Morning News Roundup (16 May)

• President Bush found a fork on the road to the immigration debate and decided to drive through it (via NYTimes):
  

  Mr. Bush combined a call for considerable increases in the number of border patrol agents and the number of beds in immigration detention centers with an endorsement of proposals that would give many illegal immigrants a chance to become legal and eventually gain citizenship.
  
  He reiterated his proposal for a guest worker program giving some immigrants the right to work here temporarily. But he also proposed to strengthen enforcement by creating an identification card system for foreign workers that would include digitized fingerprints.

  
  
• Tom Shales, the WaPo's TV columnist, asks some good questions:
  

  Neither the president, in his customary pale blue tie, nor the network commentators, for the most part, answered other questions that hung in the air if not on the airwaves: Was the speech really prompted by the urgency of the immigration issue, or by the severity of Bush's low ratings in popularity polls? Was the real purpose to spur debate on immigration, or to push Iraq out of the spotlight for the next few days, while pundits ponder immigration on op-ed pages and cable news networks?

  
  
• And Mayor Elizabeth G. Flores of Laredo, Texas has another:
  

  "We have over 300 Border Patrol officers from here serving in Iraq. Why doesn't [President Bush] bring them home to do the job they were trained to do? The National Guard is trained to protect us from deadly people," said Flores, a Democrat who has been in office 8 1/2 years. "People crossing over here to work are not our deadly enemy. . . . I think this is all about discrimination and nothing else."

  
  
• Or maybe it is just desperate symbolism: The president's big initiative is heavy on symbolism but will be small in scale — and largely invisible on the ground. Though about 6,000 guardsmen at a time will be assigned to the southern U.S. border in two-week stints, they will be limited to supporting roles behind the scenes. [LATimes]
  
  
• Speaking of militarization, the Government Accountability Office is reporting the government won't be ready for another major disaster such as Hurricane Katrina unless the Pentagon takes a more aggressive role in the federal response. It urged the Defense Department to establish procedures to speed aircraft, troops and reconnaissance gear to hurricane-stricken areas when local and state officials are overwhelmed as well as beef up communications support to Homeland Security officials, who have the lead role in a disaster. [AP/Yahoo!]
  
  
• The United States is banning U.S. arms sales to Venezuela because officials believe that country's leftist government is not being helpful in combating terrorism, the State Department said yesterday.
  
  International defense specialists said U.S. arms sales to Venezuela were minimal, so the move should be seen mainly as a symbol of further chilling in the relationship between the United States and one of its biggest oil suppliers, and an attempt by the Bush administration to draw attention to President Hugo Chavez's military acquisitions. [WaPo]
  
  
• The U.S. government will re-establish diplomatic relations with Libya. (Former NYT reporter Judith Miller leans on confidential sources to explain the move.) American oil companies stand to gain from the deal. The announcement was interpreted by some as proof that promotion of democracy is no longer a top priority of the Bush administration. [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• Rove is worried. “Rove’s friends and colleagues tell NEWSWEEK that the senior Bush aide has struggled to maintain an upbeat front about his legal status in recent weeks and that he has appeared distracted.” (The AP — apparently falling for the act — reports that Rove is “unfazed” by his legal troubles.) [ThinkProgress' ThinkFast]
  
  
• The city of Seattle, a group of Alaska Natives and some of the nation's top climate scientists — including two from the University of Washington — thrust themselves into a high-profile legal battle Monday, hoping to resolve a stalemate over global warming.
  
  The group is fronting an orchestrated, national campaign to convince the Supreme Court that the federal government's failure to regulate automobile emissions is already causing harm, from shrinking mountain snowpack to ecological changes in Arctic Alaska. [SeaTimes]
  
  
• Britain has issued its first drought order in 11 years, with suppliers likely to close the tap for all but essential uses of water in a bid to stave off what could be the worst shortage in a century. [AFP/TerraDaily]
  
  
• Mountain glaciers in equatorial Africa are on their way to disappearing within two decades, a team of British researchers reports. Located in the Rwenzori Mountains on the border between Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the glaciers will be gone within 20 years if current warming continues. [AP/ENN]