Swamp Gas, September 17, 2007
by Frank James
A quick guided tour of some of the morning's most important, most interesting (or both) Washington-related stories.
President Bush is set to announce Michael Mukasey, a law-and-order conservative and retired judge who has received Democratic support in the past, as his choice for attorney general, succeeding the controversial Alberto Gonzales whose last day was Friday.
U.S. ambassador to the Iraq, Ryan Crocker, criticized the bureaucratic delays facing Iraqis seeking asylum in the U.S., including those at risk from insurgents because they helped the U.S., and urged in a diplomatic cable that the process be greatly speeded up.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that he would advise President Bush to veto Democratic legislation that would require U.S. troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan to spend as much time home as they do deployed, calling it a "backdoor " way to speed up a troop drawdown.
The Federal Reserve's expected interest-rate cut this week isn't likely to turnaround consumer sentiment or undo the continuing damage from the subprime mortgage crisis.
With the failure of comprehensive immigration legislation behind them, lawmakers in Congress are introducing legislation piecemeal, including a Democratic proposal that would give conditional legal status to young illegal immigrants and Republican proposals to prevent illegal immigrants from receiving federal benefits.
Immigration enforcement officials are seeing more Cubans being smuggled into the U.S. and would like to crack down on the funding source, Cuban Americans but are bumping up against that community's political clout.
Wikipedia, the do-it-yourself online encyclopedia, has become a place where supporters and opponents of presidential candidates fight over their political biographies such as whether Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is a conservative, moderate or liberal Republican.