Republican Senators

WASHINGTON -- A sweeping nuclear test-ban treaty is facing almost certain rejection by the Senate after supporters and opponents scrambled last night to avert a vote they feared could produce a political and diplomatic embarrassment.Both sides acknowledged that the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, negotiated by President Clinton in 1996, was far short of the two-thirds majority required for ratification.Democrats favor the treaty as necessary to prevent the further development of nuclear weapons.

WASHINGTON -- A growing desire among Republican senators to quickly end the impeachment trial is raising the likelihood that witnesses will be avoided in favor of speeding up a vote on whether to convict or acquit President Clinton, several senators say.Political fears and legal doubts, combined with weariness among senators serving long days as jurors, seem to be eroding Republican support for calling witnesses and for continuing the trial as long as...

WASHINGTON -- With the questioning yesterday of Vernon Jordan, the second of three witnesses in President Clinton's impeachment trial, House prosecutors made some headway in their struggle to remove the president from office, but they again failed to produce any major new evidence.In the meantime, senators huddled in front of television screens in the Capitol showing Monday's videotaped deposition of Monica Lewinsky.Jordan, like Lewinsky, was released early from his deposition, after less than four hours of questioning, primarily by the prosecutors.

WASHINGTON -- It sounds innocuous enough, a Senate vote on "findings of fact" in the impeachment trial of William Jefferson Clinton.But what one party has called "facts," the other party has called rash political judgments, and the GOP's proposal to vote on findings of fact before a final vote on conviction could turn into a major stumbling block in the quest to end the trial by Feb. 12.A group of Republican senators is drafting a strongly worded motion that...

WASHINGTON -- After weeks of taking evidence, hearing arguments and deliberating privately, the Senate is prepared today to acquit President Clinton in a vote that is likely to deny the House prosecutors even a simple majority for conviction.A third day of closed-door deliberations yesterday brought no surprises that would upset the widespread view that the Senate will fall far short of the two-thirds majority needed to convict Clinton and remove him from office for his actions in the Monica Lewinsky affair.

WASHINGTON -- The White House, which opposes witnesses in the impeachment trial of President Clinton, suggested again yesterday that it would seek testimony from numerous individuals if the Senate votes to hear new testimony.Warning that a vote for witnesses would drag out the Senate trial for months, a White House official said Clinton's lawyers would have to embark on a "great deal of discovery," or evidence-gathering, and take "many depositions" if Republicans insist on calling witnesses.

EXCUSE the obvious glee on the faces of congressional Democrats. Senate Republicans had just gift-wrapped an ideal campaign issue by killing landmark anti-smoking legislation that had won wide public support.This was a major, self-inflicted wound. Republicans knuckled under to pressure from the tobacco industry and the prospect of tens of millions of dollars in campaign funds from tobacco firms. That kind of special-interest dealing tends to infuriate voters.Democrats and President Clinton had been the most fervent champions of the anti-smoking bill in an attempt to stem teen-age tobacco use. But Republicans succeeded in attaching enough objectionable amendments that the bill could not muster the required 60 votes to overcome a filibuster.

WASHINGTON -- On the eve of a Senate committee's crucial confirmation vote, President Clinton's choice to be the next secretary of the Air Force was confronted yesterday by continuing attacks on his integrity.That attack has imperiled the secretary-designate's prospects for confirmation to a job whose nominees generally breeze to Senate approval.Daryl Jones is an Air Force Academy graduate and a former fighter pilot who is a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve. During Senate hearings on his selection in the past month, former squadron mates of his, including a former commander, surfaced to accuse him of lying about his flying record and pressuring enlisted airmen to buy Amway household products that he and his wife sold.

WASHINGTON -- Herewith two snapshots, taken last week less than 24 hours apart, of Congress during what Republicans advertise as the rigors of re-limiting the government.On a slow Senate afternoon, C-SPAN2 is covering the antitrust subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee. A handsome, nattily attired, solidly assembled young man is testifying, with lucidity and dignity and feeling, about what he and some sympathetic senators consider an injustice requiring congressional attention.He was a wide receiver on last year's University of Wyoming football team, which had a 10-2 record in the Western Athletic Conference but did not get invited to a bowl game.

SPRINGFIELD, Ga. -- When Sen. Sam Nunn stepped to the microphone at a Chamber of Commerce dinner here recently, no one in the audience knew for sure if he was about to make a campaign speech or a farewell address.The last of a legendary breed of powerful Southern Democrat, the Georgia senator is thinking about retiring when his term ends next year. Polls show that he is popular enough to be re-elected, but he may not want to run.Across the South, old bulls like Mr. Nunn have been stranded high and dry by rising Republicanism.

