Dueling Protests Converge at Pelosi’s Office – ‘Health Care for All!’ or ‘Kill the Bill!’

ABC News' Z. Byron Wolf reports: Capping off protest day here at the Capitol are the competing protests that have converged on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's district office on Capitol Hill, leading to several more arrests and littering the hallway with torn copies of House Democrats healthcare bill.

An protest of about 100 people supporting universal care – including some familiar faces from Lieberman's office earlier today – was already ongoing at Pelosi's office when a new group of about 100 people who oppose the bill showed up.

Specifically, the new group of protesters is concerned that the health reform bill will put tax dollars toward abortions.

Among the protesters against a health reform bill was Randall Terry, founder of the anti-abortion rights group Operation Rescue.

Terry said one of the protesters who was arrested is Father Norman Weslin, a priest from Indiana. Weslin laid down in front of Pelosi's door until a group of police officers picked him up and carried him away.

Up to four protesters (it wasn't clear from which group) were arrested when they started ripping up pages from the bill in the hallway.

Chants of “Healthcare for all!” have been drowned out by chants of “Kill the bill!”

Police are trying to clear the hallway.

This is the office for Pelosi in her capacity as Congresswoman for the 8th District of California. It is not where she works – that office is in the Capitol building.

Stephen Baldwin: Pelosi ‘Foolish’ to Suggest Political Violence is Concern

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports:

With the Values Voter conference taking place in Washington, ABCNews.com's “Top Line” caught up with Stephen Baldwin, the actor and conservative radio talk show host, about the anger being voiced at President Obama across the country.

Baldwin sharply disputed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's contention that angry words aimed at the president could lead to political violence. Pelosi became emotional yesterday in recalling political violence that erupted in her hometown of San Francisco in the 1970s.

“I don't think it's a legitimate concern,” Baldwin said. “I think that again this administration feels like they have to think for its people. I think that it's foolish to even suggest that. I don't think that by any means the general public and the voters out there are stupid. They're smart people, and I think we ought to allow them to have the platform and opportunity to show that.”

Asked whether he thinks race is playing a role in the critiques being aimed at Obama — as former President Jimmy Carter suggested this week — Baldwin said: “No, not at all. I think Jimmy Carter is a dum-dum.”

Added Baldwin's radio co-host, Kevin McCullough: “It is laced with this idea that those that oppose the president really dislike him for irrational reasons. And that's not the case. The national tea party here last weekend in this city brought a little over a million people. The mall was clean when they left. No arrests were made. They spoke their mind. They spoke strongly. They peacefully protested, and to continually have this inference that if you oppose the president you must be a crook, you must be dangerous, you must be a racist, you must be a homophobe, it just — it doesn't fly.”

Baldwin and McCullough are in Washington today as part of the annual Values Voter conference. They're speaking to the conference this afternoon, and are headlining a party for young conservatives at 9:30 pm ET. More information on that event is available atMcCullough’sblog, HERE.

Baldwin also told us that he's in talks with the producers of “The Biggest Loser” to host a new reality series: “It's in development, and it's looking kinda cool. And we'll see.”

Click HERE to see the interview with Stephen Baldwin and Kevin McCullough.

We also spoke with Ceci Connolly, who covers health care for The Washington Post, about the president's weekend media blitz. Her guess is that Democrats' current timeframe for passing health care reform by Thanksgiving is a bit optimistic.Watch the discussion with Ceci Connolly HERE.

ABC News? Dean Norland reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today dismissed speculation that an agreement struck with moderate Democrats on health care legislation would cost support for the bill from liberal House Democrats when a bill reaches the floor this fall.

?We?re all part of the same party. We will have a bill that will come to the floor, and when it does, it will pass,? Pelosi, D-Calif., said at her weekly news conference.

The speaker said that House moderates, who are members of the Blue Dog Coalition, are not having an undue influence in writing the bill. ?I don?t think there is any disproportionate influence when members speak out in favor of their constituents,? she said.

Pelosi explained that she wants a bill that will correct what she said insurance companies have done to the health of Americans.

?I think it?s very clear that we want a strong public option in the legislation. Insurance companies are out there in full force carpet bombing, shock and awe, against a public option,? Pelosi said.

Pelosi Praising China?

ABC News' Kristina Wong reports:House Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised the Chinese government today, in a noticeable departure from her longtime criticism of the Communist regime's human rights practices.

“They are on the move, and doing many things right,” she said, at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., where she spoke of her recent trip to China to meet face-to-face with Premier Wen Jiabao, President Hu Jintao and the National People's Congress Chairman Wu Bangguo. She said the primary topic of discussion was climate change and energy.

Pelosi praised the Chinese government's steps towards cleaner air in China, including implementing a high speed rail train, and closing down inefficient coal plants.

