Robert Lopez served 8 years in our military, fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as a tank commander. He was told he'd get his whole education bill paid for when he got out of the service. Mr. Lopez has fought and sacrificed for our country but like so many others, Mr. Lopez has faced the bleak reality of a government that has turned its back on its veterans.

That is why Senators Jim Webb and Chuck Hagel proposed a new GI Bill, which would bring back WWII-style standards of providing vets with full tuition, room and board. And that is why 51 senators have signed on, including 9 Republicans like John Warner, giving this GI Bill tremendous bi-partisan support.

But it isn't enough. Faced with unprecedented filibusters, the only way to ensure Senate passage of the GI Bill is to get 60 cosponsors. So far, John McCain has refused. The same McCain who insists he supports our troops. The same McCain who is voting lockstep with the Bush administration (who have also resisted this bill). We need to get John McCain to do the right thing. We need him to sign now and signal to other Republican leaders that we should be strongly behind our vets.

The original GI Bill transformed American history, providing education for returning soldiers. Not only was this our nation's moral duty for the unbelievable sacrifices of our World War II veterans, it helped create America's middle class and spurred decades of economic growth for our country.

That's why, today, we're launching this new web video with an accompanying petition, urging Senator McCain to step up and be a leader for veterans, by signing onto the GI Bill.

The burden of ensuring that our veterans get the education they were promised and earned largely sits on his shoulders. If he won't stand up for the troops, he must explain why.

Vote Vets, WesPAC and Brave New Films feel passionately about giving our veterans the support they rightly deserve. Our government owes our troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan the opportunity to receive full educational benefits. These patriots have fought hard for our government; it's time our government started fighting hard for them.

Sign the petition to McCain here.

Update [2008-4-3 18:25:19 by Todd Beeton]:Watch the video below:

More as we have it...

Jim Webb will hold a press conference following Warner's.

Update [2007-8-31 14:33:42 by Jonathan Singer]: Warner declines to make an endorsement, but perhaps suggests that he'd like to see Tom Davis to run, saying that he'd like to see someone with experience, someone like a Congressman, to run. (Perhaps I'm reading too much into that answer, but perhaps not...)

Update [2007-8-31 15:25:41 by Jonathan Singer]: I think Marc Ambinder's reading is right:

Ex-Gov. Mark Warner, a once-upon-a-time presidential candidate, is probably going to run for the Democratic nomination. He is extremely popular; he will be heavily favored to win; his race will draw upon the same grassroots energies that excited the Democratic base in 2006. Having Warner on the ballot will help the Democratic presidential nominee in Virginia.

The problems for the GOP don't end there, however. It's clear that John Warner's retirement represents a disaster for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which simply cannot afford an open seat race in an expensive state that at least some signs indicate is trending blue (even if it is still a slightly red hue of purple).

But it goes beyond that, as well. The National Republican Congressional Committee is already going to be on the defense in Virginia's second congressional district, where Republican Congresswoman Virginia Thelma Drake only scraped by last year with 51 percent of the vote. The likelihood that Congressman Tom Davis of the 11th district, a northern Virginia district that is extremely expensive to advertise in and only leans about a point towards the Republican, will opt to make a run for the Republican senatorial nomination this year, thus leaving his seat open, only makes it that much tougher for the NRCC.

In short, regardless of how much of a headache John Warner has been for the GOP over the years, his retirement could not have come at a worse time for the Republicans, whose chances of retaking the House and the Senate, and potentially even retaining control over the White House, have been diminished as a result of today's announcement.

Update [2007-8-31 16:12:1 by Jonathan Singer]: Tom Davis is apparently intent on running a campaign about nothing.

They talk a lot.

"Republican officials" say Warner will announce his retirement today.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., is expected to announce today that he will not seek re-election, Republican officials said Thursday.

According to GOP campaign and congressional sources, the 80-year-old Warner has informed them he will retire when his fifth term ends at the end of next year.

So is it confirmed? Not quite yet.

Political analysts, however, cautioned that Warner may not come to a final decision until he steps up to the microphone at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where he is scheduled to appear at 2 p.m.

And as for Craig, it looks as though his resignation could be imminent.

Several well-placed GOP sources in Washington and Idaho have told CNN that embattled Republican Sen. Larry Craig is likely to resign soon, possibly as early as Friday.

