Congress U S

The gun-control debate sharpened Tuesday as President Obama backed an effort to revive the assault weapons ban spearheaded by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is poised to have a powerful new role as the head of the Senate committee overseeing gun laws. Calls for federal gun restrictions were mounting following last week's shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. -- even from lawmakers who had rejected them in the past. The National Rifle Assn. and its allies have successfully kept such efforts at bay for years, but the slayings of 20 children have roiled the politics of gun control and now challenge the gun lobby's hold on Capitol Hill.

Congress passed a bill Tuesday that would make widows and widowers of U.S. citizens eligible for green cards even if their spouses died before their applications were approved. The measure, part of the more than $40-billion Homeland Security appropriations bill, ends the "widow penalty," which required couples to be married for two years before the surviving spouse would be eligible to apply for residency. Now, surviving spouses can apply for a green card for themselves and their children regardless of when the U.S. citizen died or how long they were married.

For President Bush and for the leadership in Beijing, the battles in Congress over U.S. policy toward China never seem to end. And on Capitol Hill, support for the Bush Administration's approach continues to slip. The President managed Wednesday to squeak by another year's legislative skirmish with Congress over the continuation of China's most-favored-nation trade benefits.

A desire to keep Congress from blocking the deployment of U.S. peacekeepers in Bosnia has embroiled the Clinton Administration in an internal dispute over how large a force the United States should send. Some Administration officials are arguing for a deployment of about 8,000 American troops, a number that they contend would give the United States a lower profile and reduce congressional resistance to the mission, leaving President Clinton less politically vulnerable.

As prospects for a U.S. aid package for Mexico's economy have grown increasingly uncertain in Congress, U.S. investors and Mexican leaders find themselves entertaining some grim scenarios. Economists and trade experts say a refusal by Congress to approve President Clinton's $40 billion in loan guarantees would deliver a devastating economic blow to Mexico--and have severe repercussions on this side of the border and throughout Latin America as well.

Rep. Elton Gallegly says he doesn't wake up in the middle of the night haunted by the fateful decision he made 30 years ago: to drop out of college. The Simi Valley Republican says he would love to have a college degree framed on the wall behind his congressional desk. But he figures that if he had the piece of parchment, he might not have the desk.

Ignoring a veto threat and stoking a fight over trade, the House on Wednesday approved an $8.6-billion expansion of a federal program that assists workers who lose their jobs because of foreign competition. The vote comes as the White House works to steer four trade deals through a less-friendly Democratic-controlled Congress amid U.S. job losses and other effects of globalization.

In 1799, in the midst of an undeclared war with France, the U.S. frigate Boston seized the Flying Fish, a Danish-owned ship that had been sailing from a French port. The Boston's captain was operating under orders. But the Supreme Court, in a ruling now fraught with significance for the Middle East crisis, held that the seizure was unlawful because it ran afoul of an act of Congress, which authorized U.S. captains to seize only American ships.

The Reagan Administration faced a key test of credibility this week when the White House announced that it was sending 3,150 U.S. troops to Honduras to counter a Nicaraguan incursion. And by all accounts, the Administration failed. Democrats in Congress accused the White House of "crying wolf." Even members of Congress who sympathize with President Reagan's views on Nicaragua said that his aides inspired little confidence in their portrayal of the situation.

Cindy Sheehan, the mother of a slain soldier who has been camping outside President Bush's Texas ranch, is an impassioned witness but an imperfect messenger. Her leftist foreign policy agenda is as unlikely to draw majority support as the militant unilateralism of the hard-core neoconservatives. But Sheehan will have done the nation a service if she inspires, or shames, both parties to resume debate over the direction of the Iraq war.