Senate U S

Life imitates art on TV from time to time, but perhaps never so closely as it does on tonight's "Murphy Brown" episode, in which Candice Bergen's character faces a U.S. Senate committee that is investigating a leaked confidential Senate report. This morning, a real-life broadcast reporter--National Public Radio's Nina Totenberg--was scheduled to face a Senate special counsel who really is investigating a leaked confidential Senate report.

SACRAMENTO -- The California lawmaker who authored the country's first ban on teenagers using tanning beds is complaining to the Federal Trade Commission about a new tanning group's safety claims. State Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) on Wednesday accused the newly organized American Suntanning Assn. of Jackson, Mich., of making similar safety claims as those made by a predecessor organization, the Indoor Tanning Assn. In Feb. 5 letter, Lieu asked the FTC to order the suntanning group to stop saying that indoor tanning has health benefits.

Senate Democrats dealt a severe blow to the Republican legislative agenda Thursday, killing the heart of the GOP's campaign platform--a constitutional amendment that mandates a balanced budget in seven years. Conceding a significant loss of momentum, grim-faced Republicans immediately set out to exact political revenge, blaming President Clinton and targeting six Democrats who voted against the proposal even though they had backed a virtually identical measure only a year and a day earlier.

When Daniel K. Inouye was 17, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. An aspiring surgeon, he spent much of the next week helping care for the wounded at an elementary school in his native Honolulu. He wanted to enlist immediately but couldn't. Japanese Americans were classified as "enemy aliens. " Two years later, once restrictions were lifted in 1943, he joined the Army's 442nd Regimental Combat Team, whose motto was "Go for broke. " PHOTOS:  Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii The Japanese American soldiers became the most decorated unit in U.S. history.

1994 January: President Clinton asks Atty. Gen. Janet Reno to appoint an independent counsel to investigate his Whitewater land deal; Reno names Robert B. Fiske Jr. February: A federal grand jury begins hearing evidence about whether depositor's funds in a savings & loan were diverted into Clinton's 1984 gubernatorial campaign and into Whitewater Development Corp., co-owned by the Clintons and James and Susan McDougal.

For a candidate languishing at the bottom of the polls, Mel Levine does not act like an underdog. Well-bred, Ivy League-educated and rich, Levine exudes the confidence of a man who feels destined for political success--despite being a relative unknown. With nearly $4 million in the bank, the congressman from Santa Monica has one of the largest war chests of any Senate hopeful in the nation.

With a final burst of partisan bickering, the Senate on Tuesday approved what likely will be the last federal judges of the Clinton era. Unanimously approved by the Republican-controlled Senate were U.S. District Judge Mary Murguia, the first Latina on the federal bench in Arizona; U.S. District Judges Susan Bolton and James A. Teilborg, also from Arizona; and U.S. District Judge Michael J. Reagan of Illinois.

The Senate on Saturday approved the North American Free Trade Agreement, ending with little flourish a national debate that a week ago had threatened to throw out the pact entirely and complicate Clinton Administration plans for expanded trade agreements with other parts of the world. The vote was 61 to 38. As was the case earlier in the House, Republicans supplied the most support, accounting for 34 of the favorable votes to 27 from the Democrats.

Even before Paul Wellstone was sworn into office 11 years ago as a U.S. senator from Minnesota, he staged several protests to a brewing Persian Gulf War that perturbed veterans, annoyed the vice president and prompted then-President George Bush to dismiss him as, to put it mildly, poultry droppings. Today, the liberal Democratic lawmaker is poised to again oppose what he sees as a rush to war with Iraq.

Mike Huckabee once advocated isolating AIDS patients from the general public, opposed increased federal funding in the search for a cure and said homosexuality could "pose a dangerous public health risk." As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by the Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than relying on federal health agencies.