“The U.S. and China are the biggest emitters of greenhouse gases,” she said, striking a tone of cooperation ahead of difficult international negotiations on climate change to take place later this year in
Copenhagen.

As the world's largest net emitter of greenhouse gases, China's leaders argue the country cannot limit its emissions while it is still undergoing industrial development, and say the U.S. faced no such limitation as it was developing.

“We're in this together; we share this planet,” Pelosi said.

Pelosi dismissed news reports suggesting she downplayed the issue of human rights in her meetings with China's leaders, pointing out she was currently wearing a pin given to her by anti-Chinese government protestors in Hong Kong.

“It's not so much my view has changed, but my role has changed,” she said, recalling how in 1991, she had unfurled a banner of protest in Tiananmen Square and was chased away by police. Now, as Speaker of the House, she could “express her views directly” to the Chinese leadership.

“We were very frank about human rights,” she said.

Pelosi said the two sides also discussed North Korea's recent nuclear test and missile launches. She said the Chinese leaders conveyed the impression that they had “some ability but not unlimited” to coax the North back to the Six-Party Talks over North Korea's disarmament.

“They did not want full responsibility for bringing them back to the table,” she said.

Pelosi joked that around this time last year, she was the “most hated person in China,” for meeting with exiled Tibetan leader and human rights advocate, the Dalai Lama. But this year, she said she was
received with an “incredible show of hospitality.”

Thomas Mann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that China's warm welcome of Speaker Pelosi reflects several factors – “recognition that Pelosi is a powerful Speaker of a very consequential
legislative body; while the two countries have different interests, their economic and environmental fates are inextricably linked; and a belief that dealings with President Obama will be strengthened with
good relations with the Democratic Speaker.”

Pelosi said that relations between President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao were positive, and that they have established a “good rapport.”

“We are economic competitors,” Pelosi said firmly, but added, “I have to be an optimist. I could argue both ways, but I choose to look at it from a positive perspective.”

House GOP to Force Vote on Pelosi

ABC News’ Rick Klein, Jonathan Karl, and Dean Norland report:

House Republicans today plan to force their colleagues to vote on whether to launch an investigation of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s allegation that the CIA misled her, a move that will force Democrats to take a stand on a politically contentious issue.

The measure has virtually no chance of passing, given the Democratic majority in the House, and the wide support inside the caucus for Pelosi, D-Calif.

But Republican aides say they want to force the full House to vote on whether to create a special, bipartisan subcommittee to investigate the speaker’s claims — a move that keeps Pelosi in a harsh spotlight for another day, and forces some Democrats into a potentially awkward vote.

“The speaker has had a full week now to either produce the evidence or retract and apologize, and she’s done neither,” a senior Republican aide tells ABC News. “There is no choice now. A bipartisan investigation is needed to get to the facts.”

As Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line” yesterday, Republicans don’t want this issue to fade, with next week’s Memorial Day break looming.

“We do go home for this Memorial [Day] break so there is a concern that this will dissipate over time. If it does then it’ll be the country that pays the price,” said King, who supports a more harsh resolution that would strip Pelosi of her security clearances until the matter is resolved.

UPDATE: Democrats voted to table the resolution that would have required an investigation, with a 252-172 party-line vote. So Republicans got the vote they wanted, albeit not directly.

UPDATE II: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., called a press conference to blast Republicans’ “policy of distraction” by focusing on Pelosi, instead of the core issues regarding interrogation techniques and policies.

“Republicans for the last few weeks have been focused on the politics of personal destruction,” Hoyer said. “This was a distraction — a distraction because the minority party does not want to look at what George Bush did.”

GOP Rep.: Pelosi Should Lose Security Clearances

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: One of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leading Republican critics is calling on his colleagues to suspend the speaker’s security clearances, until or unless her disagreement with the CIA is resolved.

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said on ABCNews.com’s “Top Line” today that Pelosi, D-Calif., “can’t be trusted with intelligence secrets until this matter is cleared up.”

“The speaker’s intelligence security credentials are in question. I think this Congress needs to consider whether we would suspend that and ask her whether she will step down or step aside until such time as this matter is cleared up,” said King, who said he agreed with former House Speaker Newt Gingrich that Democrats should replace Pelosi as speaker.

“The briefings that take place on the fourth floor of the Capitol building will not be at the level of confidence and the ability of the members to keep that secure,” he added. “And certainly I think at this point the speaker can’t be trusted with intelligence secrets until this matter is cleared up.”

Pelosi last week accused intelligence officials of “misleading the Congress of the United States” by not fully briefing her about waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques. CIA Director Leon Panetta maintains that she was fully and accurately briefed.

King’s idea for a House floor vote on security clearances is not being embraced by House GOP leadership, according to Capitol Hill sources.

But Republican leaders are considering other ways to force all House members to take a stand on the controversy surrounding Pelosi before the Memorial Day break.

