by Frank James
A quick guided tour of some of the morning’s most important or interesting, or both, Washington-related stories.
Support appears to be slipping in the House for a resolution condemning the nearly century-old Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Turks after the modern-day Turks warned that approving the measure could hurt the U.S.-Turkish alliance and cause Turkey to close its territory to U.S. transshipments of vital supplies to American troops in Iraq.
The U.S. finds itself in a tricky situation strategically and diplomatically in Iraq as tensions escalate between two long-time allies, Turkey and the Iraqi Kurds, with the Turks appearing poised to launch attacks across its border into northern Iraq to strike at Kurdish separatists.
The federal government is investigating several large U.S. food companies for suspected fraud and other wrongdoing in their activities to provide food to the U.S. military in Iraq. A new study suggests that the number of deaths in hospitals and nursing-homes in 2005 due to a bacteria resistant to most common antibiotics was, at around 19,000, much higher than was previously thought.
Differing sharply with many conservative commentators, Republican presidential candidates all agree that global warming is a concern but advocate different approaches, with Sen. John McCain supporting emissions caps and better gas mileage while Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney prefer the use of alternative energy.
More than a third of major Republican donors who helped finance President Bush’s two campaigns for the White House are sitting on the sidelines due to their lack of enthusiasm for the Republican presidential candidates.
The Transportation Security Administration promised lawmakers his agency will increase oversight at overseas maintenance facilities used by U.S. airlines following concerns that terrorists could gain access to U.S. airliners to sabotage them.
Iowa Republicans moved up their primary by eleven days to Jan 3, as the state’s Democrats consider moving theirs earlier as well, all of which places more pressure on New Hampshire to move its primary forward so that it retains its first-in-the-nation status.
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Michael Mukasey, President Bush’s nominee to head the Justice Department as the new attorney general who is expected to be easily confirmed, has as perhaps his greatest challenge restoring the morale at the agency which was greatly sapped during the controversial tenure of his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales.
The Republican Party appears to be splitting along factional lines, with movement, fiscal and social conservatives apparently unable to disagree on whom can best lead their party and the Iraq War causing further divides and rumblings of cultural conservatives breaking away if Rudy Giuliani wins the nomination.