From today’s press gaggle with Col. David Lapan, Director of the DoD press office.
Oil Spill
-The DoD remains involved with the massive oil spill of the Gulf Coast.
-There are 1,200 National Guard Troops in Louisiana, but not all of them are under Title 32 status, which means that the federal government won’t reimburse all state costs.
-Due to improving weather conditions, there were 4 aerial sprays with C-130 airplanes. There will likely be more today.
Times Square Suspect
-This continues to be a law enforcement matter, and has not yet involved the DoD.
-There has not been any communication between Defense Secretary Robert Gates and his Pakistani counterpart regarding the incident.
-Lapan says reports from CBS that there were army planes flying over New York analyzing the suspects’ cell phone calls are false. Story has been removed from website.
North Korea
-Although there were reports that that South Koreans belive a North Korean submarine attack is behind the loss of one of their navy’s ships this March, the official investigation is still ongoing. The U.S. response will wait until after the investigation is complete.
Franklin Graham
-Despite being uninvited to the National Day of Prayer Ceremony at the Pentagon, controversial Evangelicalist Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham, is still planning on coming to the Pentagon in protest. He will reportedly pray silently outside the building.
-According to Lapan, Pentagon security are examining factors related to this (ie. How many people will show up, if there are precautions that should be taken etc.)
-There are public spaces surrounding the building, such as the 9/11 memorial and the metro entrance, where demonstrations are allowed.

By Chingyu Wang-Talk Radio News Service
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Tuesday that the massive oil spill in the Gulf Coast must not deter Congress from passing new energy legislation.
“Certainly the risk that is presented by offshore drilling is something that has to be taken into consideration, but we must pass this [energy] bill,” Pelosi told reporters.
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), who accompanied Pelosi, said that the prevention of future offshore drilling disasters must be an important goal for lawmakers.
“[Congress must determine] whether or not we have a prevention system and a clean up system that is worthy of this century,” said Miller.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and a collection of other Senate Democrats called upon Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to release three Americans imprisoned after allegedly straying onto Iranian soil while backpacking last August.
“Enough is enough,” Boxer said during a press conference Tuesday in the U.S. Capitol. “We call on [Ahmadinedjad] today to immediately release the three [Americans] on humanitarian grounds.”
Boxer added that if the Iranian government is unwilling to release the prisoners, then they should at least allow their families to visit them in prison by granting travel visas. Additionally, Boxer asked for the prisoners be given permission to contact their families via telephone.
The California Senator stressed the urgency of the situation, explaining that Swiss authorities who visited the prisoners reported that two of the Americans are in poor health.
The Senators’ call for the backpackers’ release coincides with Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York for an international conference on nuclear policy. According to Boxer, attempts by the prisoners’ families to arrange a meeting with the Iranian president in the city have been fruitless.
The Iranian government has refused to release the backpackers amid concerns that they were engaged in espionage, a charge that Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Penn.) dismissed as “absurd.”
“They are pawns in an international struggle,” Specter said.
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) added that evidence shown to the Senators from intelligence officials has further dissuaded the Senators from entertaining the notion that the Americans were spies.
The three backpackers have been identified as Shane Bauer, Sarah Emily Shourd and Joshua Fattal. Both Bauer and Shourd are journalists.

Andrea Nill, an immigration researcher at the Center for American Progress, told Talk Radio News Monday that hardline immigration policies can backfire on their proponents. Nill explains that supporters could lose hispanic and moderate votes by supporting laws similar to the controversial bill recently signed in Arizona. (0:21)

Talk Radio News Service discusses the book “The Golden Age of Jewish Achievement” with author and CEO Steven L. Pease. Pease’s book details the effects of Jewish culture on politics, art and the world at large. (9:51)

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By Monique Cala Talk Radio News Service/ University Of New Mexico
House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) accused Democrats of engaging in a ‘cynical ploy’ to shore up support in an election year through their calls for comprehensive immigration reform.
“It is nothing but a cynical ploy to try and engage some segment of voters to show up in this November’s elections,” Boehner said during a press conference Thursday.
According to the Ohio Republican, the timeline sought by Democrats to pass reform by the end of the year will be impossible to meet.
“There is not a chance that immigration is going to move through Congress. I have been around here for a little while, and know that in the middle of an election year … you can not do a serious piece of legislation of this size [and] difficulty in this environment.”
Noted Boehner, “Even the President admitted it was impossible.”
The Minority Leader also commented on Arizona’s controversial new immigration law, which has put immigration reform on the front burner.
“[The] people of Arizona have a right to pass their laws under the 10th amendment,” said Boehner.

