Robert's US Government Info Blog January 2007 Archive

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has announced that it will propose a regulatory change raising the mandatory retirement age for U.S. commercial pilots from 60 to 65. Probably responding to legislation ... Read More

From Montana to Maine, states are scrambling to pass legislation rejecting the federal Real ID Act, requiring them to issue what amounts to high-tech, higher-cost, federally-approved national ID cards to ... Read More

Criticized for its lack of "standardization and meaningfulness," the current set of questions used by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to test applicants for U.S. citizenship will be ... Read More

As U.S. Liberals Guide Deborah White correctly points out, President Bush failed to use the words "Katrina" or "coalition" in his State of the Union Address. "Tens of billions to ... Read More

The U.S. Congress may soon pass this non-binding joint resolution condemning President Bush’s recently ordered troop buildup in Iraq. Passage of this resolution will not stop the war. The resolution ... Read More

The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reports that from 2001 through 2004, the annual death rate among inmates in U.S. state prisons was 250 deaths per 100,000 inmates – a ... Read More

Besides again defending his Iraq war strategy, President Bush on Tuesday spoke on an array of domestic issues in his seventh and next-to-last State of the Union Address. "Our job is ... Read More

Starting today, Jan. 23, 2007, citizens of the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Bermuda are required to present a passport to enter the United States when arriving by air from ... Read More

This evening, President George Bush will deliver his seventh State of the Union Address. On Jan. 8, 1790, President George Washington delivered his and the brand new nation's first State ... Read More

America's 106.9 million full-time and salaried workers earned a gross median weekly income of $682 during the final quarter of 2006, a figure 3.5 percent higher than at the same ... Read More

One day next week, Congress will likely pass a concurrent resolution expressing the "sense of the Congress" that President Bush's recent order committing over 20,000 additional U.S. troops to the ... Read More

Claims by the Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) that Grand Canyon National Park employees had been ordered not to offer an estimate of the geologic age of the canyon appear ... Read More

With its 264-163 passage yesterday of a bill ending billions of dollars in tax incentives to oil companies, the House of Representatives completed its Democratic leadership's blitz of debating and ... Read More

The House of Representatives yesterday, in a strongly bipartisan 356-71 vote, passed H.R. 5, a bill lowering interest rates on certain student loans. The White House, however, issued a statement ... Read More

In the first trial-by-jury conviction under the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, an Azusa, CA man has been found guilty of posing as the America Online (AOL) billing department in emails ... Read More

Wrapping up the Democratic leadership's "first 100 hours" agenda of major legislation, the House of Representatives on Thursday will probably pass a bill ending billions of dollars in tax incentives ... Read More

Looking to go 5-for-5 in its Democratic leadership's "first 100 hours" agenda, the House of Representatives on Wednesday will probably pass a bill lowering interest rates on student loans. While the ... Read More

President Bush made it clear in his weekly radio address to the nation that he had no intention of backing down on his troop buildup plan and accused his congressional ... Read More

Federal law designates the birthdays of only two Americans as national holidays -- George Washington and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The birthdays of Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee, ... Read More

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has announced that the 2007 Nissan Altima Hybrid has qualified for a $2,350 tax credit as a qualified hybrid motor vehicle. IRS advises taxpayers that the ... Read More

In a 253-174 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives has again passed a bill designed to encourage embryonic-stem cell research. Considered this session as part of the House Democratic majority’s ... Read More

President Bush announced tonight that he would be ordering at least 20,000 additional U.S. troops into the Iraq war over the next few months, while calling on the Iraqi government ... Read More

Update: The House, by a vote of 315-116 has passed the bill H.R. 2 -- increasing the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour over the next two years. The U.S. ... Read More

The ‘First 100 Hours’ of legislation promised by new House Majority Leader Rep Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland, 5th), begins today with consideration by the House of H.R. 1 – a bill ... Read More

With Democrats now in control of Congress, President Bush may decide to exercise a legislative power he has used only once during his six years in office -- the veto. Veto ... Read More

Speculation is that President Bush's new strategy on Iraq will include an increase in the number of U.S. troops committed to the conflict. Speculation is also that he will at ... Read More

On the day after Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California) made history by becoming the first woman to be elected as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, let's recall Nellie Tayloe ... Read More

From a very respectable high of 2.6 percent per year during the 1970s, the growth rate of the U.S. labor force has been decreasing with the passage of each decade ... Read More

The Federal Reserve Board and the Office of Thrift Supervision have released an updated edition of their popular Consumer Handbook on Adjustable Rate Mortgages (.pdf), also known as the CHARM ... Read More

Louisiana lost almost 5 percent of its pre-Hurricane Katrina population during 2006, according to estimates just released by the Census Bureau. On July 1,2006, Louisiana's population of 4.3 million was ... Read More

Foreign terrorists, including al-Qaeda operative Ramzi Yousef, may have played a role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, according to an oversight investigation by the House International Relations Committee. In his ... Read More

UPDATE: The claims made by PEER in the press release reported below were shown to be bogus. Employees of the Grand Canyon National Park have been directed not to offer an ... Read More

With the help of "the power of the American spirit, confidence in our purpose, and faith in a loving God who created us to be free," President Bush urged Americans ... Read More