Tag: robert gates

Marguerite Salazar, confirmed by the Senate in Denver Monday as state insurance commissioner, threw cold water on the state Republican outrage machine.

If you like to read about longreads, i.e., books, we got two on tap. One is the Defense Secretary Robert Gates autobiography. The other is a new guns-blazing bio on Fox News big man Roger Ailes.

Unlikely allies — the National Taxpayers Union and U.S. Public Interest Research Group — have united to show the Congressional supercommittee where it can cut a trillion dollars in federal spending.

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.

Overall taxpayer money delivered to the Pentagon and its contractors in 2010 will add up to well more than an all-time record-breaking $1.01 trillion. As has been widely reported, Defense Secretary Robert Gates asked the new fiscal-conservative Republican Congress to consider cutting the Pentagon budget by $80 billion over the next five years, meaning the Defense budget will still rise in that time but not by as much as it would have done. Republicans derided the proposal, arguing that the country was at war and that there was plenty of spending to be cut elsewhere. As the 112th conservative Congress got underway, Colorado GOP Rep. Doug Lamborn, for example, introduced two bills that would strip public broadcasting of roughly $500 million per year. Lamborn's bills won't pass. China meantime is serious about taking over the reins of the world economy. It is spending a fraction of what the U.S. spends on Defense and double what the U.S. spends on the clean energy technologies of the future-- and it is selling those technologies and its expertise in creating them to customers around the world including to the cash-strapped U.S.A.

Colorado U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn announced Thursday that he had introduced legislation to cut funding for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting after 2012. Lamborn said that times had changed since the government first began funding public broadcasting and that in the age of "500 channels" it is no longer necessary to subsidize access to TV and radio for American citizens.

In a setback for Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.) and Senate Armed Services Committee supporters like Colorado's Mark Udall, efforts to...

That statistic comes to you from Servicemembers United, which opposes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and seeks its repeal. It’s lower than in previous years:...

Sen. Mark Udall said he was moved to introduce legislation repealing the nation's "Don't Ask Don't Tell" military policy banning gay service members from serving openly in part because the policy has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars over the past 17 years and negatively effected the lives of thousands Americans dedicated to their country.