Free Republic

<p>House committee chairmen have signed off on a plan, endorsed by Majority Leader Tom DeLay, to cut 1 percent from their respective parts of the federal budget by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.</p> <p>The support of the Republican leadership puts muscle behind an idea proposed months ago by House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, Iowa Republican, and greeted with equal parts enthusiasm, skepticism and derision.</p>

<p>Democratic senators said yesterday they will attempt a filibuster to stop passage of a bill to prohibit lawsuits against gun manufacturers and distributors.</p> <p>"We are here to send a clear message to the gun lobby: You don't own the United States Senate," said Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, New Jersey Democrat. "The gun-immunity bill that is being bullied through Congress is one of the most outrageous pieces of legislation I have every seen. It is a total sellout to a special-interest lobby."</p>

<p>A Republican congressman wants travelers to and from the Caribbean to carry passports, citing lax travel rules that allowed a Washington-area sniper suspect to smuggle dozens of illegal aliens into this country.</p> <p>Rep. John Hostettler of Indiana, chairman of the immigration subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, said he has begun the "educational process" that he hopes will persuade Congress to close what he called an immigration loophole.</p>

<p>President Bush's support for renewing a ban on so-called "assault weapons" has rankled the National Rifle Association, but the chance of such a bill reaching the president's desk is "zero," said a top House Republican aide.</p> <p>Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, and seven other Senate gun-control advocates introduced a bill yesterday to reauthorize the ban on several types of semiautomatic rifles. The law, signed by President Clinton in 1994, is scheduled to expire Sept. 13, 2004.</p>

<p>Congress will debate a bill tomorrow that would permit religious groups that accept federal job-training funds to hire only workers who share their faith.</p> <p>Liberal interest groups and some Democrats are outraged over the proposed change in the reauthorization of the Workforce Investment Act, calling the measure a repeal of civil-rights protections.</p>

<p>The House passed a bill yesterday that promotes abstinence in fighting AIDS worldwide and prevents religious groups from being forced to distribute condoms, handing a major victory to conservatives.</p> <p>The bill, which passed by a vote of 375-41, takes up an initiative pushed by President Bush in his State of the Union Address in January to spend $15 billion over the next five years on AIDS prevention, mostly in Africa and the Caribbean.</p>

<p>A Democrat's bill that would link stricter gun laws to national security concerns appears dead on arrival in the Senate, a fact that some see as evidence of the decline of the gun-control movement.</p> <p>Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, New Jersey Democrat, said yesterday that "chances are slim" for success of his bill, which would extend the time allowed for background checks on gun buyers during periods of heightened security alerts.</p>

<p>A Democratic attempt to insert higher fuel-efficiency standards on sport utility vehicles into the Senate energy bill will have to wait until the legislation is considered on the floor.</p> <p>Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, failed yesterday to gain support in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee for an amendment that would force automakers to increase the fuel efficiency of SUVs by 30 percent in eight years.</p>

<p>More black Americans today are finishing high school, going to college, moving to the suburbs and earning higher salaries than in previous decades, while the trend of single-mother households is in historic decline, a new report shows.</p> <p>According to a report released yesterday by the Census Bureau, the percentage of black families led by unmarried females is 43 percent, the lowest percentage since at least 1980, when 40 percent of black families were led by an unmarried woman.</p>

<p>Iraqis danced in the streets, kissed the cheeks of coalition soldiers, threw flowers in the path of tanks and cheered as U.S. Marines helped bring down a statue of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.</p> <p>It was a scenario wholly contrary to a future many of those very same media outlets predicted just days before.</p>

<p>Television screens, newspapers and magazines across the globe this week featured images of a joyously liberated Baghdad.</p> <p>Iraqis danced in the streets, kissed the cheeks of coalition soldiers, threw flowers in the path of tanks and cheered as U.S. Marines helped bring down a statue of deposed dictator Saddam Hussein.</p>

<p>Liberal Senate Republicans are holding firm to their demand for no more than $350 billion in tax cuts, and might scuttle the entire budget process as a matter of principle.</p> <p>Senate Republican leadership and influential House members have applied intense pressure on Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, Maine Republican, who has taken the lead in demanding a smaller and more focused economic-growth package. And the more they push, the more determined she is to stand firm.</p>

<p>Veteran war correspondent Peter Arnett was fired by NBC yesterday for saying on state-run Iraqi television that the allied war effort had failed "because of Iraqi resistance" and presenting his opinion as fact.</p> <p>"It was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an interview with Iraqi state television," NBC said in a statement.</p>

<p>Conservative Republicans in the House say they will flex their muscle to ensure that President Bush's tax-cut plan — or at least most of it — is retained in the 2004 federal budget.</p> <p>Rep. Mike Pence, Indiana Republican and deputy majority whip, said conservatives are tired of getting beaten and will not support a budget that contains only the $350 billion in tax cuts approved last week by the Senate.</p>

<p>Many Democratic critics of President Bush's war plans in Iraq did not express the same reservations about President Clinton's military actions in Kosovo in 1999.</p> <p>And many Republicans who today support U.S. action in Iraq opposed a resolution authorizing Mr. Clinton to use force in the Balkans.</p>