Senate Democrats

After a fierce debate, the state Senate rejected Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s choice for environmental secretary yesterday - the first time in Maryland's modern history that the chamber has refused to approve a governor's nominee to head an agency. The 26-21 vote against Lynn Y. Buhl followed a week of furious backroom negotiations and aggressive lobbying by the governor as he tried to avert a public and embarrassing setback. The outcome strained relations between Ehrlich and the Senate, and left some senators angry, even as others said it was a natural consequence of a Republican executive and a Democratic-controlled legislature.

WASHINGTON -- Republicans and Democrats together registered deepening anger and frustration over President Bush's Iraq policy yesterday as top administration officials tried to sell the new version of the Bush war plan to a hostile Congress. There were no overt moves on Capitol Hill to cut off funding for the troop increase as some had suggested. But the Iraq strategy seemed headed for a serious fight in Washington, as Senate Democrats said they intend to offer a resolution of disapproval and the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, vowed to mount a filibuster in opposition.

WASHINGTON - Concerned that the United Nations might convene in September without a U.S. ambassador, the Bush administration and congressional Republicans are stepping up pressure on Senate Democrats for quick action on the disputed nomination of John D. Negroponte. Democrats are resisting, saying the administration hasn't produced key documents that could shed light on Negroponte's sensitive tenure as ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s. Negroponte, 62, was closely involved with the U.S. effort to arm the contras fighting the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

President Bush formally asked Congress yesterday for broad authorization to "use all means," including force, to disarm and topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, regardless of whether the United Nations supports such action. "If you want to keep the peace, you've got to have the authorization to use force," Bush said yesterday after he sent Congress a proposed resolution that administration officials said aims to give him the "maximum flexibility" he would need to take action in Iraq.

WASHINGTON - James Leon Holmes, an Arkansas lawyer, wrote in 1997 that a wife is to "subordinate herself to her husband." Earlier in his career, he likened abortion-rights activists to Nazis and suggested that rape victims do not need access to abortion because they almost never become pregnant. President Bush has chosen Holmes for a federal judgeship. The selection has aroused an outcry from Democrats who say his views, and those of a handful of Bush's other judicial nominees, are too radical for the federal bench.

Every government-run center in Maryland that connects out-of-work residents with job openings, resume help and training grants would close. AmeriCorps and several other service organizations would shut down, with no funding to support 170,000 positions in the state, including teachers in poor neighborhoods and those who deliver meals to homebound elderly residents. And a federal agency with nearly 13,000 employees in Maryland — the Social Security Administration — could end up furloughing all of its workers for a month.

WASHINGTON -- Buoyed by President Clinton's State of the Union performance, White House lawyers returned to the well of the Senate yesterday to launch a blistering attack on the House impeachment charges, concluding with an impassioned political appeal to senators to acquit Clinton."

Food safety groups are ramping up pressure on Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski over language included in a government funding bill that would make it harder for courts to block the planting of genetically engineered crops. The language, tucked into appropriations legislation to fund the government through the end of the fiscal year, would strip courts of the power to halt the planting of such crops if a judge felt a review of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's approval was warranted over health or environmental concerns.

What happened: Senate Democrats voted 60-40 early Monday to end a Republican-led filibuster on the $870 billion health care package. What's next: A final Senate vote is expected by Christmas. Democrats worry that passage could jeopardize their comfortable majority in Congress. Full article, PG 8

WASHINGTON - Senate Democrats permitted a committee yesterday to approve President Bush's nomination of Utah Gov. Michael O. Leavitt to be chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, but several threatened to block the nomination on the Senate floor. The Environment and Public Works Committee voted 16-2 in favor of Leavitt's nomination, though Democrats expressed reservations about his ability to lead the embattled agency on a course independent of what they called the anti-environment policies of the Bush administration.