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Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) defended her role in the $300 million “Louisiana Purchase” Thursday, saying she attached it to the healthcare bill at Gov. Bobby Jindal’s (R-La.) request and that it was not a condition of her support for the bill. Landrieu used a floor speech, press conference and private e-mails from Jindal to fire back against critics of the $300 million-plus in Medicaid funds that became known as the “Louisiana Purchase.” “Nothing about this effort was secret — it was public from the very first meeting that happened at the governor’s mansion in January,” Landrieu said. “It was a...

WASHINGTON – The White House on Monday defended President Barack Obama's support for taxing high-value insurance plans to help pay for health care overhaul, a levy the AFL-CIO president angrily said "drives a wedge between the middle class and the poor." Obama is scheduled to meet with labor leaders on the issue Monday afternoon. Labor opposes the tax, arguing it would hurt union members who negotiated good health benefits instead of salary increases. Hours before the meeting, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka lashed out at the so-called "Cadillac" tax in the Senate bill. "The benefits tax in the Senate bill pits...

It's not every day that Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, a liberal Democrat from Texas, says "I agree with Sarah Palin." She acknowledged the rarity in an interview with The Hill, but said she agrees that the Newsweek magazine cover with a photograph of Palin in running shorts is sexist. "I've never seen Governor Palin dressed in that kind of attire at a political event," Jackson-Lee said. "What is the necessity of highlighting that picture among the thousands that have been taken of her?"

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday defended $11.1 billion in new borrowing as a critical investment in the state's water future while at the same time insisting California must cut its way toward a balanced budget in the short term. In an interview with The Bee's editorial board, the Republican governor also took aim at the state's prison employees and advocated for a constitutional change allowing California to rely more on private workers. After reaching a deal last week with state lawmakers to bolster California's water infrastructure, Schwarzenegger is trying to build popular support for the plan, knowing voters will have...

San Rafael -- Al Gore and his crusade against global warming landed in the Bay Area this week with a call to arms and a message for those who still think the former vice president is tilting at windmills. The solution to climate change includes windmills, along with solar and geothermal energy, Gore told The Chronicle in an interview Monday. He also defended himself against attacks by critics who accuse him of pushing the green agenda so that he can personally benefit from investments he has made in green technology. "I have made some investments in the last few years...

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday defended US President Barack Obama's Middle East policies, saying that efforts to engage Iran through dialogue and earnest attempts to jump-start the peace process were bearing fruit. "A year ago, Iran was united in its nuclear ambitions and the world was divided in its response," Emanuel said while addressing the Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly in Washington. "Today, thanks to the work of the president, there is strong and international consensus against a nuclear armed Iran. That is the goal of America."

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A top adviser from John McCain's presidential campaign who has criticized Sarah Palin's odds as a 2012 presidential candidate defended Wednesday the decision to pick her as McCain's 2008 running mate. Steve Schmidt, who was chief strategist for the Republican's campaign during the 2008 election, said choosing Palin — then a little-known Alaska governor — helped the GOP gain ground against the Democrats and Barack Obama. "I believe to this day that had she not been picked as a vice presidential candidate, we would have never been ahead, not for one second, not for one minute,...

MIAMI — Speaking via telephone from his home in Tegucigalpa on Monday, interim Honduran President Roberto Micheletti again defended the actions of Honduran military officials in booting President Manuel Zelaya from power. ''We can't allow that this government take us to communism or socialism,'' Micheletti told a group of reporters at a telephone press conference organized by Honduran Unity, a Miami-based group of Honduran activists who support Micheletti.

DETROIT, Michigan (AFP) – Former president George W. Bush defended harsh interrogation tactics used in the "war on terror" as both legal and necessary to prevent an imminent attack, local media reported Friday. The remarks came a week after former vice president Dick Cheney branded President Barack Obama as soft on terror for repudiating the tactics. In wide-ranging remarks to the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan, Bush defended his decision to allow harsh interrogation of the terror suspect accused of ordering the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Bush told the crowd of 1,500 that the techniques were...

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, testifying in Congress on Wednesday, defended the right to abortion worldwide and the Obama administration's decision to finance family planning overseas. Demonstrating the eloquence she so often used in the US presidential campaign last year, Clinton stood her ground against Christopher Smith, a Republican lawmaker from New Jersey who strongly opposes abortion.