[...]

GOP sources with knowledge of the situation told CNN's Dana Bash that the Republican National Committee was poised to take the extraordinary step of calling on Craig to resign but held off.

The RNC put the move on hold, the sources said, because top party leaders have received indications that Craig himself is preparing to step down.

Craig's resignation wouldn't be terribly surprising after yesterday's release of his arrest tape and a growing chorus of GOP senators, including NRSC chair John Ensign, for Craig to consider stepping aside.

So much for a sleepy Friday before Labor Day.

Basically, if we take the context of how he's doing it; where he's making the announcement, fundraising, age; it looks like a retirement announcement to me.  It's been widely expected, but now we've been given a timetable for an answer.  A day's wait.  

I have personally thought he had been avoiding announcing his future plans so he can paint himself in a way so his apprentice/heir, whatever you want to call him, Davis, looks like the next "John Warner" for Virginia.  

Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) will announce tomorrow at the University of Virginia whether or not he intends to seek a sixth term, according to two top Virginia sources. Warner is planning a 2 p.m. news conference on the grounds of the Charlottesville, Va., school, where he took his law degree over 50 years ago. The Virginian will give his speech near the statue of Thomas Jefferson on the steps of the school's famous Rotunda, adding a fitting Warner flourish to the event.

Timeline for announcing plans, full article here: http://www.politico.com/blogs/thecrypt/0 807/Warner_to_announce_tomorrow_whether_ he_will_seek_reelection.html

It's certainly taken a long enough time, but it seems that there now be a fourth Republican vote in in the Senate in favor of Congress setting a timetable for the withdrawal of American troops. The AP's Hope Yen has the story (via Steve Benen).

GOP Sen. John Warner, who wants U.S. troops to start coming home from Iraq by Christmas, said Sunday he may support Democratic legislation ordering withdrawals if President Bush refuses to set a return timetable soon.

"I'm going to have to evaluate it," Warner said. "I don't say that as a threat, but I say that is an option we all have to consider."

As Benen notes, this seems to be a departure from Warner's stance just a few days ago, when he said,

"Let the president set the timetable; let's not have the Congress set any timetable.... [T]he Congress has repeatedly tried to set timetables and a total plan by certain dates to have a withdrawal. I have voted against that, and I will continue to vote against that type of proposition."

First let's make clear that Warner is not yet coming out in favor of Congressional legislation setting a binding timeline for the withdrawal of American troops out of Iraq. But if he were to vote for such a measure out of unhappiness with the President's stubborn unwillingness to change course in Iraq, Warner would represent the fourth Republican vote in the Senate (after Gordon Smith, Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe) in favor of a timetable for redeployment.

Four Republican votes are not enough to force the President's hand -- or even to move legislation in the Senate. With Joe Lieberman voting consistently with the right on Iraq, it would take 10 Republican votes (plus a hopefully returning Tim Johnson voting with his party) just to get an up-or-down vote on legislation that would help bring an end to the war in Iraq. Yet despite the fact that Warner is seemingly on his way out, he does, as former chairman of the armed services panel, continue to maintain at least some sway with his Republican colleagues, perhaps enough to persuade even a few to join him in support of a timeline. That still doesn't get us to the 67 votes required to override the President in the Senate, let alone the 60 votes necessary to invoke cloture, but at the least it gets us a bit closer. So all eyes should be on John Warner in the coming weeks to see if he might actually follow through and try to force the President's hand on Iraq.

We all know the story of Good 'ole Johnny Warns.  In the first quarter he astounded Democrats everywhere when he raised a WHOPPING 500$ from a sole donor.  

Now the second quarter numbers came around, we all know John fundraised just a tad more to pull in an astonishing $71,914.  Now, that is obviously more than what he managed to pull in last time.  But let's put this into perspective.  

$60,150 Came from PAC's.  Mostly from one specifically - "...Republican Senators who have formed a joint fundraising committee, the 2007 Senator's Classic Committee..." Full quote and link below the fold.  

George 'Macaca' Allen has fundraised more money so far this cycle having raised $136,448 in 6 months.  