A report authored by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) showing that healthcare costs will increase under a newly passed reform law should have been released before the law was passed, said Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) during a phone interview with Talk Radio News Service on Wednesday.
“I think it’s a shame that the report was released after the vote; clearly it was important,” Cassidy said. “It was, if you will, a damning indictment [of the legislation].”
The 38-page analysis conducted by the chief actuary at CMS, Rick Foster, concludes that healthcare spending will represent 21% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2019. According to the report, that figure equals a 0.2% increase — or $311 billion — over the level that would be reached without reform in place.
During the nearly year-long debate over the legislation, the President frequently assured the public that his plan would bend the nation’s healthcare cost curve down. But now, said Cassidy, Americans may start to lose faith in the administration’s ability to be forthright.
“[The administration's] central premise was that they were going to lower costs,” he said. “Now, integrity and faith in government are key things, trust in government is a key thing. If we’re not gonna be able to trust them on this…what does that mean about other big policy decisions?”
Click here to listen to more of the Congressman’s interview.

In a fiercely fractured ruling, the Supreme Court Wednesday favored Congress’s plan to allow a cross to remain standing in the middle of the Mojave Desert by transferring the land to private hands. The trade of a 1-acre plot containing the cross for a 5-acre region in another area of the desert had been challenged by a retired Park Service officer who won a court battle in 2002 to have the cross removed. A district court had found that the cross violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution and must therefore be removed.
Only three of the Court’s nine Justices directly approved of the cross’s new situation. Justice Anthony Kennedy, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and in part by Justice Samuel Alito, wrote that the lower court dismissed Congress’s effort to fix the problem too easily. Rather than looking at the land transfer as an attempt to “evade” the problem, Kennedy wrote that the lower court should examine whether the land transfer would successfully transform the land from public property to private property, meaning the cross could remain without giving an impression government favor to any particular religion. Justice Alito added separately that he thought the issue had been adequately litigated, and he would have directly approved the land transfer.
Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote separately to argue that the Park Service officer, despite visiting the area and seeing the cross on a regular basis, was not seriously injured by the cross’s presence. Scalia said that no Court should never have taken up the case.
Justice John Paul Stevens, disagreeing with the Court’s conclusion, wrote that the constitutional problem would not be resolved even if the land were transferred. A reasonable observer, Stevens wrote, would not know that the ownership of the land had changed and might assume that this plot of land, sitting in the middle of a large government-owned preserve, was also government land. Further, he argued, Congress’s motivation in trading the land was to preserve the cross, expanding on the constitutional violation. Stevens wrote that the land transfer should have been stopped and the order to remove the cross maintained. He was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.
Writing only for himself, Justice Steven Breyer pointed out in a 6-page opinion that the lower court had simply ordered the cross be removed. Because Congress set up the land transfer without challenging that court order, the order was still in effect and the cross should be removed.

By Sofia Sanchez
University of New Mexico/Talk Radio News Service
Senator Tom Udall (D-N.M.) criticized Republicans on Tuesday for categorically blocking a financial regulatory reform bill making its way through the Senate. Udall countered what he referred to as talking points by GOP leadership, including a claim made by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who equated the bill to a giant bailout fund for Wall Street.
“He is taking his talking points from a memo that was taken by a Republican pollster…Nothing that Mitch McConnell has said has been accurate about this. [The bill] holds Wall Street accountable, it ends tax payer bailouts and guarantees that tax payers will never again be forced to bail out these reckless Wall Street firms,” said Udall. “I, once again, don’t understand why Republicans aren’t willing to engage in a fair legislative discussion and debate.”
Udall touted a provision within the bill that would create an independent agency with authority to monitor firms for abusive practices, and provide consumers with information in clear English so consumers can shop better for mortgages and credit cards.
Being a representative from a border state, Udall was asked to assess an anti-illegal immigration bill that was signed into law last week in Arizona by its Governor, Jan Brewer. However, rather than echoing the sentiments of certain Democratic leaders in the Senate, including Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Udall offered only a one-line response.
“Comprehensive immigration reform should be done this year and I hope they [Congress] stick to that.”

By Chingyu Wang
Talk Radio News Service
While House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) thanked members of the American Hospital Association (AHA) during its their annual conference Tuesday for supporting the Democratic health care reform bill, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) reminded the audience that “you and I found ourselves on a different page.”
The AHA, a national organization formed by almost 5,000 hospitals and medical care providers and 37,000 individual members, displayed packets during the conference that praised the new health care reform law for expanding health coverage to an estimated 32 million Americans in the next ten years.
Citing a new report by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Cornyn told members of the audience that health care costs will rise to $311 billion by the year 2020, and said his “biggest disappointment” with the law is that it will worsen America’s long term fiscal situation.
Pelosi, on the other hand, said hospitals stand to benefit the most from the new law due to “32 million patients [having] an insurance card…fewer uncompensated emergency room visits…[and] reduced costs and improving care.”
Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who followed the Speaker, discussed the case of Well Point Inc. attempting to decline health coverage to breast cancer patients, and called on the AHA to help discourage such “illegal” behavior on the part of insurance companies.