November 16, 2008 – Capitol Hill Blue

Sparks will fly in Congress this week

November 16, 2008

Expect plenty of fireworks when the U.S. Congress meets this week for a post-election session focused largely on the ailing U.S. economy.

With Barack Obama preparing to become the 44th U.S. president on January 20, lawmakers will take another crack at providing fiscal relief to Americans and the U.S. auto industry, and elect leaders for the new Congress set to convene on January 6 with Obama’s Democrats in stronger control.

Lawmakers also will move to expel Republican Ted Stevens from the Senate if a protracted ballot count shows that Alaska voters returned the 84-year-old senator to Washington after his conviction for corruption last month.

Obama reaches out to former rivals

November 16, 2008

Presidents typically say they want to be surrounded by strong-willed people who have the courage to disagree with them. President-elect Barack Obama, reaching out to Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republicans, actually might mean it.

Abraham Lincoln meant it. He appointed his bitter adversaries to crucial posts, choosing as war secretary a man who had called him a “long-armed ape” who “does not know anything and can do you no good.”

You could say his Cabinet meetings were frank and open.

Richard Nixon didn’t mean it.

“I don’t want a government of yes-men,” he declared. But among all the president’s men, those who said no did so at their peril. He went down a path of destruction in the company of sycophants.

Race crimes rise after Obama’s election

November 16, 2008

Cross burnings. Schoolchildren chanting "Assassinate Obama." Black figures hung from nooses. Racial epithets scrawled on homes and cars.

Incidents around the country referring to President-elect Barack Obama are dampening the postelection glow of racial progress and harmony, highlighting the stubborn racism that remains in America.

From California to Maine, police have documented a range of alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts have been delivered by adults, college students and second-graders.

Defense Secretary Breaks From Past to Ensure Smooth Transition

November 16, 2008

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is approaching the presidential transition unlike any of his predecessors.

Nation’s Economic Crisis Forces Democrats to Focus More Intensely on Creating Jobs

November 16, 2008

For most of his campaign, President-elect Barack Obama’s economic message was a call to restore balance to an off-kilter system, with investments in health care and education and reforms to the tax code and labor laws.

World Leaders Agree to Seek Major Reform

November 16, 2008

World leaders holding an emergency meeting to combat the economic crisis agreed yesterday to a far-reaching action plan that, over the next 4 1/2 months, would begin to reshape international financial institutions and reform worldwide regulatory and accounting rules.

Detroit Has Plans for Loans to Retool. First It Must Survive.

November 16, 2008

DETROIT — In Washington, President Bush and others see the $25 billion in loans Congress has already approved to retool the ailing automobile industry as a convenient pot of money to help automakers survive the economic tumult.

U.S., Pakistan Have Tacit Agreement on Airstrikes

November 16, 2008

The United States and Pakistan reached tacit agreement in September on a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy that allows unmanned Predator aircraft to attack suspected terrorist targets in rugged western Pakistan, according to senior officials in both countries. In recent months, the U.S. drones have fired…