Washington Week In Preview

Libby Answers the Fitzgerald Bombshell

What’s really happening in Washington this week.

Monday

Maybe we can deport Congress instead: Latinos are planning the biggest-ever nationwide rally of immigrants today, a 60-city extravaganza that leaders claim will attract millions of participants. Their target: efforts by Congress to restrict immigration.

But the demonstrators might be giving lawmakers a bit too much credit. Congress, failing last week to pass immigration legislation, a budget, or much of anything else, goes on yet another vacation, this one a two-week Easter recess. After a tentative agreement on an immigration bill collapsed Friday in the Senate, the matter is heading back to the judiciary committee’s drawing board.

Tom DeLay is looking for work: And George Washington University may have just the thing. It sponsors a discussion titled, “Why Be a Lobbyist Today?” featuring, among others, representatives from Wiley Rein & Fielding and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld.

Tuesday

Race to the bottom: The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll comes out Tuesday, giving the first measure of public opinion since news broke that indicted former White House official Scooter Libby testified that President Bush authorized leaks of classified information. Last month’s Post poll put Bush’s support at 41 percent. An Associated Press/Ipsos poll out last Friday had him at a record-low of 36 percent.

Check out the Willie Mays memorabilia: The nation’s newest tourist attraction, George W. Bush’s boyhood home, opens in Midland, Texas. The first lady and the president’s parents will be on hand to cut a ribbon and reminisce at 1412 West Ohio Ave.

The vice president, meanwhile, throws out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals’ home opener. The pressing question: Will he take the mound and do the full windup, as President Bush does, or will he make a wimpy toss from the stands like William Howard Taft?

The forgotten upper class: Hillary Clinton gives her first major economic speech as a proto-presidential candidate. Her venue: the annual black-tie dinner meeting of the Economic Club of Chicago. Don’t expect a lot of fiery populist rhetoric from the New York senator; she doesn’t want her hosts busting their cummerbunds or fainting in their foie gras. Bush once referred to a similarly attired crowd as his base: “The haves and the have mores.”

Wednesday

Newt in ‘08! The fallen House speaker continues his effort to revive his political viability with a stop today in New Hampshire, where he’s speaking about health care.

Drip, drip, drip: The political world breathlessly awaits the latest installment in Scooter Libby’s public squabble with Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor probing the Valerie Plame leak. A filing by Fitzgerald last week claimed that Libby, formerly Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, told a grand jury that Bush authorized him to disclose classified information. Libby has until Wednesday to respond to Fitzgerald’s latest bombshell.

Scandalmongers also await the press’s first opportunity to question Bush about the revelation. After Monday’s speech on Iraq at Johns Hopkins’ School for Advanced International Studies? On a campaign trip to Iowa on Tuesday? With the Ghanaian president at the White House Wednesday? Questions will be asked—shouted, if necessary—but not necessarily answered.

Friday

It’s Good Friday and Passover: Which means, of course, that the Federal Reserve releases its weekly report on assets and liabilities of commercial banks at 4:15 p.m.