by Frank James
A quick guided tour to some of the morning’s most interesting or important (or both) Washington-related stories.
U.S. and Iraqi military forces mounted a huge offensive to root out Sunni insurgents in Baquba in Diyala Province.
U.S. commanders rejected the recommendation of Army mental-health experts that soldiers get one month breaks after spending three months in combat since such a plan would reduce force levels available to the surge.
Dozens of Iraqis who served as Arabic and cultural interpreters for the U.S. military have fled Iraq for their safety only to become abandoned by the U.S. that once relied so heavily on them. Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that his embassy’s staff lacked enough qualified people and that security rules were too restrictive.
The Bush Administration freed up millions of dollars for humanitarian purposes and to buttress the Palestinian Authority government of President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah-led government against the more extremist Hamas group which has taken over the Gaza Strip.
Karl Rove and other senior White House staffers used Republican National Committee e-mail accounts to conduct official business and deleted numerous e-mails in violation of federal record-keeping laws, according to a House investigation.
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Six states are ignoring a federal law requiring them to create more secure drivers licenses, crimping plans to make those documents de facto national identification cards. Lawmakers in Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Washington say the federal law is too expensive to implement and an invasion of privacy.
Immigration legislation was reintroduced in the Senate by Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid with a list of 22 amendments, some likely to prove divisive, such as one which would require illegal immigrants to return to their home countries before applying.
The Democratic-controlled House may break up the immigration bill into more digestible parts, having votes on discrete, popular chunks like border security and provisions for agricultural and high tech workers.
Sen. Dick Durbin and Rep. Bobby Rush vowed to introduce bills to strengthen the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s power to recall dangerous products in the wake of the agency’s slow response to reports of problems with deadly magnet toys that eventually killed or wounded dozens of children.