Swamp Gas, December 31, 2007

by Frank James

A quick guided tour of some of the morning's most important, most interesting, or both, Washington-related stories.

The presidential candidates spent the last weekend before Thursday's Iowa caucuses criss-crossing the state making their closing arguments to voters as they tried to position themselves to either win or come close in the first vote that actually matters.

The presidential candidates on both sides are talking a lot about their personal religious faith to an unprecedented degree, sensing that voters, especially in Iowa where the electorate is particularly religious, want to hear candidates talk about how God factors in their lives.

The Pakistani government appeared set to delay national elections by several weeks following last week's murder of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto although opposition parties said they wanted the vote to occur on Jan. 8 as scheduled. Meanwhile, her 19-year old college student son Bilawal was named chairman of her party but her husband will effectively lead the party.

The physicians who tended to Bhutto after she was mortally wounded resisted the Pakistani government's attempt to portray the fatal injury as coming not from a gunshot but by a suicide bomb blast which caused her to strike her head against part of the vehicle, a dispute that has increased calls for an international investigation into the murder.

Violent tribal protests erupted in Kenya after the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, was declared the victor in national elections even though he was behind in the early vote count and in voter-preference polls done before the election.

Sen. John McCain, who has made campaign-finance reform and the battle against special-interest money signature issues over his career, has spent a lot of time raising money from wealthy donors in the financial and other industries as he has attempted to revive his cash-starved presidential campaign.

Lobbying by mortgage lenders stopped efforts in some states to keep those companies from expanding their sub-prime lending to non-credit worthy customers, helping to fuel the current credit crisis.

Mitt Romney appeared to have some success in regaining traction and eroding support for his main challenger, Mike Huckabee, as polls showed Romney, once Massachusett's governor, essentially pulling even with former Arkansas governor who had earlier surged ahead.

A temple to an Indian god has become the destination for hundreds of thousands of Indians seeking travel visas to the U.S. and other Western nations who come to pray for the god's intervention.