Day: January 2, 2007

The nation honored Gerald R. Ford on Tuesday in a high-powered fanfare for the common man who was summoned to the presidency in the Watergate crisis. He was remembered for what he didn’t have — pretensions, a scheming agenda, a great golf game — as much as for the small-town authenticity he brought to high office.

“In President Ford, the world saw the best of America and America found a man whose character and leadership would bring calm and healing to one of the most divisive moments in our nation’s history,” President Bush said in his eulogy.

Congress returns to work on Thursday, where Democrats will inherit a congressional agenda dominated by the war in Iraq, increasing their exposure to what has only been a politically damaging issue for Republicans.

In the weeks ahead, the new Democratic Congress will be confronted with President Bush’s new plan for Iraq and a White House request that lawmakers authorize an estimated additional $100 billion to pay for the war.

Democrats also may be asked to support a plan lifting restrictions on reserve deployments to ease the strain on active-duty troops.

A new report by scientists studying Louisiana’s sinking coast says the land here is not just sinking, it’s sliding ever so slowly into the Gulf of Mexico.

The new findings may add a kink to plans being drawn up to build bigger and better levees to protect this historic city and Cajun bayou culture.

If the land is shifting — even slightly — engineers may need to take that into consideration as they build new levees and draw lines across the coast to identify areas that should and shouldn’t be protected.

Ordinary Americans joined President Bush and other dignitaries to pay final respects to Gerald R. Ford as his flag-draped casket rested under the Capitol dome, before a last round of funeral services and burial near his old family home in Michigan.

The remains were to be removed from the Rotunda on Tuesday, to lie in repose briefly outside the Senate before leaving the Capitol where Ford served as a congressman for 25 years.