Posted by Frank James at 4:55 pm CST

The office of Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) emailed a press release with a copy of a letter the senator sent to a Bush administration official asking why executive-branch officials didn't do a 45-day investigation of the Dubai Ports World deal.

The press release is below. Its first paragraph incorrectly states that the administration "approved the sale of six American ports." It actually approved the sale of operations at U.S. ports. The ports would remain in the hands of state or local port authorities.

Posted by Mark Silva at 4:25 pm CST

So we've landed in Shannon, Ireland to jettison the crew from the charter ferrying the press to India and pick up some new fuel and a fresh crew. (Which begs the question about what sort of shape we'll be in when we reach New Delhi.)

President Bush is breathing a sigh of relief as well, departing from Washington and the crisis of the week, the big port sale.

Posted by Mark Silva at 7:45 am CST

ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE – President Bush is bound for India and Pakistan today, with Air Force One fuelling up for a 17-hour passage to New Delhi and the president spending the night on board.

And I'm going with him.

Posted by Frank James at 7:18 am CST

In an earlier posting, I reported that Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee raised further questions about the Bush administration's review of the Dubai Ports World deal based on a mostly classified Coast Guard report which indicated Coast Guard intelligence officials didn't have enough information to properly assess the threat that might emerge from the transaction.

The Senate committee went from open to closed session yesterday afternoon to discuss the Coast Guard report more fully.

Apparently, Collins heard nothing during the closed session that quelled her concerns.

Posted by Frank James at 10:49 pm CST

The AFL-CIO hosted a press conference today to announce its most expensive mid-term election effort ever, $40 million, aimed at electing what it called pro-worker candidates to Congress as well as statehouses across the country.

John Sweeney, president of the organization, called it a "non-partisan" effort more than once. But some of the language the union officials used came straight from the Democratic party playbook.

Posted by Frank James at 4:57 pm CST

Another Senate committee is asking questions today about the Dubai Ports World deal and there was a fascinating development. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, referred to a Coast Guard document that she found most troubling.

It appears from the Coast Guard document from December which was partly declassified that Coast Guard intelligence officers weren’t satisfied that they had enough intelligence information to do a proper threat assessment of the acquisition by Dubai Ports World, the United Arab Emirates-owned company of Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Co., a British opened company.

Posted by Jeff Zeleny at 12:12 pm CST

Sen. Barack Obama delivered the Democratic Hispanic Radio Address today. While the Illinois Democrat only speaks limited Spanish, he recorded the message in the language after a tedious taping process.

The topic: ethics reform

Posted by Mark Silva at 4:10 pm CST

President Bush has little time for cultural affairs on his planned trip to India next week -- no side-trips to the Taj Mahal, for instance.

But Bush plans to take in a cricket match in Pakistan.

Posting by Frank James at 3:41 pm CST

This week, Iraq appeared to be melting down following the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, an important Shia shrine.

Experts have wondered whether a full-scale civil war between Shias and Sunnis was near, as revenge killings racked the country since Wednesday’s bombing.

Posted by Mark Silva at 2:30 pm CST

The United States is at war with an enemy that will never shake the resolve of the American people, the U.S. is taking the fight to the enemy rather than facing the enemy at home, freedom is on the march and America’s vision of a free world will prevail.

The world also is a safer place now that Saddam Hussein is in prison, and American forces in Iraq will “stand down’’ as Iraqi security forces “stand up,’’ but the commitment of U.S. troops there will be determined by conditions on the ground, not politicians in Washington.

Posted by Frank James at 1:47 pm CST

Any certifiable political junkie knows by now that President Bush hasn’t used his veto to torpedo any legislation in his five years in the White House, though he has issued numerous veto threats, the latest being his vow to thwart Congress if it tries to stop the controversial Dubai Ports World deal.

Bruce Reed, who was a senior aide in the Clinton White House and who now writes a blog, "The Has-Been" for Slate.com, accuses Bush of being “afraid to use the veto powers the Founders … gave him.”

Posted by Frank James at 7:35 pm CST

The Department of Homeland Security distributed a picture this evening following the release earlier today of the White House's report on how the government botched the response to Hurricane Katrina.

The photo is of Homeland Security Sec. Michael Chertoff in a non-descript room with senior officials from his department. The email the photo came with said Chertoff was discussing "implementation plans," resulting from the Katrina-response analysis. Chertoff is at the head of the table. To his right are Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson; to his left are George Foresman, under secretary for preparedness; John Wood, his chief of staff, and Sharon Hardie, chief of staff for the preparedness directorate.

I would love to know what was going through Chertoff's mind when this picture was taken. Could it have been "I left a life-time appointment on the federal bench for this?"

Posted by Frank James at 4:40 pm CST

Have federal officials over several administrations been breaking the law that guided how they're supposed to review foreign investments in the U.S. that could potentially affect national security?

