Heh

The new Pacman game - ESPN Page 2 (This is about football).

Sunrise

This strikes me as very encouraging. Pasted in full:

House GOP Leaders Threaten To Vote Against Money For Troops

By Greg Sargent | bio

Okay, so here's the state of play in the House right now with regard to the coming showdown between Congressional Dems and the White House over the war.

The House GOP leadership has now unveiled its response to the news this morning that House Dems are coming together behind an approach to the soon-to-be-voted-on spending bill that would bring the troops home if the Iraqi government fails to reduce violence there. House GOP leaders say that if Dems try to attach any conditions to the war spending bill, Republicans in the House may vote against it:

The House minority leader threatened Thursday to get his members to vote against a $96.3 billion spending bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if Democrats persist in plans to attach conditions to the money that would tell President Bush how to conduct the wars.

This is interesting -- now it's the House Republican leadership who is threatening to vote against funding the troops. The same Republican leadership which, behind House GOP leader John Boehner, has been demanding that Dems show full support for funding the troops, lest they be accused of not supporting them:

REP. BOEHNER: Let’s have a real resolution on the floor. It’s a bill that says, “We will not cut the funding for our troops in harms’ way.”

Meanwhile, Hill sources tell us that it may be days before Congressional Dems seriously coalesce behind the current approach in any case.

The sources say that it's very likely that the current approach won't be drawn up in the form of a bill until another Caucus meeting is held, because the new approach has yet to be run in detail by rank and file House Dems. Another Caucus meeting can't be held until early next week, so it could be days before we see a final bill, though if consensus emerges quickly a bill could be drafted and directed into the appropriations process within a few days.

Meanwhile, multiple sources tell us that negotiations are ongoing over the approach and that the situation is very fluid. One source who's in touch with Congressional staff says that the leadership is considering attaching a new bill by Dem Rep. Howard Berman to the supplemental spending bill. Berman's legislation, called the Iraqi Benchmark Act, would stipulate that if the "surge" doesn't measure up to the benchmarks articulated by the President himself, an "immediate redeployment" would be mandated. "The leadership is thinking about embracing this," the source says.

In other words, stay tuned until next week.

So that's where we are.