by Frank James

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

Tensions increased in Pakistan as opposition leader Benazir Bhutto demanded for the first time that President Pervez Musharraf step down completely as head of the Pakistani government and she said she would not serve in any power-sharing arrangement with him.

The number of roadside bombs in Iraq has fallen significantly since the start of the year which may be the result of the discovery by U.S. military units of a number of ammunition caches.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission is considering reducing the minimum prison sentence for crack cocaine convictions which would make thousands of federal prisoners eligible for release and narrow the disparity between crack and powder cocaine sentences.

The U.S. has pacified the Sunni town of Jurf al Sakhr by infusing cash for reconstruction projects and jobs which has led to a dwindling of the violence there though there is little evidence of the democracy the U.S. had hoped to instill.

The mortgage crisis has renewed the dominance of the government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as lenders wanting to off load their loans to the government-related entities are forced to impose stricter standards on borrowers.

New research found that 45 percent of the children of African-American parents who were middle class in the late 1960s found themselves as adults at or near poverty.

The Democratic-controlled Congress and those who voted it into power have learned what for them has been a disappointing lesson, that even a weakened, lame-duck President Bush has enough leverage to steer his Iraq agenda along lines of his choosing, despite congressional and public opposition.

Congress's Democratic leaders are running out of time to fill out their list of accomplishments in order to make the case to keep their majorities. The window is also closing on their ability to shape the national agenda which will be increasingly dictated by presidential candidates early next year.

A major anti-abortion group, the National Right to Life Committee, is expected to endorse Fred Thompson, the Republican presidential candidate and former Tennessee senator, further highlighting the differences between social conservatives who are supporting several of the GOP candidates.

The not-in-my-backyard syndrome has hit the ethanol industry throughout the Midwest as communities which like the idea of the economic development that comes from ethanol are starting to resist the idea of having ethanol plants built nearby.