By Frank James
A quick guided tour of some of the morning’s most important or interesting (or both) Washington-related stories.
The Republican Party is losing its grip as the party of business, a title it has long claimed, as fiscal conservatives grow dissatisfied with rising government spending and deficits under GOP leadership while there’s rising unhappiness with the Iraq War and the Republican leadership’s slower-than-Democrats response to global warming and health care problems.
The controversial Blackwater USA private contractor firm has fired 122 of its armed guards in Iraq in the past three years but also tried to cover up shootings, according to a congressional report that resulted from the recent killing of innocent Iraqi civilians by Blackwater employees.
A review of facts related to the 1967 attack by Israeli pilots on the U.S. spy ship U.S.S. Liberty during Israel’s Six Day War against Egypt still leaves the central question unanswered: Why was the attack which left 34 Americans dead ordered?
With one of the largest meat recalls as an ironic backdrop, Congress is considering legislation that would drop federal inspections of meat by small producers which is then shipped across state lines. Scientists were surprised by the vast extent of Arctic ice melting that occurred this summer and by their inability to predict it.
Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested he might run for parliament and become prime minister, a strong indication that the former KGB official plans to hold onto the power he’s amassed.
A new Washington Post-ABC News poll is bad news for President Bush and many congressional Republicans as it indicates that most Americans don’t want Congress to give President Bush’s the full $190 billion he’s requested for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars while they do support expanding a children’s’ health insurance program he and many congressional Republicans oppose.
Sen. Barack Obama may be the fastest-rising political star in recent memory, raising prodigious amounts of campaign cash and getting lavished with media attention but some some observers believe he appears to have plateaued More Top Picks Webcams
Obama continued his run as one of American politics biggest rainmakers, raising $20 million during the third quarter even with the challenge of the typically slower summer months. Sen. Hillary Clinton, like the major Republican candidates, didn’t release her numbers Monday.
In his new autobiography, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas describes how he came to be a conservative, an ideological journey with its underpinnings in his childhood when he was raised by his strict, “no excuses” grandfather and later reaffirmed by life experiences in which brushes with liberals and liberalism repeatedly left him with a bad taste in his mouth.