3/16 - Vin Diesel

• Debt Ceiling. The Senate voted 52-48 on March 16 to raise the federal debt ceiling from $8.184 trillion to $8.965 trillion, the fourth increase since 2002. The debt ceiling maintains the federal government's full faith and credit in the face of growing budget deficits (about $8 trillion at the end of 2005).
  
  What if the debt ceiling was not raised in time? The federal government does not necessarily go immediately into crisis, as it can take some stop-gap measures to keep the debt within the ceiling if that ceiling is not raised in time. The debt would have surpassed the then-current ceiling in May 2002, but the Treasury Department kept the government going for another month by suspending or redeeming investments in retirement funds and by managing available cash resources. The debt ceiling was then raised in June 2002.

• The Futile Crescent. The U.S. military announced on March 16 that it had begun "Operation Swarmer," a large-scale assault on insurgents outside Samarra, the city where a major Shiite holy shrine also known as the Askariya Shrine was bombed in February. "This operation is part of our ongoing efforts to help move forward on the security front," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said on March 16 (transcript on-line here). Also on March 16, Iraq's new parliament met for the first time, though it did not conduct any business.
  President George W. Bush's March 13 speech before the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies is on-line here. In the speech, he said that some improvised explosive devices had components that "were clearly produced in Iran" and that Iran's actions were "increasingly isolating" the country, "and America will continue to rally the world to confront these threats."
  Joint Chief of Staff General Peter Pace did say in a March 14 press conference (on-line here) that he did not have proof that Iran's government was sponsoring insurgent activity in Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that it was possible but "not likely" that Iranians acting in Iraq were acting independent of the Iranian government.

• Indecision 2006. Rep. Katherine Harris said on March 15 that she planned to continue with her campaign for one of Florida's Senate seats. Harris, who was Florida's Secretary of State during the 2000 election, is in her second term in the House of Representatives and her campaign is on-line here.

• Moussaoui Trial. A trial began on March 6 to determine the sentence for Zacarias Moussaoui, who already pled guilty on April 22, 2005 to conspiring to commit the September 11, 2001 attacks. Federal District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled on March 14 that the government could not introduce aviation-related evidence given a government lawyer's improper coaching of witnesses, but has declined to dismiss the government's effort to seek the death penalty. Information on the case is on-line here.
  According to the second superseding indictment (on-line here), Moussaoui came to the United States in February 2001, took flight lessons in August 2001, and lied about why he was present in the United States to federal agents. Moussaoui was in a Minnesota jail on September 11.

posted by Stephen Lee @ 3/17/2006 08:02:00 AM