1. The House yesterday passed a resolution 395 to 21 condemning the State Department for its refusal to divulge public details on Iraqi corruption in a new showdown with the Bush administration over the war and its classification policies. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sponsored the nonbinding resolution, which states that the administration abused its power by classifying U.S. assessments on corruption inside Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government. The measure is one of several challenges to President Bush's management of the war by Democrats, who lack a veto-proof majority to order troops home. Republicans called it a political stunt.
2. The oxygen-depleted "Dead Zone" in the Gulf of Mexico cannot be remedied unless federal and state agencies cooperate to reduce agricultural nutrient and urban storm-water runoff along the 2,300-mile Mississippi River, according to a report from the National Academy of Sciences. Though the river passes through 10 states, the report says there is no one agency, coalition or comprehensive strategy overseeing its health.
3. The Bush administration again has appointed a chief of family planning programs at the
Department of Health and Human Services who has been critical of contraception. Susan Orr, most recently an associate commissioner in the Administration for Children and Families, was appointed Monday to be acting deputy assistant secretary for population affairs. She will oversee $283 million in annual grants to provide low-income families and others with contraceptive services, counseling and preventive screenings. In a 2001 article in The Washington Post, Orr applauded a Bush proposal to stop requiring all health insurance plans for federal employees to cover a broad range of birth control. "We're quite pleased, because fertility is not a disease," said Orr, then an official with the Family Research Council.4. In a magazine arriving in mailboxes this week, National Institutes of Health Director Elias A.
Zerhouni suggests that embryonic stem cell research should be expanded. "All avenues of research need to be pursued," Zerhouni says in the newest edition of Medline Plus, a journal published jointly by the NIH and Friends of the National Library of Medicine. He adds: "We must continue the research at all levels, or there will be no progress." Those views put Zerhouni, who serves at the pleasure of President Bush, at odds with his boss. Bush has twice vetoed legislation that would do exactly what Zerhouni is espousing: expanding research on new embryonic lines.
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