Swamp Gas, June 7, 2007

by Frank James

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

Vice President Cheney, in a March 2004 meeting, pushed for the domestic wiretapping program over Justice Department officials' concerns that elements of it were illegal, according to a former top agency official. The meeting came the day before then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales's controversial and unsuccessful visit to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital room to get the sick man to override his aides' objections.

The immigration compromise being considered in the Senate would create a logistical nightmare for an already overburdened federal bureaucracy.

The tuberculosis-infected Atlanta lawyer had lawmakers worried about the continued vulnerabilities to terrorism the case exposed.

U.S. District Court Judge Reginald Walton, who gave a harsh sentence to Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former chief aide convicted for perjury and obstruction of justice, is known as a tough judge who hands down stiff sentences, which is why President Bush made him one of the first judges he named to the federal bench.

Immigration bill supporters fended off a key amendment that would have barred many illegal immigrants, including those convicted for failing to obey deportation orders, from being eligible to gain legal status. But the bill's future was still in doubt.

Scientists reprogrammed ordinary skin cells to act like embryonic stem cells, raising the possibility that the moral and religious objections to embryonic stem cell research could become moot.

Federal prosecutors are probing the Kuwaiti company building the U.S. embassy in Baghdad for allegedly obtaining Pakistani and West African workers through human trafficking and keeping them as virtual slaves.

Rudy Giuliani is preparing to expand his campaign beyond national security, the issue most identified with him, to propose a health-insurance plan that would be a major shift from the current system, with people paying for their own care the way they pay for car or home insurance. It's a risk for Giuliani since many people like the current approach.

Human-rights groups say there were at least 39 "ghost detainees," people held as terrorist suspects, in secret U.S. detention centers around the world whose fates were unknown. Sometimes wives and children of detained suspects were held as well, according to the groups scheduled to issue a report today.

A $10 million earmark for the Coconut Road near Ft. Myers, Fla. appeared in a 2006 federal transportation bill written by Rep. Don Young, a Republican from Alaska. The road would presumably benefit Florida developer Daniel J. Aranoff who helped raise $40,000 in campaign funds for the lawmaker.