January, 2008

Senate Democrats assailed Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey on Wednesday for refusing to offer an opinion on the legality of waterboarding, an interrogation method that many consider a form of illegal torture. In often sharp exchanges, the lawmakers accused Mukasey of trying to protect the Bush administration, with one comparing him to a corporate lawyer trying to cover up the misdeeds of his client. Another accused him of playing word games and engaging in the sort of political double-talk that he said he would seek to avoid as attorney general.

Suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 reached their highest level since the Army began keeping such records in 1980, according to a draft internal study obtained by The Washington Post. Last year, 121 soldiers took their own lives, nearly 20 percent more than in 2006. At the same time, the number of attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries in the Army has jumped sixfold since the Iraq war began. Last year, about 2,100 soldiers injured themselves or attempted suicide, compared with about 350 in 2002, according to the U.S. Army Medical Command Suicide Prevention Action Plan.

Latino evangelicals are credited for helping re-elect President Bush, but their loyalty to the Republican Party waned after the failed immigration bill left them feeling abandoned by the GOP and more open to Democratic presidential candidates in this year’s election. Many Latino evangelicals expressed that they are still undecided as they wait to hear candidates speak more about plans for the nation’s immigration problem. But memories of being shunned by the Republican Party during the immigration row still remain fresh in their minds.

The number of workers filing new claims for jobless aid surged last week to the highest since October 2005, and consumer spending softened at the end of last year, according to reports on Thursday that heightened worries about a possible recession. The Labor Department said initial claims for state unemployment benefits jumped by 69,000 last week to 375,000. It was the biggest jump since September 2005 and the highest since October of that year, just after Hurricane Katrina devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast.

In his new budget, to be unveiled Monday, President Bush will call for large cuts in the growth of Medicare, far exceeding what he proposed last year, and he will again seek major savings in Medicaid, according to administration officials and budget documents. Mr. Bush has repeatedly said that the costs of Medicare and Medicaid, which dwarf spending for lawmakers’ pet projects, are unsustainable. The two health programs account for nearly one-fourth of all federal spending, and their combined cost - $627 billion last year - is expected to double in a decade.

As elite universities debate with Congress over how much of their multibillion-dollar endowments to spend, a new report argues that higher education's heavy-lifters, community colleges, need both more money and better results. The report, commissioned by the nonprofit College Board, aims to bring some of the spotlight back to the nation's 1,200 community colleges and their 11.6 million students.

An unprecedented nationwide surge of 1.4 million legal immigrants applied for U.S. citizenship in the 2007 fiscal year. But now many of those immigrants fear a bureaucratic backlog may prevent them from becoming citizens in time to vote in this year's presidential elections. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials estimate the processing time for naturalization applications filed after June will be about 18 months - more than twice the average wait of previous years.

Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards will make a major policy address on poverty Wednesday in New Orleans, where he launched his presidential bid 13 months ago. The AP reports that he will also drop out of the presidential campaign. In a news release, the Edwards campaign called poverty "the great moral issue of our time." "National discussion of important issues like ending poverty has given way to sniping and personal attacks between the two front-runner candidates. Ending poverty and fighting for the middle class is the cause of John Edwards' life - and he will urge the nation to refocus on this important issue."

The House voted on Tuesday to approve a $146 billion fiscal stimulus package, hoping to seal a fast-paced deal with President Bush on tax rebates and business incentives intended to jolt the economy with new spending. But the deal, which would be the most striking show of bipartisan cooperation since Democrats won control of Congress in 2006, was at risk as Senate Democrats forged ahead with their own, more expensive plan and jockeyed over what to include in it.

President Bush is making a renewed push to allow the government to spend food aid money to buy crops in poor countries. Congress is unlikely to go along. Bush has asked Congress to change a law that requires food supplies for foreign aid to be bought in the United States. The administration and aid groups have argued that the current policy slows efforts to deliver food to disaster areas, sometimes by months. Critics also say it harms farmers in developing countries by denying them markets that could help them and the people who would work with them out of grinding poverty.

The top U.S. envoy to Africa called the month of post-election violence in Kenya "ethnic cleansing" and said Wednesday Washington was reconsidering hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the country. Jendayi Frazer said neither President Mwai Kibaki nor his chief rival, opposition leader Raila Odinga, is doing enough to stop the bloodshed that has claimed more than 800 lives since the disputed Dec. 27 presidential vote.

Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey on Tuesday left open the possibility that the use of a controversial interrogation method known as waterboarding could be legal in certain cases under U.S. and international law. But he declined to provide a definitive opinion, saying that the technique -- which evokes the sensation of drowning -- was not authorized for use by the CIA. Mukasey is expected to be questioned extensively on waterboarding this morning in his first appearance as attorney general before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday vowed to continue pressing for legislation that would provide health insurance to his state's uninsured, a day after a universal health care bill he supported died in a Senate committee. Lawmakers had missed a golden opportunity for California to show the rest of the United States how to establish universal health care, Schwarzenegger said in a speech to the press club of the state capital.

