by Frank James
A quick guided tour of some of the morning's most important or interesting (or both) Washington-related stories.
Deaths of U.S. service members in Iraq fell to the lowest level in more than a year, a drop military officials attributed to the surge of coalition forces in the country.
Iran's top security official said his nation would help the U.S. in Iraq in exchange for the U.S. setting a timetable for withdrawing American troops.
The U.S. military's struggle against the most dangerous threat to soldiers, improvised explosive devices, has included a long learning curve with much trial and error.
Law-and-order cases figure prominently on the Supreme Court's docket this term with the possibility of decisions that will frustrate efforts to easily label the court as conservative, increasing chances its opinions will play a large role in the presidential elections.
Many businesses fear a federal court will uphold the legality of a Homeland Security Department program that could result in the firing of numerous illegal workers because of a failure of their Social Security numbers to match federal records.
North Korea appears to be reaching out, with a summit between North and South Korean leaders and the communist nation's vow to stop its nuclear program being seen as possible signs of the desperate straits the impoverished nation finds itself in.
The U.S. maintains its leadership as the world's top source of weapons to the developing world.
Congress raised the debt limit again as the national debt rose to nearly $10 trillion, with critics accusing the federal government of recklessly increasing the nation's borrowing ability while proponents said the expansion was needed to keep from harming the U.S.'s creditworthiness.
More than a quarter of the recruits the Central Intelligence Agency offered jobs to were racial or ethnic minorities, a record, the CIA's top spy said.
John Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidate, can't match the campaign cash of Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama so the former senator's hopes for the nomination rest squarely on grassroots efforts in New Hampshire and Iowa.
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