by Mark Silva

Come along for a brief tour of some of the top, or simply more interesting, stories of the day in Washington or perhaps a bit beyond, yet connected to, the Washington horizon this morning:

TEMPTATION STREET --The new congressional and lobbying ethics law is sending a "ripple of fear'' through K Street, home of the Washington lobbyists, the way the New York Times tells it. "It comes amid signs that federal prosecutors are taking a newly aggressive approach to corruption cases — including treating campaign contributions as potential bribes.''

The first concern is what lobbyists are calling the new “temptation rules.” The Times notes: "Not only do they bar lawmakers and aides from accepting any gifts, meals or trips from lobbyists, they also impose penalties up to $200,000 and five years in prison on any lobbyist who provides such freebies.

BASRA BACKSLIDES -- When Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, conferred with President Bush at Camp David last week, he said British forces in Iraq had made a transition from "combat to overwatch'' in three of the four provinces they controlled and hoped to achieve the same oversight role in the fourth province, Basra in the south.

But the Washington Post paints a troubling picture of Basra today: "As British forces pull back from Basra in southern Iraq, Shiite militias there have escalated a violent battle against each other for political supremacy and control over oil resources, deepening concerns among some U.S. officials in Baghdad that elements of Iraq's Shiite-dominated national government will turn on one another once U.S. troops begin to draw down,'' the Post reports..

"Three major Shiite political groups are locked in a bloody conflict that has left the city in the hands of militias and criminal gangs, whose control extends to municipal offices and neighborhood streets. The city is plagued by "the systematic misuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias that increasingly intermingle with political actors," a recent report by the International Crisis Group said.

"it's hard now to paint Basra as a success story," a senior U.S. official in Baghdad with long experience in the south told the Post. Instead, it has become a different model, one that U.S. officials with experience in the region are concerned will be replicated throughout the Iraqi Shiite homeland from Baghdad to the Persian Gulf. A recent series of war games commissioned by the Pentagon also warned of civil war among Shiites after a reduction in U.S. forces.

LIVING IN THE OLD USSR -- Heavy sedatives keep Larisa Arap languishing in a woozy haze at a mental asylum, the victim not of a troubled mind, her family says, but of a Soviet-era practice that continues to muzzle and punish dissent in today's Russia, the Chicago Tribune's Alex Rodriguez reports today.Earlier this summer, Arap, an activist with former chess champion Garry Kasparov's opposition movement, co-wrote an article that alleged abusive practices at local psychiatric clinics. When Arap appeared at a Murmansk clinic to pick up a routine medical certificate July 5, a doctor called police and had her taken to a local asylum.

"One of the doctors asked whether I thought it was normal to write such things," Taisiya Arap said. "She said, 'It's not possible to write such things. It's forbidden.'"

The Soviet Union routinely locked up dissidents in asylums, a practice that attracted worldwide condemnation because of the protests of Andrei Sakharov and other human-rights activists. Today, 16 years after the Soviet collapse, authorities are increasingly returning to psychiatry to suppress political opponents or punish activists, according to human-rights organizations and other watchdog groups.

BIG UNEASY -- Nearly two years after Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans, there are signs that the city "famous for its laissez-faire lethargy and laid-back detectives'' is gaining new ground against a tide of criminality which threatens to sweep away the promise of recovery.

From Coronado Heights to Lakeview, hope is returning that "the battle for New Orleans," as residents call it, is winnable – on the streets and inside the city's corruption-tinged criminal justice system, the Christian Science Monitor reports. "Reforms in the squad room and the courtroom have lifted the rate of solved murders here from 16 percent to 42 percent since January. Moreover, a new violent-crime unit has won convictions in 19 of 20 cases since April.''

"We're in a brave new world here. It's the wild, wild West, and a circumstance that very, very few cities have ever been through," says Stella Baty Landis, an anticrime activist and owner of Sound Cafe in the Marigny neighborhood, tells the Monitor.

Still, the city's murder rate is on track to top 100 for every 100,000 residents, more than 11 times the national average. The latest crime wave mirrors the dark days of the late 1980s' crack epidemic and marks New Orleans as the city with the sharpest spike in violent crimes in the US over the past year.

LEARNING TO LOVE YOUTUBE -- The majority of Republican presidential candidates are backing off their objections to participating in the unconventional YouTube debates, the Washington Times reports today.

"Candidates' reservations about the seriousness of the format, which features videotaped questions from voters, and the original September date are being resolved and the field is growing, said sources close to the campaigns and debate organizers, the paper finds. "We're working with CNN, YouTube and the candidates to find a suitable date," said Florida Republican Party spokeswoman Erin VanSickle, whose group is co-sponsoring the debate with the cable news network, to be aired live from St. Petersburg, Fla.

Initially, only two of the 10 declared Republican candidates agreed to participate: Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas. The number is now at four and, the paper's sources say, the full field could be announced as early as this week. The debate now likely will take place in November or December.

"The Democratic CNN/YouTube debate was a success, and we have equally high expectations for the Republican CNN/YouTube debate," a YouTube spokesman told the paper. "We remain confident that all of the Republican campaigns will participate."