Swamp Gas, December 13, 2007

by Frank James

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

Eight veterans charities actually spent less that a third of the money the public donated to help vets of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars on the returning members of the military, according to a watchdog group.

With their attempts to drive the agenda on the Iraq War and domestic issues frequently thwarted by President Bush and Republican lawmakers, the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate have taken to blaming each other for their inability to get more accomplished.

The Federal Reserve Board tried to thaw the credit freeze by saying it would extend $40 billion in loans to U.S. banks while central banks in Europe agreed to take their own steps to improve short-term lending which has been greatly reduced by the fallout of from the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

Somalia has grown into the worst humanitarian crisis on the African continent with 200,000 mostly women and children fleeing ahead of advances by pro-government militias.

The last Republican presidential debate before the Iowa caucuses was somewhat overshadowed by a seemingly pejorative question former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's asked about Mormon beliefs before the debate, and his apology to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney at the end of the debate.

A Marine colonel who in 2002 wrote a paper criticizing the use of military tribunals to try Guantanamo detainees is now the chief judge of tribunals there.

Immigration is the top or one of the leading issues for many voters in Iowa who are witnessing the effects of illegal immigration far from the border and haven't heard yet a satisfactory answer to the complicated problem of undocumented workers from the presidential candidates stumping there for support.

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) has given the Bush Administration one week to tell Congress whether foreign-intelligence agencies videotaped interrogations of terrorist suspects and provided those tapes to the CIA.

President Bush vetoed a congressional effort to expand the state children's health insurance program for the second time, saying as he did previously that the expansion allowed adults into the program and would raise taxes.

Army suicides reached a record this year—109—as deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan grew lengthier and many Army officials remained the relatively insensitive to the mental health needs of soldiers.