The six senators representing the West Coast states of California, Oregon and Washington are sending a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. today, calling for an investigation into possible manipulation of the gasoline market by refineries that serve the region. In the letter the senators say an investigation is needed to determine whether false or misleading information was used to create a perception of a fuel supply shortage. That might have helped boost fuel prices, the senators say. In California, the price of a gallon of regular gasoline hit a new record of $4.671 a gallon last month.

Republicans seized control of the House on Tuesday and shrank the Democratic advantage in the Senate, dealing a major setback to President Obama and sweeping a number of "tea party" insurgents into power. The nearly coast-to-coast blowout -- a result of voters' frustration and deep economic anxiety -- promised to once more change the country's political dynamic, presenting challenges to both parties in a newly divided government. Obama, who pushed through the most expansive legislative agenda of any president in generations, could spend the remainder of his term just trying to preserve what he has accomplished.

The Senate confirmed Elena Kagan as the 112th justice of the Supreme Court on Thursday, creating a historic bloc of three liberal women likely to vote together much of the time. The 63-37 vote suggested that the bitter partisan divide that has plagued legislative efforts on Capitol Hill is increasingly infecting the high court nomination process. Kagan, the daughter of a tenants' lawyer and a teacher, who was raised in New York's Upper West Side, worked in the Clinton White House and headed the faculty at Harvard Law School before joining the Obama administration as its advocate before the Supreme Court.

Eleven years ago, Carly Fiorina, who proudly touts herself as a one-time secretary and law school dropout, was hired as chief executive of tech giant Hewlett-Packard Co. Her mission: to breathe life into the slumbering electronics giant, which was missing out on the technology boom going on around it. Fiorina was by then a seasoned AT&T and Lucent Technologies executive who had been named the most powerful woman in business by Fortune...

The most cherished American credo is that anyone can grow up and run for high office. Carly Fiorina's candidacy for the U.S. Senate, which she formally announced Wednesday, will put this notion to the test. Specifically: Can someone who has spent the last few years running from her checkered record as a big-business CEO, shown so little interest in politics that she consistently failed to vote and has at best a tenuous grasp of such major issues as healthcare reform prevail in a statewide California election?

Maneuvering to improve prospects for sweeping healthcare legislation, Senate Democrats hope first to win quick approval for a bill that grants doctors a $247-billion increase in Medicare fees over a decade but raises federal deficits in the process, officials said Wednesday. By creating a two-bill approach, Democrats can contend that the more comprehensive healthcare measure meets President Obama's conditions -- that it will neither add to deficits nor exceed $900 billion in costs over 10 years.

Vice President Dick Cheney cast his first tie-breaking vote in the Senate on Tuesday, rescuing President Bush's budget plan from a Democratic effort to scale back the administration's $1.6-trillion tax cut proposal in order to increase funding for a new Medicare prescription drug benefit. Cheney cast his vote during debate on a budget resolution that includes the outlines of Bush's fiscal policy, including his tax cut plan.

Firestone admitted Tuesday for the first time that it had produced defective tires, and that their design, along with possible quality control problems at one of its plants, appear to be factors in the catastrophic tread failures. "We made some bad tires, and we take full responsibility for them," John Lampe, executive vice president of Bridgestone/Firestone Inc., told a Senate Commerce Committee hearing chaired by John McCain (R-Ariz).

Despite months of outward ambivalence about creating a government health insurance plan, the Obama White House has launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to get divided Senate Democrats to take up some version of the idea for a final vote in the coming weeks. President Obama has cited a preference for the so-called public option. But faced with intense criticism over the summer, he strategically expressed openness to health cooperatives and other ways to offer consumers potentially more affordable alternatives to private health plans.

President Obama wades into an intramural fight among Democrats today by attending a high-dollar fundraising dinner for Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), demonstrating an unusual measure of personal commitment in a primary battle whose outcome is far from clear. As leader of his party, Obama had the option of following a more neutral course and staying out of the primary race between Specter and Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.). But the White House has opted to double down on its support for Specter, a longtime Republican who switched parties in the spring partly to avoid an anticipated defeat in the GOP primary next year.