Posted on 01/21/2006 4:18:32 PM PST by Wolfstar
PRESIDENTIAL NEWS OF THE DAY The first family is spending the weekend at Camp David. Next week, the President, Vice President and others in the administration will be pushing back on the issue of monitoring international phone calls potentially connected with terrorism.
THE WEEK AHEAD: Once again Scott McClellan did not announce the week-ahead schedule at his press briefing. However, a search of news articles yielded the following:
President Bush will speak Monday at Kansas State University about U.S. efforts to fight terrorism. His address will be part of the university's Landon Lecture series and is scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. CST in Bramlage Coliseum on the Manhattan campus. GWB is the third sitting president to give a lecture, following Ronald Reagan in 1982 and Richard Nixon in 1970.
President Bush will visit the ultra-secret National Security Agency on Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday a sports team that never was invited to the White House will finally do so nearly 40 years after they won their championship.
'66 Miner title team to finally visit Washington
Bill Knight
El Paso Times
Friday, January 20, 2006The 1966 Texas Western NCAA championship basketball team, the team that was never invited to the White House, will meet with President Bush there Feb 22.
"The White House has invited Coach (Don) Haskins and his wife (Mary), the players and their spouses to have dinner and to see a screening of 'Glory Road,' at the White House on February 22," said Steve Tredennick.
Tredennick, who played on Haskins' first Texas Western team, is a lawyer in Round Rock, Texas, who has been handling everything for the 1966 team.
"This is pretty exciting after 40 years," Haskins said. "I think everyone's excited. I just called Eddie Mullens (the sports information director in 1966) and he was ecstatic. George W. is a special guy, as far as I'm concerned."
Harry Flournoy, a starter on the 1966 team, lives in Los Angeles. He, too, was excited by the news.
"Yes, it is exciting," Flournoy said Thursday night. "We should have been the ones to start that tradition in 1966. But better late than never. Seriously, all this is just something I could never have dreamed ... not even in my wildest dreams. I know we're going to have a good time. I know I am. I love all those guys (teammates). We love getting together, hashing out things, telling some lies and hoping people's memories are not too good."
And, on Wednesday night, Feb. 22, the men from 1966 will tell their stories in the White House.
QUOTE OF THE DAY: The First Lady gave an interview to the BBC's Sir David Frost after her return from Africa. Following are excerpts from the transcript.
First Lady recalls 9/11 challenge
By Matthew Davis
BBC News, Washington
The United States' First Lady Laura Bush has told the BBC that the "war on terror" has made her job more challenging than she ever anticipated.
"Obviously we didn't expect what happened on September 11th, we never expected we would be in a war, and that is very, very difficult," she said.
Mrs Bush, just back from Africa, made the comments during an interview with the BBC's Sir David Frost.
Such is her popularity that some have speculated that she might follow in the footsteps of her predecessor as First Lady, now-Senator Hillary Clinton, and seek elected office.
In a speech on Thursday President George W Bush said his wife would never run for office, and Mrs Bush confirmed it was "absolutely unlikely".
She also said that her friend, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - who despite her denials is still being tipped as a potential 2008 presidential candidate - had "fully decided" not to run.
Mrs Bush spoke instead of the challenge of being a first lady in a country divided by the war in Iraq.
"I watched people that I love very much in this job - my mother-in-law and my father-in-law - and I had a real idea of the weight of it, the weight of the job.
"I remember during the Gulf War when President Bush, my husband's father, was president, and the very start of it when the body bags went over to Kuwait - and the whole worry of that, the whole gravity of that.
"The choices that a president makes, for instance, are so consequential, there are so many consequences - and so I knew that, even though that doesn't always help when you are in the midst of it yourself.
"Many people are very, very sincerely anti-war, everyone is anti-war, the president is anti-war, no-one wants war, but no-one wanted what happened on September 11 either."
In the homespun way that has endeared her to the US public, the first lady also revealed what first attracted her to Mr Bush.
"One of the first things I liked about him when I met him was his sense of humour," she said.
"And to be married to someone who can be funny at the dinner table - we had two teenage girls at the dinner table - it was really very nice, he was always able to defuse moments of tension when 13-year-old girls are acting like 13-year-old girls - he's a really wonderful father to our girls."
Q: Why do you keep linking Iraq and 9/11 and so forth? Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, and you keep -- we started the war in Iraq. We brought the terrorists in, so-called.Q -- and 20 to 50 people are dying every day in Iraq.
Q We invaded.
Q Innocent Iraqis are paying the price.
Q Many are dead. Thousands are dead.
Q They don't want a foreigner in their country.
The selection of photos on this thread is intended to rebutt this hateful reporter.
Here!!!
86?
Pinging you to the Saturday Dose.
It's not really funny any more HC.
President George Bush lays a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey, 20 November 2003
Cool !! Love the Dose! Katrina Survivor here and grateful for Bush's visits and FEMA money! :D
A very touching photo. The President meets with 94-year-old Anna Tovcimak after a roundtable discussion on Medicare Liability Reform in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
I guess Curmudgeons don't know what that is, eh? :)
If it's so offensive to you, it's REALLY easy to ignore the thread.
Hi, Wolfstar :)
The bronze relief in this photo is wonderful. It is of GWB taking the presidential oath of office while his wife, mother and father look on.
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