The study predicts that inducements for coastal drilling would cause only a tiny increase in production of oil that could cost as much as $80 a barrel.
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 - The first talks on North Korea's nuclear program since the communist nation tested an atomic device ended Friday without an agreement on disarmament or a date for further negotiations.
AP - Thousands of frustrated holiday travelers queued up at the ticket counters Friday morning, desperate for a flight out as Denver International Airport prepared to reopen its runways after a two-day blizzard shutdown.
AP - Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday that he hopes to give a report to President Bush this weekend on what he learned during his three days of meetings with military and political leaders here.
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