Day: December 13, 2006

Although he says he will take recommendations by the Iraq Study Group and others "very seriously," President Bush has decided to continue his basic policy on the war and has asked his staff to work out the details as he wraps up a highly public review of the war and its aims.

White House insiders say Bush still believes the war can be won and is determined to "stay the course" until that victory is achieved — a goal that few others within the President’s inner circle believes is valid.

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was, as a Congressman and politician, about as phony as they came.

He claimed to be a born-again Christian but cussed like a sailor. He decried the "politics of personal destruction," but practiced the destruction of his enemies as a fine-honed art.

He took bribes, laundered campaign funds and milked the system for personal gain. When he got caught, he ran like a thief in the night, resigning from Congress.

Now DeLay is back with a new "grassroots" political organization and a blog.

Two apparently unrelated stories that got prominent coverage in the national media last week tell us a great deal about the political uses of fear. First, on Dec. 5, New York City made front-page news by announcing it had decided to prohibit everyone from the fanciest restaurants to the most humble street vendors from selling foods containing trans fat.

Three days later the FBI created headlines when it revealed it had arrested a man who had allegedly plotted to launch a terrorist attack against Chicago-area Christmas shoppers just before the holiday.

With the whole world watching, George W. Bush is looking like a man who has just figured out what most of us saw long ago — that he got himself cornered in an Oval Office.

Never mind that Geometry 101 says it can’t happen. Washington 101 says it can — and Bush now knows that it did. Deep down, he also knows why: Everybody he trusted to get it right in Iraq got it wrong. Perhaps he did, too — by failing to ask the right questions and of those he so blindly trusted.

If Rep. Harold Ford decides to run again for the Senate in 2008, he’ll find a different political landscape. And it could be less hospitable, political experts say.

Even so, the Memphis Democrat’s loss by only 2.7 percentage points to Republican Bob Corker last month would still leave him a viable candidate to take on Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., whose first term ends in two years.

Attorneys for the U.S. Justice Department may intervene to defend the Patriot Act in a federal case involving an Islamic charity, court documents show.

The charity, Life for Relief and Development, was raided by federal agents in September and sued Comerica Bank last month, saying it violated the its civil rights by planning to close its accounts.

The Christmas trees are back up at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

Maintenance staff worked overnight to restore the 14 plastic trees that had been removed during the weekend because of a rabbi’s threat to sue over the lack of a menorah in the airport’s holiday decor.

President Bush, facing intense pressure to craft a new blueprint for the Iraq war, said Tuesday the U.S. is holding fast to its objectives and commitment. The White House said he knows the general direction he wants to move U.S. policy but won’t announce it until next month.

Congress comes and goes, but new federal regulations just keep on coming.

Congress has gone home, but bureaucrats are still concocting new regulations to govern American life. The sprawling agenda is spelled out this week in illuminating detail.

The La Graciosa thistle will get new critical habitat in California’s San Luis Obispo County. So will the Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep, in the mountains. Cabbage growers in North Carolina, California and Texas could get better crop insurance.