Swamp Gas, May 30, 2007

Posted by Frank James at 7:40 am CDT

A quick guided tour of some of the morning's most important or interesting (or both) Washington-related stories.

Ten U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq on Memorial Day, the Pentagon said, making May the deadliest month this year. Meanwhile, gunmen dressed as police kidnapped five Britons from an Iraqi ministry and more car bombings rocked Baghdad.

Congressional Republicans are hearing from more traditionally GOP voters who are increasingly questioning the Iraq War, which worries those lawmakers whose seats could be at risk because of the trend.

Robert Zoellick was named by President Bush to be the World Bank's new president to replace Paul Wolfowitz, forced to resign because of his controversial role in securing his girlfriend a high-paying job. Zoellick, a Goldman Sachs vice chairman, has already served the Bush Administration as U.S. Trade Representative and deputy Secretary of State.

The Supreme Court ruled that workers in unequal-pay disputes cannot sue employers years after the alleged wrongdoing, a decision that caused Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to take the relatively rare step of reading the dissent from the bench. She called the ruling a setback for women's rights.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) unveiled a health-care plan, which he said would insure all children and provide better medical access by reducing costs. His plan, which would be partly funded by increasing taxes on the wealthy, would retain employer-provided insurance, was described by experts as centrist and not as sweeping as one proposed by fellow Democrat John Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina.

President Bush lambasted conservative critics of the latest immigration-reform package, accusing them of "empty political rhetoric."

Obtaining U.S. citizenship will become more expensive, as the Bush Administration was set to announce it was more than doubling the fee for citizenship papers to $675 from $330 and almost tripling the fee for those wanting to become permanent residents. Immigration advocates criticized the increases which the government said were needed to pay for services.

Iran formally charged three Americans with spying and threatening its national security. Those charged were Haleh Esfandiari, a noted scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington, Kian Tajbakhsh, a social scientist with the New York-based Open Society Institute, and Parnaz Azima, a journalist with the U.S.-funded Radio Farda.

The federal government issued its first quarantine order in more than 40 years to isolate in an Atlanta hospital a man infected with a highly drug-resistant form of tuberculosis. Airline and health officials made efforts to contact passengers and crew who traveled on the same flights as the infected man.

Campaign cash is flooding into Democrats from corporate and other special interests now that Democrats control Congress. Rep. Jerry Costello, a downstate Illinois lawmaker, is an example as airlines and others seek to influence the decisions of the lawmaker who chairs the Aviation subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.