The White House said Monday that President Obama's loud silence during last week's standoff with Somali pirates who hijacked a U.S. cargo ship and held the captain hostage was necessary in such a tense situation. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said the president, who came under fire over the weekend for staying mum on the drama, did not want to make the situation "even potentially more dangerous by putting the president out there for the captives to see."

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - In a room full of television industry executives, no one seemed inclined to defend MSNBC on Monday for what some were calling its lopsidedly liberal coverage of the presidential election. The cable news channel is "completely out of control," said writer-producer Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, a self-proclaimed liberal Democrat. She added that she would prefer a lunch date with right-leaning Fox News star Sean Hannity over left-leaning MSNBC star Keith Olbermann. Olbermann was criticized by many who attended Monday's luncheon sponsored by the Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The event was...

Jerome Corsi, author of the anti-Obama book titled The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality was deported back to America not because of a hitch in his travel documents as reported earlier but due to the nature of his mission in the country. According to Foreign affairs minister Moses Wetangula, Corsi displayed inconsistent conduct with the expected norms of good behaviour in the country. Corsi was on Tuesday night deported back to America after he attempted to launch the book blasting White House hopeful Barrack Obama at a Nairobi hotel. The initial explanation offered by the authorities...

SAN DIEGO – Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Monday vigorously disputed his opponent's assertion that he had backed away from his own comprehensive plan to overhaul the nation's immigration laws. “I do ask for your trust that when I say I remain committed to fair, practical and comprehensive immigration reform, I mean it,” the Arizona senator told the National Council of La Raza convention here. “I think I have earned that trust.” On Sunday, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, told the same group at the San Diego Convention Center that McCain backed off his...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday defended tough interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects approved by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11, saying they were necessary to protect America from new attacks. In her most extensive public comments about how the administration dealt with detainee interrogations in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, and the anthrax attacks that followed, Rice insisted the methods of questioning complied with both U.S. law and treaty obligations. But she acknowledged that those rules had since changed and that the United States was a "different place" then, adding that the administration's top priority...

LUBBOCK, Texas - Republican John McCain defended his latest plan to help some homeowners pay their mortgages, saying Friday it was not a reversal of his earlier opposition to aggressive intervention by the government. The likely Republican presidential nominee on Thursday proposed to help 200,000 to 400,000 homeowners trade burdensome mortgages for manageable loans, a plan that would cost $3 billion to $10 billion. Democratic rivals Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama argued that McCain was flip-flopping. Last month, he said he preferred only limited intervention and letting market forces play out, drawing criticism from Democrats and some Republicans...

SACRAMENTO - In his first direct responses, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger defended dumping his brother-in-law Bobby Shriver and actor Clint Eastwood from the state Parks and Recreation Commission - a step critics allege was taken in retaliation for their opposition to a six-lane toll road through San Onofre State Park. Led by Shriver and Eastwood, the appointed and unpaid commission has been an outspoken opponent of the toll road, claiming that super highways have no place in state parks. There also are worries that it could irreparably damage a renowned surfing area called Trestles. In an interview with the Orange County...

NEW ORLEANS - Hillary Rodham Clinton strongly defended her husband's record on civil rights Saturday at a forum in which she acknowledged "painful moments" in a presidential contest pitting the first woman candidate against a pioneering black contender. At the annual State of the Black Union conference hosted by PBS's Tavis Smiley, Clinton pushed back hard on the notion that Bill Clinton had inflamed racial tensions while campaigning for her in the run-up to South Carolina's primary last month. The former president — once so popular among black voters he was dubbed the first black president by novelist Toni Morrison...

LAS VEGAS - Former President Clinton on Monday compared Republican criticism of his wife's position on driver's license for illegal immigrants to the ads that helped sink John Kerry's White House hopes in 2004. "I had the feeling that at the end of that last debate we were about to get into cutesy land again," Clinton told some 3,000 members of the American Postal Worker's Union at a convention. At the end of a televised Democratic presidential debate last week, Hillary Rodham Clinton hedged on whether she supported a plan by her home state governor, New York's Eliot Spitzer, to...

NEW YORK - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad defended his nation's human rights record on Monday as hundreds of protesters gathered outside the U.N. and Columbia University to protest appearances by the hard-line leader. "People in Iran are very joyous, happy people," he told a National Press Club audience that questioned him about the arrests of students, journalists and women. "They're very free in expressing what they think." He said women in Iran were "the freest women in the world ... They're active in every level of society." Human rights activists inside and outside Iran have decried a recent wave of...