Tag: leon panetta

“Sleazy attacks don’t work on Mike Coffman, people,” said a spokesman. “They just don’t.”

The fight over America's energy policy has a new battleground: the Department of Defense budget.

Colorado US Senator Mark Udall on Thursday denounced a move by Republican members of the House seeking to postpone repeal of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy that bars gay soldiers from serving openly. The policy was lifted by lawmakers last December, a move spearheaded by Udall, and is set to end officially this Tuesday according to a plan drawn up and followed over roughly the last year by military leaders. Yet, in a letter today, House Armed Services Committee Chair Buck McKeon and Military Personnel Subcommittee Chairman Joe Wilson asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to, essentially, turn in paperwork to them before allowing the repeal to take effect.

Rare earth metals used to manufacture magnets for electric vehicles, display screens for electronics, rechargeable batteries and smart bombs are almost entirely mined in China but that could soon change. U.S. Reps. Mike Coffman and Doug Lamborn are pushing hard to knock down the barriers of entry for rare earth production to return to the United States, where mines closed in the 1990s when China undercut global prices.

Thursday, during the Senate Armed Services Committee’s confirmation hearing on the nomination of Leon Panetta to head the Department of Defense, Senator Mark Udall sought answers from Panetta about his views on the future of the U.S. military’s role in the world in the face of budget cutbacks and the ongoing war on terror.

Republican Arizona Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, has long opposed the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the U.S. in the War on Terror. He is now railing against apologists for those techniques, mostly on the right, who have seized on the death of Osama bin Laden at the hands of Navy SEALS to assert that it was torture that delivered the intelligence that made the SEALS' mission to hunt down bin Laden successful.

Today, Senator Mark Udall issued a statement commenting on Obama's nomination of Leon Panetta as Secretary of Defense. Udall said the country's debt is among its most serious national security threats and said it will be up to Panetta to manage a budget as well as managing military operations.

The release of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate has overshadowed another major story coming out of the administration today. Multiple sources within the Pentagon have told the AP and reporters from other publications that President Obama intends to nominate current CIA director Leon Panetta to fill the position held by outgoing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and that Gen. David Petraeus will be chosen to replace Panetta at the CIA.