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Former President Bill Clinton's advice that Democrats should quit harping on President Bush's disputed statement that Iraq had pursued nuclear material from Africa was well-received by many Democrats on Capitol Hill — but not his wife. "Everybody makes mistakes when they are president," Mr. Clinton said Tuesday night on CNN's "Larry King Live," adding that "the thing we ought to be focused on is what is the right thing to do right now." The comments were widely interpreted as a message to Democratic presidential candidates that their constant criticism of Mr. Bush's Iraq policy is pushing the party too far...

<p>The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, tears welling in his eyes, apologized yesterday to Democrats for being "just plain stupid" for calling the Capitol Police to evict Democrats from a meeting room Friday.</p> <p>"Every member has just as much right to be here and be heard as any other," said Rep. Bill Thomas, California Republican, accepting blame for a "breakdown of order and decorum" at the committee meeting and admitting that his pride and passion got in the way.</p>

<p>A top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said President Bush shouldn't be gun-shy about sending troops to keep the peace in Liberia just because "things aren't going well in Iraq."</p> <p>Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Connecticut Democrat and member of the Foreign Relations African affairs subcommittee, said the escalation of bloodshed in Liberia during the past two days warrants quick action by the Bush administration.</p>

<p>A federal judge yesterday dismissed a lawsuit by the NAACP that claimed gun manufacturers endangered minorities in New York by irresponsibly marketing firearms.</p> <p>While agreeing there is "clear and convincing evidence" that gun dealers are guilty of "careless practices," U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein ruled that members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People were not "uniquely harmed" by illegal use of firearms.</p>

<p>Stopping the U.S. Navy from conducting live-fire bombing exercises on the tiny Puerto Rican island of Vieques was a hot cause for leftist activists, Hollywood stars and Democrats in Congress in 2001.</p> <p>The pressure ultimately led to President Bush deciding to end 60 years of live bombing at Vieques — the final wisps of smoke blew in May — and conduct exercises elsewhere, such as the Florida Keys and the North Carolina coast.</p>

<p>Stopping the U.S. Navy from conducting live-fire bombing exercises on the tiny Puerto Rican island of Vieques was a hot cause for leftist activists, Hollywood stars and Democrats in Congress in 2001.</p> <p>The pressure ultimately led to President Bush deciding to end 60 years of live bombing at Vieques — the final wisps of smoke blew in May — and conduct exercises elsewhere, such as the Florida Keys and the North Carolina coast.</p>

<p>Many congressional Democrats who have opposed the war in Iraq support sending troops to Liberia, especially because it would be at the request of the United Nations.</p> <p>Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat, has been among the most strident foes of President Bush's Iraq policy. He voted against the use of force, accused the president of "going it alone" and lamented that the war had isolated the United States from its European allies.</p>

<p>The threat of a veto has helped quell a Republican rebellion today that would nullify new Labor Department rules designed to give union members more detailed information about the financial activities of their unions.</p> <p>The White House Tuesday evening released a statement threatening a veto of the House labor, health and human services and education subcommittee's appropriations bill if an amendment to kill the new requirements was included. The amendment is supported by most Democrats and a group of 28 Republicans in labor-heavy districts. The bill comes up for a House floor vote this afternoon.</p>

<p>Congress plans a flurry of votes this week for key spending bills that will be a test of the Republican leadership's ability to keep to its legislative schedule and restrain spending.</p> <p>That effort became more difficult, however, when a $1.9 billion supplemental-spending request from the White House to cover disaster relief was delivered Tuesday morning. Supplemental bills traditionally balloon as legislators attach pet projects.</p>

<p>The heat of the summer usually brings with it a wilting of politics, but a wide-open race for the Democratic nomination for president is keeping the candidates sweating on the campaign trail.</p> <p>Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has considerable momentum after beating his rivals in fund raising from April through June with $7.4 million. He is in a virtual dead heat in the polls with Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts for the Jan. 27 New Hampshire primary.</p>

<p>House Democrats are criticizing President Bush's tax cuts through a series of demonstrative amendments that would cut the benefits to millionaires by 40 percent and designate the funds for more government spending.</p> <p>Rep. David R. Obey, Wisconsin Democrat and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, has offered four amendments to the three spending bills that have come before the committee. Each amendment has failed on a party-line vote, though Obey spokesman David Sirota said more like them are planned.</p>

<p>The House yesterday passed, on a 425-2 vote, a bill that will spend $29.4 billion for the Department of Homeland Security, while Democrats complained that the amount fell "dangerously short" of protecting the nation from terrorist attacks.</p> <p>Rep. Harold Rogers, Kentucky Republican and chairman of the House Appropriations homeland security subcommittee, lauded the "largest reorganization of the federal government in 50 years" and insisted that the government was doing all it could to fight terrorism.</p>

<p>The chairman of the House Budget Committee has established a Web site where the public can report incidents of waste, fraud and abuse in federal programs.</p> <p>It's a tool, he said, to pressure Congress to keep spending down.</p> <p>Rep. Jim Nussle, Iowa Republican and chairman of the House Budget Committee, has instructed every committee that controls mandatory spending to find at least 1 percent of waste in their budgets by Sept. 2.</p>

<p>The House Appropriations Committee approved a spending bill for homeland security in 2004 that is slightly more than this year's allocation but, because of a strict spending caps, it is less than many members wanted.</p> <p>Rep. C.W. Bill Young, Florida Republican and chairman of the committee, warned that "not every member will get what he wants" as the 13 spending bills make their way to the House floor.</p>

<p>The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency yesterday debunked the notion that a classified intelligence report had said the United States had no reliable evidence before hostilities that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.</p> <p>The 2002 DIA report, leaked to the press this week, said intelligence officials could not pin down the exact location of Saddam Hussein's caches of chemical and biological weapons. However, Adm. Lowell Jacoby, the director of the DIA, said yesterday that didn't mean Iraq's banned weapons program was a myth.</p>

