Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is continuing a push for 1,100 new diplomatic staff to be added to the State Department’s budget for fiscal 2009, Matthew Lee of the Washington Post reports.  Rice has been under fire for paying little attention to management and administrative issues.  The present plan would bring in 450 new foreign service officers to address the fact that "many embassies are operating at 70 percent of their desired staffing levels," create 350 new jobs in a "Civilian Stabilization Program" to work in areas of recent military conflict, and add 200 new diplomatic security agents and 50 political advisers to work with the military.  Read Lee here.

Alison Young of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has been investigating the response of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the 2007 Andrew Speaker TB case.  You’ll recall that Speaker travelled against CDC advice and then evaded possible border detention by traveling back to the U.S. through Canada.  However, it turns out that Speaker did not have a highly-resistant form of TB, and was seen by nearly all specialists as "low risk" for transmitting the disease to others.  Some are wondering if, having allowed Speaker to travel, the CDC then tried to capitalize on his flight to draw attention to the TB problem — and build up the center’s budget.  The CDC has not responded to FIOA requests about the Speaker case for seven months.  Read Alison Young here.

The Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig reports that Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson is facing accusations of pressing local housing officials to choose certain real estate developers in the Philadelphia area.  A lawsuit there notes also that HUD reduced funding for Philly projects when Jackson’s preferred developer wasn’t chosen.  One Philadelphia housing developer said he "didn’t have to worry about defaulting" on certain projects because he had "important friends and [Secretary] Jackson was one of them."  Read Leonnig here.