Congressional Republicans Who Cross the President Pay a Price Back Home

Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:

Risky Business

Some congressional Republicans who have broken ranks with the president over the Iraq war are finding it to be far riskier than national opinion polls might suggest. The Washington Post reports Maryland's Wayne Gilchrest — a Marine who saw combat in Vietnam — and who voted for the war funding bill with the troop withdrawal timetable — has been called a coward and a traitor during town hall meetings back in his district.

And constituents in Bob Inglis' South Carolina home district were so furious after he voted for the non-binding resolution opposing the president's troop surge — that local GOP officials are considering an effort to find a primary challenger for the next election. Inglis apparently got the message — he voted against the bill with the troop withdrawal timetable.

September 12, 2001 Meeting

Former CIA Chief George Tenet writes in his just-released book that on the day after 9/11 he met with Pentagon adviser Richard Perle.

"He said to me, 'Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday, they bear responsibility.'" But Bill Kristol notes in The Weekly Standard: "Richard Perle was in France on that day, unable to fly back after September 11. In fact Perle did not return to the United States until September 15."

This morning Tenet told NBC's "Today Show": "I may have been off by a couple of days. The encounter occurred. The conversation occurred."

But Perle "categorically denies" ever having mentioned Iraq to Tenet in the days after 9/11.

Can't Take a Joke?

We told you a week and a half ago that the student senate at the University of Rhode Island was threatening to decertify the school's College Republicans club — because it refused to apologize for a satirical offer of a scholarship for white heterosexual males.

Last week the senate voted to withdraw its apology demand after it was hammered by free speech advocates and school administrators.

The Republicans will publish an explanation of the scholarship offer — which was never paid. The president of the group tells Cybercast News: "The student senate has always been grasping for straws in their pursuit of trying to punish the College Republicans simply because we are the College Republicans."

Gas Stations

And some time ago we told you that lawmakers in Europe were concerned that natural emissions from livestock are more harmful to the planet than pollutants from planes, trains, and automobiles. Now the London Sun reports an official European Union declaration is demanding changes to the diets of cows and sheep — and ways to capture their gas emissions and recycle manure.

The document warns "the livestock sector presents the greatest threat to the planet." The U.N. says livestock farming produces 18 percent of all greenhouse gasses — while all forms of transportation generate 14 percent.

—FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.