Tony Snow doing his best Ja Rule interpretation: It's Murda!

White House Press Secretary Tony Snow (or "Snow Job" as I like to call him) has apologized for his statement last week that George Bush believes stem cell research is the equivalent of murder.

Last week, after Bush issued the first veto of his presidency, Snow said "The president believes strongly that for the purpose of research it's inappropriate for the federal government to finance something that many people consider murder. He's one of them."

Snow apologizes for ‘murder’ statement

Spokesman says president would not use term with stem-cell research

Republican Senator Arlen Specter says he is preparing a bill that will allow the United States Congress to sue George Bush over his presidential signing statements, in which he frequently declares that he doesn't have to follow a bill that he just signed into law.  He says his bill will be ready by week's end.

Specter said in a statement on the floor of the Senate "We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will...authorize the Congress to undertake judicial review of those signing statements with the view to having the president's acts declared unconstitutional."

And speaking of Bushie's infamous signing statements in which he declares himself above the law, an American Bar Association task force on Monday calls the signing statements unconstitutional, and said that rather than attaching conditions to bills, Bush has an obligation to either 1) veto legislation, 2) sign it, or 3) take no action.

And one final footnote on Arlen Specter: I applaud his desire to sue Bushie over these signing statements.  But Specter sure is a walking contradiction!  One minute he is in cahoots with the Administration to retroactively write Bush's illegal warrantless spy program into law.  And the next, he wants to sue BushCo!

Specter prepping bill to sue Bush

Italy's former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, is denying that he and the Sismi military intelligence agency knew anything about a request from the Central Intelligence Agency, that Italy help the CIA kidnap Muslim cleric Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr and fly him to Egypt.  Nasr says he was tortured in Egypt.

But one of the suspects in the case, Marco Mancini, says that Simsi knew more about the request than people have admitted in public. And Mancini's lawyer, Luigi Panella, says his client has evidence that his superior knew about the operation as well. 

But Panella says Mancini refused the CIA's request to assist in the kinapping. "They were aware of the fact that the Americans had proposed a joint operation to seize Abu Omar. This is true. Mancini and his men, who were heads of all of northern Italy, refused (the mission)."

Italy spy boss refused CIA's kidnap request: lawyer