The Wonk Room

Defense Secretary Gates said Thursday that the push by lawmakers for additional F-22 fighter jets — against the Pentagon’s recommendation — actually risks making America more vulnerable.

Iraqi Kurds and the central Iraqi government “are closer to war than at any time since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003,” according to Kurdish prime minister Nechirvan Barzani. Had it not been for the presence of the U.S. military in northern Iraq, Barzani said, fighting might have started in the most volatile regions.

The Washington Times reports that “one of the world’s largest engineering firms, Siemens, could lose hundreds of millions of dollars in sales to the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) because it sold Iran equipment used to spy on dissidents.”

According to a new report from the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government, “states’ tax revenue fell 11.7% in the first three months of 2009, the steepest decline on record, and collections have gotten even weaker since.”

Yesterday, the Obama administration sent legislation to Congress “seeking to rein in compensation at public companies by giving shareholders a say on executives’ pay packages and diminishing management’s influence on pay decisions.”

A group of senators led by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) sent a letter to President Obama urging him “to uphold the recommendations of the International Trade Commission and slap tariffs of up to 55 percent on the value of Chinese tire imports.”

Following an October 2008 immigration raid, federal authorities named a South Carolina poultry plant, Columbia Farms Inc., in nearly 30 charges yesterday, claiming that the plant knew its managers were hiring undocumented immigrants all along.

After months of gridlock, the U.S. Senate confirmed Robert M. Groves as Director of the United States Census Bureau this week. He will face a series of challenges, including how to count the thousands of frustrated Latinos threatening to boycott the 2010 census.

Last night, the Senate approved a federal hate crimes legislation that, according to Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), “recognizes that there is a difference between assaulting someone to steal his money, or doing so because he is gay, or disabled, or Latino or Muslim.”

“It’s important that those who consume the products being made all around the world to the benefit of America — and it’s our own consumption activity that’s causing the emission of greenhouse gases, then quite frankly Americans need to pay for that,” Commerce Secretary Gary Locke told Chinese businessmen, implying President Obama isn’t opposed to “carbon tariffs.”

“Global wind energy potential is considerably higher than previous estimates by both wind industry groups and government agencies,” according to a Harvard University study published last week.

“The United States released more than a thousand intelligence images of Arctic ice to help scientists study the impact of climate change,” within hours of a recommendation by the National Academy of Sciences.