Bush, Lieberman in Homeland Security debate

President Bush is in South Dakota today complaining about U-S Senate inaction on his “homeland security” initiatives, restating criticism he leveled in DesMoines yesterday. Bush says the Senate is trying to protect the “turf” of the 100 various agencies who’ll be losing employees to the new Department of Homeland Security. Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Democrat’s Vice Presidential candidate in 2000, is visiting Iowa, too, and rejects Bush’sassertion that Senators are trying to “micro-manage.” Lieberman says Democrats in the Senate and Bush agree on 90 percent of the merger of agencies into a single Homeland Security Department, but Lieberman says it doesn’t make any sense for Bush to insist that the workers who’re transferred into the new agency lose some of their rights as federal employees. This morning, Lieberman’s meeting with Iowa’s Lieutenant Governor to talk about homeland security. Bush’s speech about the Homeland Security agency is being delivered at Mount Rushmore, located in the home state of the leader of Senate Democrats.