Friday Roundup

Congressman Travis Childers (D-MS) joined a majority of his colleagues today in voting for the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2009 (H.R 1728) to help curb abusive and predatory lending, a major factor in the current financial and economic meltdown.

Second District U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Bolton, said he will back Obama's budget request. "The original $100 million was not a cap, it was a beginning,'' said Karis Gutter, Thompson's deputy chief of staff about paying thousands of black farmers as part of a discrimination settlement with the Department of Agriculture.

President Obama pledged to allow unionization at TSA during his campaign last year, and Reps. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, introduced a bill last month that would give screeners bargaining rights and move them to the government's general pay schedule.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chairs the Homeland Security Committee, called a national identification system for animals "essential" to protecting the nation's food supply. He said the participation rate should be at least 70 percent, though a rate of more than 90 percent would be ideal. Thompson and others stopped short of calling for a mandatory system, saying they were open to working with the livestock and poultry industry on a remedy.

Brian Martin, the policy director for U.S. Rep. Gene Taylor, said that Taylor has been involved with Wayne County for some time to improve rail service in the county and that Taylor is supporting this project.

Which better reflects American values – Fox’s “American Idol” or PBS? Rep. Gregg Harper (R-Miss.), meantime, held out for another option. “How about c): none of the above,” Harper said. “‘American Idol’ is very much a cultural phenomenon, and certainly there are more viewers of that than the PBS system, but I enjoy both of them.”

"I am hopeful that the department and its contractors have learned from previous failed attempts and will apply those lessons to the deployment (of the new system). We will be watching closely until SBInet is complete," Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and a critic of the initial virtual fence efforts, said via e-mail Thursday.