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 - Insurgent attacks killed five more American troops west of the Iraqi capital, the military said Friday, making December the second deadliest month for U.S. servicemen in 2006.
AP - The district attorney dropped rape charges Friday against the three Duke University lacrosse players after the stripper who accused them changed her story again. But the men still face kidnapping and sex charges that could bring more than 30 years in prison.
AP - Denver's snowed-in airport reopened Friday for the first time in two days, but the backlog of flights around the country could take all weekend to clear, and many of the nearly 5,000 holiday travelers stranded here might not make it home for Christmas.
Not even a dreary forecast could keep the space shuttle Discovery from coming home for the holidays. "You've got seven thrilled people here," Commander Mark Polansky told Mission Control. The orbiter touched down at Florida's Kennedy Space Center at 5:32 p.m. ET Friday, after two landing windows were canceled by bad weather.
The U.S. military Friday reported five U.S. troop deaths, while Iraqi authorities reported the discovery of a dozen bodies and the kidnapping of a Sunni imam.
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