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by Frank James

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

Scores of people in Karachi were killed when two bombs exploded near the truck carrying Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader and former Pakistani premier, who had just returned to her native land after eight years in exile. She was safe but the attack underscored the instability of the nation that is a key ally to the U.S. in the war on terror.

President Bush’s veto of the State Child Health Insurance Program was sustained in the House as the Democratic leadership in the chamber fell 13 lawmakers short of having enough votes to override the veto. House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi vowed to send another bill to the president in a matter of weeks.

As he campaigns in South Carolina, Sen. John McCain is frequently reminded of the ruthless campaign that was waged against him in 2000 on then Gov. George Bush’s behalf, with South Carolinians approaching him now to apologize for the smear campaign against him. On the second day of his confirmation hearings, Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey found the atmosphere tenser than it was the first day as Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee tried to push him on the issue of whether waterboarding constituted torture.

Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign massive campaign war chest has been improbably enlarged by donations from low-income Chinese immigrant workers who can least afford such contributions and in some cases feel pressured by neighborhood associations to make them.

As thousands of politically active evangelical Christians prepared to meet in Washington, they confronted the fact that none of the Republican presidential candidates gives them great confidence in terms of being the person to carry forward the Religious Right’s agenda.

The U.S. military was able to successfully bring Shiite and Sunni leaders from southwest Baghdad together

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to broker an agreement for the end of sectarian violence and attacks on U.S. troops.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said private security contractors whose priority is to protect their clients no matter what are harming the U.S. military’s efforts to gain the Iraqi trust.

Many House and Senate Democrats reacted negatively to a bipartisan Senate compromise on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that would give retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that provided consumer records and access to their facilities to federal counterterrorism agents.

Boeing said it has solved most of the problems with the virtual border fence it’s building for the Homeland Security Department, flaws that delayed the project to the point where the agency threatened to pull its contract if Boeing didn’t quickly fix the problems.