Possibly, based on an exchange at today's Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on the controversial deal that would transfer control of operations at six U.S. ports to Dubai Ports World, a company owned by the United Arab Emirates.

Posted by Mark Silva at 3:20 pm CST

Sometimes, it seems, the White House can't catch a break.

Just as the White House was “moving on’’ from the vice president’s accidental shooting of a hunting companion last week, the Bush administration confronted a new, much more serious controversy this week with its approval of the sale of several major American port operations to an Arab company - the White House had to concede that Bush didn’t even know about the deal until after it was done.

And now, as the president prepares for a potentially historic trip to India next week, it turns out the Bush administration has denied a visa to a prominent Indian scientist who planned to travel to the U.S.

Posted by Frank James at 1:53 pm CST

A quick observation after today's just-ended Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on the controversial Dubai Ports World transaction is that 9/11 didn't change everything, at least not how the Executive Branch reviewed the pending takeover of certain U.S. port operations by the United Arab Emirates-owned company.

Under questioning by Sen. Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.), Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt, said Bush administration officials followed precedent set by prior administrations, Republican and Democratic, in how it interpreted the federal law that calls for the Executive Branch to review such transactions.

Posted by Frank James at 3:47 pm CST

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-N.C.) who usually backs President Bush, made public a letter she sent the White House today opposing control of the operations at several U.S. ports being tranferred to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates government.

If someone like Myrick is sending a letter like this to the president, then releasing it publicly, Bush apparently has a lot of convincing left to do.

Posted by Mark Silva at 10:45 am CST

The White House, on the one hand, was maintaining today that the government’s approval of a controversial takeover of several American port operations by a United Arab Emirates company should have come as no surprise to members of Congress now protesting the deal - negotiations underway had been reported for some time in the financial press.

But the White House, on the other hand, acknowledged that even President Bush was not informed of the deal until this past weekend, after his agencies had approved it.

Posted by Cam Simpson at 10:10 am CST

(I am traveling in the Middle East with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.)

Not long after Condoleezza Rice vacated the West Wing of the White House and settled into her new quarters at the State Department last year, she sent a strong symbolic message: The old ways of Foggy Bottom were over. Rice did the previously unthinkable: She canceled a trip to Egypt, long a crucial Washington ally in the Middle East, following the government's detention of Ayman Nour, the Egyptian posterboy for democratic reform.

Posted by Frank James at 5:35 pm CST

Sen. John McCain called for cooler heads to prevail in the standoff between the White House and Congress over the proposed transfer of control of facilities at several major U.S. ports to a company owned by the government of the United Arab Emirates.

Here's the press release his office issued late today.

Posted by Frank James at 5:10 pm CST

Ever hear of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S.? Most people haven't, partly because the panel is "secretive" as some journalists have described it. But listen closely in coming days and you should hear much more about it, though extensive details about its operation are likely to remain scarce.

The committee, actually a group of executive-branch officials who screen proposed foreign investments in U.S. entities with national security implications, is involved in the controversial proposed transaction in which a United Arab Emirates-government owned company is close to gaining control of facilities in several major U.S. ports including New York, Baltimore, Miami and New Orleans.

Posted by Mark Silva at 1:55 pm CST

On the second day of his alternative energy tour, President Bush assured people hard at work in pursuit of energy alternatives that their government jobs are secure.

Before Bush’s arrival at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., the well-paying positions of some 32 people were saved by a sleight of the federal budgetary hand in which Sen. Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican explained that the Energy Department had shifted some “unused funding’’ to preserve the positions of the people who were losing their jobs on the eve of Bush’s arrival.

Posted by William Neikirk at 4:05 pm CST

Sometimes a visit by a president can change a lot of things—such as keeping your job. Just ask some 32 people who had been fired last week from their high-paying positions at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.

It appeared that all was lost for these workers until President Bush decided to visit the laboratory on Tuesday to promote his proposals for renewable energy (which will require a good bit of new research by this very institution).

Posted by Mark Silva at 1:40 pm CST

President Bush is out there talking about batteries.

It's hardly coincidental that the president's own political batteries are in need of a recharge, with his job-approval ratings hovering below 40 percent in the latest polls. Getting out to places like Milwaukee – where the president appeared today – to encourage research and development in lighter automobile batteries for the new generation of hybrid-powered cars is one way to get a new political dialog going, he figures.

Posted by Michael Tackett at 4:10 pm CST

The guest at lunch was one of those sleazy, despicable Washington lobbyists. The restaurant was one of those typical Washington expense-account clip joints where food is art, the portions are scant and the prices are merely obscene.

He had attained the rank of national pariah and scourge on democracy in the typical way: tours of duty on several campaigns, time served in the White House and hours logged as a top staffer on Capitol Hill -- followed, of course, by the well-worn path to the lucrative lobbyist shop.