One concept being discussed would involve a vote on whether the House intelligence committee should investigate Pelosi’s allegations. Such a vote would almost certainly fail along party lines, but would force House Democrats into a politically awkward vote.

“There are a number of different ideas on the table,” King said. “We do go home for this Memorial [Day] break so there is a concern that this will dissipate over time. If it does then it’ll be the country that pays the price.”

Though Democrats are lining up behind the speaker, King predicted that splits will begin to appear inside the party.

“I think they have to decide whether national security means more to them then holding their party together,” he said. “At some point Democrats are going to have to decide whether — it probably will be a political decision on their part — whether their seats become vulnerable. If they think they’re going to lose their seats then they’re going to join Republicans in this growing movement to stand up for national security and set aside partisanship.”

“I expect to see that fairly soon and they’re all kinds of factions within the Democratic caucus that are pulling against each other right now,” King added. “But they are not standing on the steps of the US Capitol in solidarity with Nancy Pelosi today, and I don’t expect that’s going to happen because they don’t have any confidence that what she said was the truth.”

Watch the interview with Rep. Steve King HERE.

Also today, we spoke with Ana Marie Cox, of Air America, about Pelosi, Michael Steele’s efforts to turn around the Republican Party, and tomorrow’s dueling speeches pitting President Obama against former Vice President Dick Cheney.

(Guess which speech she’ll be attending.)

Watch our interview with Ana Marie Cox HERE.

Pelosi Leaves Unanswered Questions on Interrogation Briefings

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: The intelligence briefings received by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in 2002 have developed into a recurring distraction for congressional Democrats.

Instead of arguing over whether waterboarding and other techniques are legal, and whether they represent the right policies, Democrats are on the defensive as questions swirl over what one of the most prominent party leaders knew, and what she did about it.

Inconsistencies between the now-public account of the intelligence community and Pelosi’s description of what she knew have given Republicans an opening: They’re arguing that Democrats were complicit in allowing the very interrogation methods that President Obama now labels “torture.”

Pelosi told reporters today that she won’t answer questions on the matter until her weekly press conference tomorrow — keeping the story alive for a full week after ABC News first reported on the intelligence report.

When she does explain herself further, at least three key questions remain:

1. When did she actually know waterboarding took place?

Pelosi has maintained that, in the only briefing she received on enhanced interrogation techniques, she was not told that waterboarding or any other of the enhanced methods had been used used, only that the Bush administration believed it had the legal authority to use them.

That account is contradicted by the report to Congress from the intelligence community last week. It described a Sept. 4, 2002 briefing where Pelosi, then-House intelligence Chairman Porter Goss, and two aides were told about “the particular EITs that had been employed” on terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah.

The detailed notes of the briefing — which the report was based upon — may clarify some of what Pelosi and Goss were told, if they’re declassified by the Obama administration. (The top Republican on the House intelligence committee, Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., has reviewed those memos, and has asked for them to be released.)

Pelosi has not said publicly when she learned that waterboarding and other harsh techniques had taken place.

The intelligence report shows that a top Pelosi national-security aide, Michael Sheehy, participated in a February 2003 briefing where interrogation methods used on Abu Zubaydah — which at that point included waterboarding — were discussed. A Democratic aide says Pelosi was told by Sheehy about waterboarding then — some six months after it was first used.

In addition, Pelosi’s choice to succeed her on the intelligence committee — Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif. — was in that second briefing, plus two others, in 2003 and 2004, where enhanced interrogation techniques were discussed.

In the second such meeting — on July 15, 2004 — the intelligence report describes “specific mention of waterboarding as one of the EITs.”

Said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, on Fox News Wednesday: “She was clearly briefed on these interrogation techniques, she raised apparently no objections during those briefings, and now she wants to have it both ways.”

2. When she did find out, why didn’t she do more to stop it?

The speaker and her staff maintain that House Democrats did what little they could to register objections to the use of enhanced interrogation techniques — but that the Bush administration wouldn’t or couldn’t be stopped.

They point to a letter Harman wrote objecting to the techniques in February 2003, after the first briefing she received from intelligence officials on the interrogation methods.

Harman wrote to the CIA at the time that the use of the techniques “raises profound policy questions and I am concerned about whether these have been as rigorously examined as the legal questions.” That letter appears to have been ignored by the Bush administration.

Pelosi said in December 2007 that she “concurred” with Harman’s protest. But if she concurred at the time, she didn’t put it in writing; she didn’t sign the letter along with Harman, or otherwise formally register an objection.

Pelosi may be right that nothing she said or did would have changed the practices, and the classified nature of the briefings surely limited her options. But it doesn’t appear that she went through any great efforts to make her views known, privately or publicly.