I've been on the John Warner retirement watch for the past few months, particularly since it emerged that he raised only $500 in the first quarter -- a rather stunning achievement for an incumbent, one that requires deliberate and intentional moves to shun potential donors. Since that time, the signals (for instance here and here) have continued to point to the strong possibility that Warner will not, in the end, run for another term representing Virginia in the Senate. Now The Hotline's Quinn McCord reports that Warner's latest campaign finance filing is not convincing many that he will run this cycle.

2ndQ FEC reports have been filed today for 3 GOP senators widely rumored to be considering retirement in 2008: John Warner, Chuck Hagel, and Larry Craig.

Warner had nowhere to go but up, considering he only raised $500 in the 1stQ, and indeed, his campaign brought in $71K in the 2ndQ ($60K of it from PACs), raising his CoH to $734K. Still, that's nowhere near the amount that an active re-election campaign would have raised at this point, so don't expect those retirement rumors to settle down anytime soon. Craig's fundraising was slightly more active in the 2ndQ ($201K), as was Hagel's ($388K), giving them CoH totals of $549K and $483K respectively. For Hagel, this is an uptick from the $144K that he raised in the 1stQ. (Craig raised $125K in the 1stQ, so he was a bit more active too). As reported earlier, Thad Cochran (also a retirement possibility) raised $312K for the 2ndQ.

Based on these numbers, it seems that most of these senators are merely keeping their options open. With the arguable exception of Warner, they haven't completely shut down their fundraising apparatuses, but they obviously don't feel the need to raise money in earnest yet (i.e. the $1M-$1.6M range that targeted incumbents are raising). Some may simply feel safe enough that they don't believe they need to build sizable war chests to win re-election, while others may indeed be leaning towards retirement.

The fact that Warner raised just $11,000 from individual donors is rather remarkable -- not as much so as raising $500 in total in the previous quarter, but nevertheless remarkable. Warner has, in effect, "completely shut down [his] fundraising [apparatus]."

McCord is correct in suggesting that Warner -- or any of the other two Republican Senators he mentions in the article above -- could turn on the campaign rather quickly and probably raise $1 million or more in a quarter should they decide to run for reelection. But they are going to have to make that decision at some point. And in the absence of any change, it still appears likely that John Warner is about done with Washington and ready to move on with his life.

In other Senate news... The Nashville City Paper's blog takes a look at the rumors apparently flying around Tennessee that freshman Republican Senator Lamar Alexander won't be running for reelection this cycle and instead will potentially accept a position as president of Vanderbilt University. They stress "that does not mean Alexander has even mentioned it but that people at the school are talking his name up" -- but it's still something worth keeping an eye on.

Ain't this cute:

Several Republican senators told President Bush's top national security aide privately Wednesday that they did not want Bush to wait until September to change course in Iraq.

Among those who embarked on this fool's errand were Sens. Pete Domenici and Lamar Alexander, both co-sponsors of Sen. Ken Salazar's (D-CO) bi-partisan S. 1545, which would implement the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. Well, sort of. Any mention of the withdrawal part of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations demands no actual policy change, rather it calls for a sense of the senate to be agreed upon on the conditions that certain benchmarks are met. It is this bill that the senators urged Hadley to urge the president to embrace NOW, not in September.

Mcjoan delivers a thorough smackdown of the ISG recommendation bill HERE.

This meeting comes as Senator Olympia Snowe announced that she will join her fellow Republican Sens. Gordon Smith and Chuck Hagel next week in voting with Democrats on the Levin/Reed amendment, which would mandate troop withdrawal to begin within 120 days, to be concluded by April 30, 2008.

It also comes the day before the White House is to release its 23-page progress report on Iraq that will announce that the government in Iraq has accomplished none of the benchmarks laid out for it. After the report is issued, Senator Warner intends to call publicly for a "change in Iraq policy." If he wants to do as much good as many think he has the potential to do, as a revered member of the senate, he will urge his fellow Republican senators to back Levin/Reed.

And that's not all happening tomorrow. Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi announced that the House would be taking up its own version of Levin/Reed this week.

Pelosi said: "The American people have rejected the President's failed policies in Iraq and his war without end. The situation on the ground in Iraq is worsening, and the Iraqi government has failed to meet the benchmarks set in law. This week, every Member of the House will have an opportunity to vote to set a new direction in Iraq.  The American people want Congress to bring our troops home, refocus our efforts to fighting terrorism, and hold the Bush Administration accountable."

That vote could come as soon as tomorrow night.