Nation in brief: No ‘statements,’ Bush urges

President Bush, facing a Democrat-controlled Congress for the first time, is urging lawmakers to work with his administration and warning that “political statements” in the form of legislation would result in a stalemate.

“Together, we have a chance to serve the American people by solving the complex problems that many don’t expect us to tackle, let alone solve, in the partisan environment of today’s Washington,” Bush wrote in a guest column for the Wall Street Journal posted on the newspaper’s Web site Tuesday night.

While sounding a tone of bipartisanship on the eve of the new session of Congress that begins Thursday, Bush repeated long-held positions on the war in Iraq, tax cuts and other issues often criticized by Democrats. He has vetoed only one bill, but he reminded readers that the Constitution calls on the president to use his judgment in deciding which bills to sign into law.

“If the Congress chooses to pass bills that are simply political statements, they will have chosen stalemate,” Bush wrote.

Trenton, N.J.

Panel seeks end of death penalty

A blue-ribbon commission recommended Tuesday that New Jersey abolish the death penalty and urged legislators to replace it with the sentence of life without parole.

The 13-member commission said the costs of the death penalty are greater than the costs of life in prison without parole and concluded that abolition of the death penalty “will eliminate the risk” of uneven sentencing in capital cases.

The alternative of life without parole at a maximum security prison would ensure public safety and serve the interests of society and families of murder victims, the commission said. The commission was created by the legislature, which placed a one-year moratorium on executions pending the outcome of the study.

WESTLAKE, La.

Mayor-elect death ruled suicide

The first black mayor elected in a largely white Louisiana town committed suicide days before he was to take office, the coroner said Tuesday.

The body of Gerald “Wash” Washington, 57, was found Saturday night in the parking lot of a former high school with a pistol nearby. He had been shot once in the chest, investigators said.

The death was ruled a suicide Tuesday, the same day Washington was to take office. The Calcasieu Parish Sheriff’s Office said it was asking Louisiana State Police to investigate the death, and a motivation wasn’t immediately known.

The mayor-elect’s family did not accept the coroner’s ruling and has asked for a state police investigation, Sheriff Tony Mancuso said.