Under her leadership, Congress did vote in 2008 to extend the Army Field Manual’s prohibition on torture to the intelligence community — a move that would have banned techniques such as waterboarding.

That bill was vetoed by President Bush, a point Pelosi aides make in arguing that Congress was powerless to stop the president.

“Failing to legally prohibit the use of waterboarding and other harsh torture techniques undermines our nation’s moral authority, puts American military and diplomatic personnel at-risk, and undermines the quality of intelligence,” Pelosi said after the veto.

Still, to some critics of waterboarding and other harsh tactics, the question of why Pelosi didn’t do more and sooner remains.

3. Does she think intelligence officials lied to her? And what will she do about it?

Almost lost in this discussion: If Pelosi was told in September 2002 that harsh techniques were not yet used, she was being badly misled.

According to the interrogation memos released last month by the Obama administration, Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002. Pelosi’s briefing occurred the following month.

A Pelosi spokesman, Brendan Daly, told ABC that the speaker is “is making no accusation against the CIA.”

But if she was so clearly lied to, why isn’t she demanding answers?

Perhaps more importantly moving forward, what does the speaker intend to do about this? She’s met with members of the intelligence committee to talk about ways to improve congressional oversight, but so far nothing firm is in place.

Will she hold the Obama administration to tougher standards, or press legislation — with a presumably friendlier administration now in office — to put in more congressional controls?

As we wait for answers, Pelosi has found relatively few allies among her fellow Democrats. Pressed by reporters yesterday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., allowed that “what was said and when it was said, who said it” should be part of a congressional inquiry — though his aides later explained that he was not referring specifically to Pelosi.

Some Democrats may even be making things more difficult for the speaker. Senate Intelligence Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told AFP: “I don’t want to make an apology for anybody, but in 2002, it wasn’t 2006, 07, 08 or 09. It was right after 9/11, and there were in fact discussions about a second wave of attacks.”

Pelosi Aides’ Plane Pique

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: E-mails obtained by a conservative government watchdog group are reigniting a two-year-old political fight over House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s use of military aircraft for travel.

The e-mails — obtained and released publicly by Judicial Watch — show several instances where Department of Defense officials complain about last-minute Pelosi travel cancellations, with one citing “hidden costs” involved in preparing jets for flights that never took place.

In another series of messages, the Pelosi-appointed director of the House’s Office of Interparliamentary Affairs, Kay King, expresses frustration that a particular type of jet won’t be available for members of Congress to use for official trips.

“It is my understanding there are NO G5s available for the House during the Memorial Day recess. This is totally unacceptable,” she wrote in one message obtained by Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act Request. “The Speaker will want to know where the planes are . . .”

The comment came in reference to planes available for bipartisan trips by congressional delegations — not the speaker’s personal travel.

The speaker’s office points out that, after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration put in place a new policy to have the Speaker of the House (who is third in line for the presidency, behind the president and the vice president) travel on a military plane whenever available, even on routine trips to and from his or her congressional district.

Pelosi’s predecessor as speaker, Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., also used a military plane for routine travel. The only difference: The House Sergeant-at-Arms determined that Pelosi, D-Calif., would sometimes require a larger aircraft to travel back-and-forth between Washington and her San Francisco congressional district, to ensure non-stop flights.

“The availability and size of the military aircraft is determined by the Department of Defense. Typically, when Speaker Pelosi uses military aircraft to travel between her Congressional District and Washington, the military assigns the same 12-seat aircraft used by her predecessor, Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois,” Pelosi’s office said in a written statement.

Republicans have been leveling similar charges of aircraft extravagance at the speaker since she took over her post in January 2007. FactCheck.org examined the claims earlier this year, and sided with the speaker’s office.

“She does not routinely fly about in a 757-size jet that she demanded from the Air Force. She normally flies on the same type of executive jet as her Republican predecessor,” the group found. “Pelosi has used the Air Force equivalent of a Boeing 757 to fly between Washington, D.C., and her San Francisco district. But she has done so exactly once, when no smaller aircraft was available, according to Air Force spokesman Eric Sharman.”

Nonetheless, the e-mails are likely to give fresh ammunition to Republicans who have sought to paint a portrait of Pelosi and her Democratic allies as out-of-touch.

Said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton: “Taken together, these documents show that Speaker Pelosi treats the Air Force like her personal airline.”

UPDATE: Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell was asked about the story at today’s briefing: “I really have nothing for you on it. . . . I mean, we provide air travel to a number of people. We provide aircraft for a number of government officials. That’s how we’ve done things for years; it’s how we continue to do things. I know of no one rendering a judgment on whether there is excessive use of those aircraft.”

Asked whether lawmakers should be more sensitive about arranging these flights given the budget crunch, Morrell said, “I have no reason to assume that they aren’t very conscientious about it and they don’t factor all those things into their decision-making.”

ABC News’ Luis Martinez contributed to this report.