WASHINGTON - - In a possible preview of the debate over President Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick, the nominations of U.S. District Judge Andre Davis of Baltimore to the Court of Appeals and state Labor Secretary Thomas Perez to head the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department were cleared Thursday for confirmation by the full Senate. The Senate Judiciary committee, which will hold confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor later this summer, approved Davis and Perez on bipartisan votes of 16-3 and 17-2, respectively.

They say among the first signs of a sinking ship is that the rats begin to desert. Witness now Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter bailing out of the leaky U.S.S. G.O.P. Were it not for the fact that Mr. Specter's party switch may give Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, Republicans across the country would likely greet this news with a mixture of relief and indifference; for many, Mr. Specter had long ago ceased being a Republican on almost any question that matters. As Mark Hemingway put it in National Review's blog "The Corner," "I read that he was switching parties, but I was disappointed to learn he's still a Democrat."

WASHINGTON - When Sen. Joe Lieberman broke from his longtime Democratic allegiance to back Republican John McCain for president, some rank-and-file Democrats were angry. And after Lieberman spoke at the Republican National Convention and criticized Barack Obama, they were practically apoplectic. Once Obama won and Democrats cemented their grip on Congress, the talk quickly turned to punishing the senator from Connecticut, who just eight years ago was the Democratic nominee for vice president.

WASHINGTON - The prospect of congressional approval of a federal "media shield" law this year dimmed yesterday when Senate Republicans blocked legislation that would protect journalists from being forced to reveal confidential sources. Supporters of the shield bill said it was possible - but unlikely - that the issue would be revived in September, after the Senate takes a planned monthlong recess starting this weekend. Otherwise, backers of the bill would be forced to try again in January, when a new Congress convenes.

CHICAGO - Amid intense political pressure from the nation's doctors, the Bush administration said yesterday it would hold off on a 10 percent fee cut in Medicare payments to doctors that was slated to kick in today. The Bush administration is giving members of Congress time to prevent the reduction in payments from the federal health insurance program for the elderly when lawmakers return from a July 4 recess. The administration said the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services would not process Medicare claims for the first 10 days of the month, which would allow Congress time to reconsider a vote to stave off the cut. A 10 percent reduction in payments could have big ramifications in the health care industry, with some doctors saying they could no longer afford to see Medicare patients.

Democratic remarks leave the GOP miffed When the Senate went into session Monday night, all of the Democrats were at their desks, but the Republicans were nowhere to be found. With no word on what was going on, the Democrats started thinking that perhaps the Republicans were boycotting the special session. After waiting about 24 minutes, Sen. Delores G. Kelley, a Baltimore County Democrat, stood up and said, "Mr. President, move so much be considered the elimination of the other side," to much amusement from other Democrats.

WASHINGTON -- After a heated, all-day debate on the Senate floor that pitted combat veterans against combat veterans and one former secretary of the Navy against another, lawmakers failed to require the Pentagon to give U.S. troops as much time to rest at home as they spend in the theater overseas. It was a significant defeat for critics of the Iraq war, who have been trying for months to withdraw troops over President Bush's objection. Democratic leaders had believed that the amendment, offered by a former Navy secretary, Democratic Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, was the best path for ending the war in Iraq and forcing the administration to quickly bring the troops back home.

Washington -- Republican senators told President Bush yesterday that his administration's lack of credibility in the fight against illegal immigration was a major hindrance to passing overhaul legislation, and they urged him to ask for emergency funds to ramp up enforcement. The criticism came as Bush made his first appearance in nearly six years at the GOP senators' weekly strategy luncheon in the Capitol. Senators said the president was receptive to the idea of a supplemental budget request - the same mechanism used to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

. Investigations led by a Republican lawyer, Stuart W. Bowen Jr., in Iraq have sent American occupation officials to jail on bribery and conspiracy charges, exposed disastrously poor construction work by well-connected companies such as Halliburton and Parsons, and discovered that the military did not properly track hundreds of thousands of weapons it shipped to Iraqi security forces. And tucked away in a huge military authorization bill that President Bush signed two weeks ago is what some of Bowen's supporters believe is his reward: a pink slip.

Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats probably should have known better when they asked the National Security Agency recently what they could say publicly about the warrantless wiretapping of Americans without spilling state secrets. What the senators got back were political talking points that included: The program ... has detected terrorist plots that could have resulted in injury to Americans both at home and abroad. And this: [The program] is being run in a highly disciplined way that takes great pains to protect U.S. privacy rights.