent had rebuffed calls to leave the 
bench and give up his annual salary of around $170,000, leading 
lawmakers to look into forcefully removing him.

The House impeached Mr. Kent last week, and a trial in the Senate would 
have probably begun in the next several weeks.

Pollinators?: Yes, we all know about the Congressional Black Caucus and 
the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. But even the heartiest of 
congressional watchers might not know about the Congressional 
Pollinator Caucus, which holds a briefing on Friday on, among other 
things, the health of honey bees.

Submarine Races: The Navy’s International Submarine Races, which 
celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, close on Friday. The race
s 
draw competitors from, among other places, research labs, colleges, 
high schools.

Tanking Gibbs: A few members of the White House press corps got a 
chance to dunk Robert Gibbs, the president’s spokesman, in a pre-luau 
testing of a dunking booth on the South Lawn. Check out our slide show.