by Frank James
A quick guided tour of some of the morning’s most important, most interesting, or both, Washington-related stories.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress he would support an economic stimulus to boost the ailing economy so long as it was temporary, putting him at odds with some Republicans who are using the current slowdown to argue for making President Bush’s tax cuts permanent.
South Carolina’s Republican voters were showing little enthusiasm for their field of candidates just before Saturday’s primary with the three segments of the state’s conservative voters—fiscal, social and national security conservatives—having different candidates who appeal to them.
Housing starts in 2007 fell to their lowest level in 27 years because of the crisis in the home mortgage sector and the slowing economy and many economists believed that the housing market had yet to reach bottom. Merrill Lynch, the world’s largest brokerage firm, reported a net loss of nearly $10 billion in the fourth quarter, which contained a write-down of $14.6 billion tied to imploding securities backed by by subprime mortgages.
Sen. John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, has a rapid-response team in place in South Carolina that is being kept busy by anti-McCain smears making the rounds. It’s an attempt by McCain’s forces to squelch the kind of whispering campaign of distortions and lies that hurt him badly before that state’s primary in 2000.
The U.S. military quintupled the number of airstrikes in Iraq in 2007 compared to 2006 as it received more information from Iraqis as a result of the increased security provided by the surge that allowed it to target more al Qaeda and insurgent locations.
Abortions in the U.S. dropped to their lowest level in 2005, the last year for which complete statistics exist, since 1975, 1.2 million, a new report said.
Mike Huckabee’s presidential campaign has been challenged by the need, accelerated by his Iowa success and fast-approaching Tsunami Tuesday in which 22 states will hold primaries, to run a national campaign with an inexperienced staff and not enough money.
Efforts by states and localities to offer universal health care plans to their citizens have run up against a federal law More Top Picks Cages Plants