washington

Before the 2000 census, many cities and states conducted a vigorous campaign to encourage illegal immigrants to come out of the shadows and be counted so the nation could, for the first time, get a solid handle on how many the country was home to.

It's starting to feel like Moscow on the Potomac around here, and not because of what some see as a push to nationalize banks and health care.
It's due to President Obama's penchant for enlisting high-placed experts to oversee one problem or another, which could leave Washington with more czars in power than the Russians ever had.

The Environmental Protection Agency will soon order the manufacturers of 67 pesticides to conduct tests to determine if chemical ingredients in their products can affect the hormonal systems of humans and animals.

Federal officials report there have already been almost twice as many wildfires this year than during the same period last year, and the outlook through the middle of the year for more fires in Texas, Florida and California is not good.

The feds have come up with a plan to unleash killer wasps along Texas' border with Mexico to help combat illegal immigration and drug smuggling.

Fatal shootings in Binghamton, N.Y., and Pittsburgh prompted renewed calls for stricter gun control from traditional advocates such as the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. But such calls haven't echoed in the halls of Congress or in statehouses across the country.

Medicare's plans to bring competitive bidding to durable medical equipment procurement actually will reduce competition and limit access to needed wheelchairs, oxygen tanks and other vital equipment, a group of suppliers say.

Defense industry CEOs may want to duck and cover: their pay-and-bonus packages are coming into the sights of Capitol Hill lawmakers looking for their next populist prey.

In promising to reduce the deficit, President Obama recently told Congress he would "reform our defense budget so that we're not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don't use."
That was a poke at the Air Force's F-22 Raptor.

In the late 1980s, the population of Port St. Lucie, a sleepy Florida city, was exploding. And so was its crime rate.
For the city's police chief at the time, Gil Kerlikowske, the issue was clear: How to strike the right balance between combating the climbing crime rate with the limited resources of a public agency.