President Bush offered an olive branch to congressional Democrats at his news conference yesterday. He said he would work with the opposition party to find compromise on a variety of issues, including immigration, education, and the minimum wage.
Less than a month after a report from the blue-ribbon Committee on Capital Markets Regulation proposed a dramatic deregulation of the nation's financial markets–and only a week after the Securities and Exchange Commission began chipping away at some of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's requirements for smaller businesses–corporate executives may have received yet another holiday gift.
Evidence continues to mount that the new Democratic majority plans to investigate the war, energy policy, and other Bush policies, key committees have begun hiring lawyer-investigators whose job will be to probe into the administration. In the House, for example, the Appropriations Committee under Rep. John Murtha's direction is hiring investigators who will be charged with looking into the administration's war policies and spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also, Rep. Henry Waxman, the incoming chairman of the House Government Reform Committee who's been dogging the vice president's energy task force, is also hiring lawyers. A Democratic leadership official said that the planned hearings and investigations into the war and other issues the lawyer-investigators are being hired to look into will be "very focused." In the Senate, officials said similar hirings were underway in a speeded up effort to have people in place for the start of the new Congress, especially the planned early January hearings into the war and military spending that are set to begin January 8.
AP - Eight Marines were charged Thursday in the killings of 24 Iraqi civilians last year during a bloody, door-to-door sweep in the town of Haditha that came after one of their comrades was killed by a roadside bomb.
AP - Thousands of travelers who got stranded at Denver's airport trying to beat the Christmas rush experienced a second frustrating day Thursday, forging through a snowbound city to hotels or opting to bed down again in the terminal.
AP - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told The Associated Press on Thursday that Iraq is "worth the investment" in American lives and dollars and said the U.S. can still win a conflict that has been more difficult than she expected.
Police have charged a man with killing five prostitutes in an eastern English town, authorities say. The bodies of the five women were discovered over a period of 10 days. The short time span of the murders is unprecedented in recent British history. A second man was released on bail without being charged.
Four Marines have been charged with murdering 24 Iraqi civilians, and four of their officers have been charged with failing to investigate and report the deaths, the Marine Corps announced Thursday. One of them, squad leader Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, is charged with murder and ordering Marines under his command to kill others, his lawyer said.
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