President Bush is talking more openly lately about his old drinking habit, and on Tuesday he offered perhaps his most pointed assessment yet by saying plainly that the term "addiction" had applied to him. "Addiction is hard to overcome. As you might remember, I drank too much at one time in my life," Bush said during a visit to the Jericho Program, a project of Episcopal Community Services of Maryland that helps former prisoners deal with problems such as drug addiction so they can find jobs and reintegrate productively into society.

In a blow to universal health care coverage in California and possibly to its prospects nationwide, a State Senate committee on Monday rejected a sweeping plan by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that would have offered insurance to millions of uninsured residents. Mr. Schwarzenegger, who had seemed resigned to the plan’s defeat in recent days, sounded a determined note on what he had viewed as a major policy initiative of his second term. “I am someone who does not give up, especially when there is a problem as big and as serious as health care that needs to be fixed,” Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said. “One setback is just that - a setback.”

Monday evening, Missouri’s Catholic bishops jumped into the state’s ongoing debate over illegal immigrants by issuing a statement “delivered to Governor Matt Blunt and state legislators, calling for an end to rhetoric in which political candidates vie to see who can be tougher on illegal immigrants. “The statement urges a more positive discussion of immigrant-related concerns and how our state might best address these issues,” the bishops said in a release.

Across the US, the falling dollar value has sent ripples through immigrant communities that send money to family overseas. As some currencies for developing countries have risen substantially against the dollar, many immigrant workers are increasing their workweek by up to 20 hours or taking second jobs. If the dollar's slide continues, the US may become less attractive to migrant workers, analysts say. Although it's too early to tell whether this will cause a major shift in immigration, a number of migrants in Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia are already choosing Spain over the US.

Social scientists and law enforcement officials see an increasingly complex and persistent problem: people who become criminals in part because of the influence of family members. Nearly half of the 2 million inmates in state prisons across the USA - 48% - say they have relatives who also have been incarcerated, according to a Justice Department report in 2004, the most recent comprehensive survey of state prison populations. The portion of those reporting the detention of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, spouses and children has kept pace with the national prison population as it has increased during the past decade.

Religious leaders and political analysts say that increased outreach symbolizes the importance of the Latino evangelical vote in key states such as Florida, where primary voters go to the polls Tuesday. Latino evangelicals in that state amount to about 40 percent of the Hispanic population, though Florida is unique due to its sizable, conservative Cuban population and the influence of Baptist and Pentecostal churches.

A Mexican woman says she is "picking up the torch" from another illegal resident who became a symbol for immigration reform when she took shelter in a Chicago church for a year before being deported. Crisostomo hopes her actions send a message similar to that of Elvira Arellano, who became a beacon of hope for millions of illegal immigrants and a lightning rod for those who saw her brazen refusal to leave the U.S. as proof of lax enforcement.

President Bush was criticized for not mentioning the plight of New Orleans in past State of the Union addresses, but in his latest he announced that a high-profile summit is coming to this business-hungry town, and that he will attend. The announcement Monday that three North America leaders will meet here was applauded by city leaders who see it as a chance to pack hotels and send a national message that New Orleans is closer to rebounding.

The U.S. bishops are asking President George Bush and Congress to make the needs of the poor their number one priority as they debate and pass an economic stimulus package. The bishops said this in a letter addressed to U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that urged bipartisan cooperation to "find effective ways to protect the poorest families and low wage workers from financial hardship during this economic downturn."

As big storms have exposed gaps in federal assistance for housing, house-gifting – a modern take on barn raising – has become a major philanthropic trend in the US, experts say. Home-focused reality TV shows have helped fuel the trend and give it more visibility. Faith-based groups are among those picking up the hammers and making other key contributions. In the past few years, more than a thousand families have received essentially free homes from New Hampshire to Mississippi.

Although he will not be moving from the dilapidated homeless shelter here for another week, Paul McClendon, 55, has his oversized baby-blue garbage bags packed. Sitting on his bed in a winter jacket, he talked Thursday about the new, so-called green shelter with the central heating that he will be moving into. The facility, Crossroads, which will accommodate 125 residents, may be the only “green” homeless shelter built from the ground up. It has a solar-paneled roof, hydronic heating, artful but practical ceiling fans, nontoxic paint, windows that can be opened to let in fresh air, and desks and bureaus made from pressed wheat.

At a time when more immigrants are living in the United States, the elderly are increasingly on the move, following their adult children to America and what can be a bewildering new world. In fiscal year 2006, more than 65,000 immigrants 65 and older became legal permanent U.S. residents, up 31 percent from the previous year, according to the Office of Immigration Statistics. While small in number, the elderly make up a growing proportion of the total population of legal permanent residents, from 1.3 percent in 1956 to 5.1 percent in 2006.