by Frank James
A quick guided tour of some of the morning's most important or most interesting (or both) Washington-related stories.
President Bush publicly expressed his frustration with the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki for its inability to achieve political reconciliation among its ethnic factions but stopped short of withdrawing support as anticipation grows for the mid-September progress report from U.S. officials in Iraq.
Fourteen U.S. soldiers in Iraq were killed when a Blackhawk helicopter crashed apparently from a mechanical problem and not hostile action, according to the U.S. military.
A White House manual on how to deal with protesters that has come to light because of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit tells staffers that the priority is to keep dissenters from President Bush's view.
The Central Intelligence Agency before 9/11 let bureaucratic inertia and budget shortfalls interfere with efforts to thwart al Qaeda, according to a secret, two-year old inspector general's report that was finally released Tuesday and whose conclusions were immediately rejected by former CIA Director George Tenet.
President Bush, at the end of the Quebec meeting with his counterparts from Canada and Mexico, denied rumors that the three nations' governments are covertly working to create a regional superpower like the European Union that would subvert their nations' sovereignty.
Federal Reserve Board officials are optimistic that the steps they've taken so far to ease the credit crunch have helped stabilize the financial markets and made mortgage money more available but many Wall Street observers disagree, wanting the central bank to move more aggressively to lower rates.
President Bush supports giving the Federal Housing Administration more flexibility in helping low and middle-income homeowners at risk of default or foreclosure refinance their homes.
The credit crisis spells trouble for President Bush and Republicans generally harming the party's claim to be better than the economy than Democrats and giving resonance to Democratic calls for more regulation to prevent the kind of excesses that led to the current crisis.
No-bid contracts are being using increasingly by the federal government, increasing the costs to taxpayers and raising concerns that decades of efforts to stop cronyism in government contracting are being reversed.
California Democrats, joining a growing national movement, want to place an initiative on their state's ballot to have the popular vote decide how states award their electoral votes to presidential candidates.
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Comments
KKKarl Rove's legacy codified into a "sensitive" political document protected by the Whitehouse? Nah ... that couldn't happen, right?
Americans are supposed to enjoy the Constitutional freedoms of speech and assembly. That the Cheneybush regime, under the direction of KKKarl and Satancheney are so very well organized in their efforts to destroy civil liberties is no longer a revelation: just another CONFIRMATION of their dastardly plans and evil minds.
Not since Richard Nixon, driven from office in shame, has the IMPERIAL Presidency been so rock solid.
Give the devil his due, KKKarl & Satancheney are extremely good at being evil.
Please don't let the President see this message. It might confuse or frighten him.
Posted by: snalg | August 22, 2007 10:10 AM
When all is said and done, the effect of the Fed's recent actions in the credit "crisis" (not) was to bail out wealthy traders who took huge but legal risks in order to go for the big time paydays. Is that the group we want the government to assist. The whole idea of being a hedge fund trader is to take risks, knowing you could lose big or win big.
As to the unfortunate homeowners, those who took out mortgages they so couldn't afford in order to
buy pricey houses, should the Fed be rewarding people for stupidity? And why would the govt (that is, us taxpayers) bail them out.
President Bush is no doubt singing a different, far more conciliatory tune to Al-Maliki, who, being far smarter than W, is jerking him around like a puppet, visiting Syria, cozying up to Iran, and brazenly too.
I'd say Maliki has the upper hand in this relationship, by a substantial margin. Bush has no viable alternatives
to him other than chaos.
Democrats, meanwhile, continue to backpedal. It seems crystal clear that
Bush will, at most, withdraw US forces up to the number of the surge, no more. The war will be going full blast in January 09. And it's not at all clear
that either of the lead Dem candidates will have the guts or the tenacity to pull out, given their recent backpedaling.
In November, 2008, Americans may not have a choice on the Iraq war as the de facto decision will have been made...to stay indefinitely.
Posted by: Helena | August 22, 2007 10:40 AM
The White House has a right to develop a manual on to handle protesters and that is what it did.
The ACLU as usual filed a lawsuit and settled it for $80,000 most of which went to ACLU lawyers that's all the ACLU is about is their lawyers. The whole organization is a bunch of troublemakers. Jerry White, Springfield, IL
Posted by: Jerry White | August 22, 2007 1:53 PM
That is why we are where we are. Bush's sycophants don't dare tell the president he has no clothes.
Posted by: Rick/Sneads Ferry, NC | August 22, 2007 4:11 PM
Jerry White,
Dubya wasn't spending his money when the Gubbermint settled the suit, was he?
If Dubya were half as tough with this lawsuit as his military serv... (sorry, wrong analogy).
Anyway if he really weren't so afraid of having the light of day shown on his suppression of free speech he should have let this case go to trial.
You can't handle the T-shirt.
Posted by: Doug Zook | August 22, 2007 4:16 PM