“After protesters clashed violently with the police inside and outside the New Orleans City Council chambers on Thursday, the Council voted unanimously to allow the federal government to demolish 4,500 apartments in the four biggest public housing projects here.”
The CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate whether John Kirikaou “illegally disclosed classified information in describing the capture and waterboarding of an al-Qaeda terrorism suspect.” CIA officials previously said they were “furious” at Kirkikaou for openly talking about waterboarding.
U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy ordered a hearing Friday about the destruction of CIA videotapes “over the objection of the Justice Department.” If Kennedy orders government officials to testify, the hearing would mark “the first time that administration lawyers” spoke “in public and under oath about the matter.”
“California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) plans to sue the federal government over its decision not to allow a California plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” citing the administration’s “failure” to treat global warming seriously.
“Governors and other officials from at least eight states” have “pledged to help California as it prepares to sue” the Bush administration after the EPA denied a waiver for the state’s tough greenhouse gas emissions law. “We’re going to be out there on California’s side,” Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski told the Sacramento Bee. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert will return to work at Comedy Central on Jan. 7, despite a continuing Writers Guild strike. “We would like to return to work with our writers,” said Stewart and Colbert in a joint statement. “If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers, we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence.”
Though 2007 was considered “one of Wall Street’s most dismal years in a decade,” bonus checks for investment bankers rose “an average of 14 percent.” “Four of the biggest U.S. investment banks — Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. — will pay out about” $30 billion in bonuses this year.
The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration “said the IRS needlessly spent almost $2 million on a computer security system that the tax agency doesn’t plan to use,” an “example of financial waste contained in a government report on the tax agency’s involvement in a program ordered by President Bush in 2004.”
And finally: How are notable Washingtonians spending their holiday breaks? Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) said he will be spending some time “reading” and Rep. Chris Van Hollen will be watching his son’s soccer team play in Florida. CNN’s Ed Henry replied, “Everyone’s favorite pastime of cow-tipping in wonderful Crawford, Texas…followed by the rocking Western White House New Year’s Eve party. Just kidding — about the cow-tipping.”
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