<p>Many of the critics suggesting that the Bush administration exaggerated the threat of Saddam Hussein to justify war in Iraq didn't raise those questions when they emerged from intelligence briefings.</p> <p>Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who is running for president, suggested in a CNN interview on Sunday that the Bush administration might have willfully distributed erroneous information on the threat posed by Iraq &#8212; a charge that CIA Director George J. Tenet denied vigorously in a rare public statement made Friday and released this week.</p>

<p>Democrats appear to have abandoned gun control as a political wedge, declining to push the issue in Congress despite being given the opportunity by congressional Republicans. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, upbraided President Bush earlier this month for not pushing fellow Republicans to bring the assault-weapons ban up for reauthorization before it expires in September 2004. "The president has announced that he supports the assault ban, and it would be helpful if he used his good offices to do that," Mrs. Pelosi said at her last weekly press briefing before the Memorial Day recess. "I don't know whether he intends to or not." House Republicans consider it a pretty safe bet that he won't, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas has stated that the chances of a renewal of the ban coming to the House floor are slim. Yet Democrats still have options — both rhetorically, by trying to make gun control a hot-button issue again, and legislatively, by filing for a discharge petition to get a vote on the floor. Mrs. Pelosi, however, has declined to commit to either strategy and acknowledged that if the vote comes to the floor, many Democrats would not vote to renew the ban. "We would probably lose some votes," Mrs. Pelosi said early this month. "It won't be something that we would be whipping." Asked whether she would push for a discharge petition, which requires support from a majority of House members, to force an up-or-down vote on the assault-weapons ban, Mrs. Pelosi balked, saying that "our discharge focus is now on unemployment compensation." After the press briefing, however, Mrs. Pelosi said the Democrats might revisit guns "when the issue is ripe." Republicans see that as a dodge. "There seems to be a disconnect between Leader Pelosi's desire for the administration to utilize its 'good offices,' while at the same time maintaining that they don't intend to whip the issue," a high-level House Republican staffer said. "If you want something done in this town, you have to be willing to lift a finger at the very least. But on this issue and so many others, it's apparent that the Democrats aren't interested in results, just rhetoric," the staffer said. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, California Democrat, has introduced a bill to reauthorize the ban on 19 types of "assault weapons," which first passed in 1994. It has garnered eight co-sponsors after several weeks of courting. Meanwhile, a bill protecting firearms manufacturers and gun-store owners from liability if their guns are used to commit crimes passed in the House on April 9 by a vote of 285-140, with the support of 63 Democrats. The Senate version of the bill has 52 co-sponsors and is expected to pass during the summer. Andrew Arulanandam, director of public affairs for the National Rifle Association, sees these as signs that the political tide turned long ago against those who support further regulating firearms. He pointed to the defeat in the 2000 presidential election of Al Gore in such Democratic-leaning yet pro-gun states as West Virginia, Arkansas and his home state of Tennessee. And in the 2002 midterm elections, 230 of 246 House candidates endorsed by the NRA emerged victorious. "If you look at the results of the last two elections, you see a trend that candidates who are supporters of gun rights for law-abiding citizens tend to prevail," Mr. Arulanandam said. Gun-control groups, however, suggest that the issue may be dormant now, but is apt to become an electoral factor by 2004. "No one is particularly focused on this," said Matt Bennett, spokesman for Americans for Gun Safety. "There is no hook for this issue quite yet. But when the public realizes that unless Congress acts [by September 2004], that 'street sweepers' and Tec-9s will hit the streets again, it will become hot again." Democrats abandon the gun issue at their peril, said Blaine Rummel, spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. He disputed the NRA's political success stories, noting that Mr. Gore won Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — states where advocates on both sides of the gun issue spent heavily on political advertising. "There isn't a shred of evidence that says gun control is a political loser," Mr. Rummel said. "It hasn't cost a candidate a political race anywhere." Mr. Rummel also pointed to the failed campaign of Senate candidate Jean Carnahan, Missouri Democrat, who tried to woo gun owners by wearing hunting camouflage in her political advertising. "The Democrats ran away from gun safety in the 2002 elections, and look where it got them," Mr. Rummel said. "Whoever is advising them on gun control should be shot." Democrats "foolishly believe the NRA is going to go easy on them" if they register a vote for the liability protection or keep quiet about the assault-weapons ban, Mr. Rummel said. "This issue is never going to go away," he said.</p>

<p>Momentum for a bill that would help solve thousands of cold rape cases has stalled in the House.</p> <p>The delays have frustrated supporters of the Debbie Smith Act, which would earmark $90 million over the next five years to use new DNA technology to catch rapists. The bill has languished in the House Judiciary Committee, controlled by Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican.</p>

A freshman Republican congresswoman said yesterday that House Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young tried to intimidate her because she is a leading opponent of an increase in the federal gas tax. Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, Colorado Republican, said Mr. Young, Alaska Republican, stood a step above her on the floor of the House Monday night and with aggressive gestures and words attempted to exert his influence on her. "I've been married for a long time and my husband's a gentleman," Mrs. Musgrave said. "And I have never had a man talk to me like Mr. Young did. "I wouldn't say he...

<p>Democrats are skeptical about a Republican plan to find 1 percent of savings in mandatory spending, calling it a ruse to create political cover for cuts in popular programs.</p> <p>As first reported in The Washington Times yesterday, the House Republican leadership will instruct every committee chairman to find enough instances of waste, fraud and abuse to reduce by 1 percent those programs that have levels of funding set by law rather than the annual budget process.</p>