Weekend Watchdog

Air America's Sam Seder is off this Sunday, so we won't have our usual on-air Weekend Watchdog segment. But that shouldn't stop us from keeping the pressure on the Sunday TV shows to ask the tough questions.

Add your own questions in the comment thread. Contact information for the shows is below, so we can let them know what their viewers want asked.

For Sen. John Warner, R-Va. (NBC's Meet The Press): This week, you proposed reducing our troops level in Iraq by 5,000 to send a "strong signal" to neighboring countries that "we're not going to stay there forever."

But that would only reduce our troop level from 160,000 to 155,000, higher than the troop level was before the surge.

Wouldn't that send the opposite signal, that we don't mean what we say and we do plan to permanently occupy Iraq?

For Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tx. (ABC's This Week): Ten months ago (via Eschaton), you said you thought we had "about another four to six months to get this right" in Iraq.

With sectarian violence still raging and the Iraqi government still dysfunctional, by your own standard, isn't it clear that continuing the occupation won't get things right?

For Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. (Fox News Sunday): The Lexington Herald-Leader (via Ditch Mitch) found evidence that Crandall Canyon mine owner Bob Murray pressured the Labor Department to reassign inspectors who were confronting him about his poor safety record, by dropping your name and mentioning you are "sleeping with" the Labor Secretary, your wife Elaine Chao.

The paper also reported:

When it comes to workplace-related issues such as mine safety, the McConnell-Chao marriage presents an intriguing target for industry donors. At the Labor Department, Chao has taken what some reports say is a relaxed attitude toward the regulation of coal mines and an approach that labor unions perceive as hostile.

Sometimes Chao achieves what her husband cannot in the Senate, such as a wage freeze her department instituted on certain farmworkers.

Chao attends her husband's fund-raisers, chats with his donors and seeds her agency with his former aides. Chief among them is Deputy Labor Secretary Steven Law, whose last job was helping McConnell tap donors -- Bob Murray included -- at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. They collected an impressive $187 million in four years there.

Have the efforts of you and your wife to cater to your donors led to widespread mine safety problems, like what we saw at Crandall Canyon?

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