Senate U S

Could this be an episode of "Family Feud," New York style? The contestants: Clintons, Kennedys and Cuomos, America's most famous Democratic dynasties. The prize they're sniffing around: a U.S. Senate seat, soon to be vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton. This week, Caroline Kennedy made it clear that she, like Andrew Cuomo, wants Clinton's spot after the senator ascends to secretary of State.

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, calling Saddam Hussein an international war criminal guilty of "crimes against humanity," voted 93-0 Friday to urge creation of a United Nations tribunal to indict, arrest and try him. The Clinton administration expressed support for the concept. The nonbinding Senate resolution was a largely symbolic gesture, although some supporters said it could lay the groundwork for later direct U.S. action to topple the Iraqi president.

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.

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.

A posse of politicians Tuesday rode to the defense of the Dixie Chicks. At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) led his colleagues in a tongue-lashing of radio giant Cumulus Media Inc. for its decision this spring to temporarily ban the country stars from some stations.

In a political victory for the Obama administration -- and a surprising defeat for some lawmakers in both parties -- the Senate voted Tuesday to halt further production of the Air Force's F-22 Raptor fighter jets. The 58-40 vote on an amendment to the $680-billion defense authorization bill called for stripping out the $1.75 billion set aside for construction of seven more of the jets. The F-22, which has not been used in Iraq or Afghanistan, has come under particular scrutiny for its price tag.

Georgia's Democratic former Gov. Zell Miller was appointed Monday to the late Republican Paul Coverdell's Senate seat and said he will run for the remaining four years of the term in November. Gov. Roy Barnes, a Democrat, officially announced the appointment Monday evening, saying Miller, 68, is the best-qualified person from either party. "The one who didn't want it was the one who had to take it," he said. "It used to take seniority to get things done in the United States Senate.

Sen. Bob Packwood (R-Ore.) was seized by Senate police in the wee hours of Wednesday morning and carried into the Senate to answer a quorum call, but he was in good humor after the incident, joking: "I rather enjoyed it. I instructed four of my staff to get a sedan chair." Other Republicans, however, bridled at the arrest, which took place as Democratic and Republican lawmakers staged a lengthy fight over legislation that would limit spending on congressional elections. Sen. Orrin G.

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.

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.

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.

Returning from their summer recess, congressional lawmakers are facing a climatic showdown to the yearlong struggle over healthcare. At issue are scores of competing provisions scattered through half a dozen bills. And no final decisions have been made on any of them. In the House, Democratic leaders are synthesizing the proposals of three committees, but floor debate has not begun. In the Senate, a bill close to the expected House blueprint has been approved by the health committee formerly headed by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.

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.

For almost 30 years, Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) planted his feet on the floor of the Senate and, like Southern politicians who once stood in the schoolhouse door to confront the tides of change, trumpeted a simple, defiant credo: "Never."

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said Monday that he would work to change state law so that he could appoint a temporary replacement for the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy before a special election next year. Appointing an interim senator would ensure that Massachusetts is fully represented, Patrick said at a news conference at the statehouse in Boston. He said he would seek the individual's personal assurance that he or she wouldn't run in the special election to serve out the veteran Democrat's term, which runs through 2012.

The late cultural critic Neil Postman used to pose a simple question to gauge whether a new technology was worth the investment: "What is the problem," he would ask, "to which this is the solution?" That question occurred to me last week as I contemplated the looming U.S. Senate candidacy of Carly Fiorina. The Republican, who was ousted as chairwoman and chief executive of Hewlett-Packard Co. in 2005, took a first step in that direction last week by filing tax papers for a political fundraising committee.