David Vitter

The Senate overwhelmingly approved the nomination of Hillary Rodham Clinton as President Obama's secretary of State on Wednesday, after a one-day delay forced by Republicans who wanted to continue debating her husband's overseas fundraising activities. The delay had the effect of denying Clinton a confirmation vote on Inauguration Day, when six other Cabinet members were approved. But Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who sought the delay, praised Clinton's abilities Wednesday and voted in favor.

Lawmakers on Tuesday denied themselves a pay raise next January but, with an eye toward a better economic and political climate, decided to retain their automatic cost-of-living raises for future years. A blur of last-minute procedural maneuvering in the Senate produced a salary package for members of Congress that holds their annual pay at $174,000 until 2011.

A Navy officer could face punishment, including discharge, after testifying Thursday that she moonlighted for the alleged prostitution ring run by the so-called D.C. Madam while stationed at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. Lt. Cmdr. Rebecca C. Dickinson managed the Naval Academy's food services between September 2004 and May 2007, Navy officials said. She also taught a course on leadership for the department of leadership, ethics and law. She testified Thursday in U.S.

Four days ago, the woman known as the "D.C. Madam" stood in the lobby of her condominium building near downtown Orlando, musing about the future. Deborah Jeane Palfrey said she was preparing for federal prison. She hoped she'd get time off her sentence for good behavior. She thought she might buy a place in Germany one day.

In case there was any doubt about the odds of Congress enacting a carbon tax, a Senate vote Saturday morning showed that they are long indeed. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a liberal Rhode Island Democrat, offered an amendment to the proposed fiscal 2014 budget resolution calling for "establishment of a fee on carbon pollution. " The amendment didn't suggest who'd pay the fee or how large it would be; it required only that the fee not increase the deficit and that all the revenue raised be "returned to the American people in the form of federal deficit reduction, reduced federal tax rates, cost savings or other direct benefits.

WASHINGTON - President Obama's pick for Labor secretary, Thomas E. Perez, emerged unscathed Thursday from a Senate confirmation hearing that was more perfunctory than contentious. Conservatives have been critical of Perez, the administration's top civil rights enforcer, portraying him as a dangerous liberal who would be an overly assertive regulator at the Labor Department. But despite predictions that his confirmation could be acrimonious, there was very little of the tough questioning that Republican adversaries said he deserved.

When Bobby Jindal lost his first Louisiana governor's race four years ago, some experts told him that white people here were not ready to elect a dark-skinned son of Indian immigrants. On Tuesday, as he dashed across the state in a victory caravan after his historic Saturday landslide win, Louisiana's Republican governor-elect had a message for his rural supporters: Thank you for proving the conventional political wisdom wrong.

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner told lawmakers that he doesn't think the manipulation of the scandal-plagued Libor standard by large banks cost taxpayers money when the benchmark interest rate was used to set some bailout terms. Still, he said, Treasury officials are investigating how the London Interbank Offered Rate affected bailout costs. For the second straight day of congressional hearings Thursday, Geithner defended his handling of concerns raised in 2008 that large banks were manipulating Libor.

By blocking President Obama's nominee to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Senate Republicans showed their near unanimous commitment to keep the controversial agency hobbled until after next year's elections. Obama and Democrats vowed that they would continue to fight to confirm Richard Cordray. And they portrayed Republicans as doing Wall Street's bidding to prevent a tough cop from patrolling the financial marketplace, a message that is likely to be a Democratic theme in the presidential campaign and key Senate races.

While Mark Sanford works to salvage his marriage, Republicans are facing the prospect of a different kind of breakup: religious voters walking out on the GOP. A series of sex-related scandals over the last few years has undercut the party's assertions of moral authority and, worse, may serve to reinforce the doubts that many evangelical voters have traditionally harbored about the unholiness of the political realm.