bush

Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, really wanted her national soccer team to win the 2008 European Football Championships, which concluded today in Vienna.

Expressing her obviously heartfelt enthusiasm for the German team (and not her need to get re-elected next year), she began to text them.

The texts were not merely expressions of positive fortune and celestial speed.

According to her favorite player, the suspiciously and excessively blond Bastian Schweisteiger, she weighed in with tactical suggestions.

Which, if the evidence of the games is anything to go by, must have gone along the lines of "Kick that Portuguese pillock … Read more

President Bush on Wednesday set a goal of halting the growth of greenhouse gases by 2025, calling for elimination of clean-energy international trade barriers but stopping short of specific proposals to mandate carbon emissions caps.

Delivering a speech at the White House Rose Garden, Bush said national greenhouse gas emissions growth should peak within 10 to 15 years, stop in 2025, and then decline.

He said the nationwide strategy would build on existing policies to accelerate development of energy-efficiency technologies, cellulosic ethanol, nuclear power, and renewable energy like wind and solar.

Bush said the U.S.--which has been accused … Read more

A Silicon Valley entrepreneur has been chosen to run the new National Cyber Security Center, an agency charged with coordinating efforts to protect the federal government's computer networks from cyberattacks, according to published reports.

Rod Beckström, 47, is expected to be appointed to the post Thursday and report directly to Michael Chertoff, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, according to reports in The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. The secretive center was created by a national security directive signed by President Bush in January.

In the book The Starfish and the Spider: The … Read more

WASHINGTON--The world is in the early days of an energy revolution for clean technology, a shift the United States is committed to for economic, political, and environmental reasons, President George Bush said in a speech here Wednesday.

The president spoke to delegates from more than 120 countries at the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC) 2008, where he described what the United States has done to promote biofuels, fuel efficiency, and renewable power sources like wind.

"America has to change its habits. It has to get off oil. Until we change our habits, we are going to be dependent … Read more

The House and Senate versions of the surveillance bill--called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act--need to be reconciled. But politics is in the air (I know, you're shocked, shocked.)

The controversy centers on whether to extend legal immunity to telecommunications firms that carried out Uncle Sam's bidding and wiretapped U.S. phone and computer lines without first getting court permission. The Senate says yes, while the House says no.

In his stump … Read more

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives have already stood up to President Bush this week, refusing to approve a controversial Senate bill that would immunize telephone companies from lawsuits alleging illegal spying. Now they're being forced to defend their actions against those who contend that inaction endangers national security--and who wonder what happens next.

At a Capitol Hill press conference on Friday afternoon, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he, Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), and Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) have already begun trying to resolve what has become a very public disagreement. … Read more

With Congress seeking more time to finalize a soon-to-expire expansion of the government's electronic spying powers, President Bush on Wednesday issued an ultimatum: No more delays.

In a brief morning speech delivered from the Oval Office, the president praised the U.S. Senate's passage on Tuesday of a six-year law that would give the administration more latitude to conduct surveillance without a court order. The controversial measure would also immunize telephone companies from past and future lawsuits accusing them of illegal cooperation with government spy agencies. The whole package is intended to be a more permanent replacement to … Read more

The Bush administration said on Friday that the recording industry's $222,000 courtroom victory shows that the legal system is working against peer-to-peer pirates.

"Cases such as this remind us strong enforcement is a significant part of the effort to eliminate piracy, and that we have an effective legal system in the U.S. that enables rights holders to protect their intellectual property," said Chris Israel, the U.S. Coordinator for International Intellectual Property Enforcement, to CNET News.com.

President Bush named Israel, formerly a senior Commerce Department official, to the key copyright post in July 2005. … Read more