Congress gets incomplete ahead of vote
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As Congress began its final week before the midterm elections, a veteran Senate chairman was asked the question ricocheting all over town:
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(InfoWorld) - When the U.S. Congress adjourned in the early morning hours Saturday, it left a number of technology-related bills unfinished, including two bills addressingÂ fraudulent access to personal telephone records. Despite pressure from members of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee, the full House failed to act on the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act. The law would have allowed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to seek civil penalties against businesses that obtain personal data under false pretenses. The committee has been looking into privacy concerns related to so-called pretexting since early this year, but the issue came to a head last month, whenÂ Hewlett-Packard revealedÂ it had used questionable investigative techniques in the surveillance of board members, employees, and reporters. With pretexting, private investigators or identity thieves pretend to be customers of mobile phone carriers or other companies in order to gain access to personal records such as call logs. Congress still has more time to act on the pretexting legislation or six related bills this year, however. After a month-plus break allowing lawmakers to focus on the Nov. 7 election, Congress will return for a lame-duck session Nov. 9. Democrats last week complained that the House Republican leadership had held up the pretexting legislation, but Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican and Energy and Commerce chairman, said he'd continue to push for the legislation. Congress alsoÂ failed to pass a wide-ranging broadband billÂ that would replace local franchise rules with a national system for telecom providers launching Internet Protocol-based television services in competition with cable TV. And although U.S. President George Bush called on Congress to pass legislation authorizing a controversial National Security Agency (NSA)Â surveillance program, two bills making it easier for the government to conduct surveillance without court-ordered warrants also stalled. One piece of Internet-related legislation did pass early Saturday. The Senate passed a bill providing money for seaport security, and added to the bill was a provision prohibiting U.S. banks and credit-card companies from processing payments to online gambling sites. A group of professional poker players had asked Congress to reject the bill, but a group of House Republicans pushed for the legislation, saying offshore gambling sites were breaking U.S. gambling-control laws. Bush had called for legislation to authorize the NSA program, which has listened in on the electronic communications of U.S. residents without court-ordered warrants, as a way to head off multiple lawsuits targeting the program. He has argued the program is necessary to help keep U.S. residents safe from terrorism. The HouseÂ passed one surveillance bill, but the Senate failed to act. The House bill would allow federal law enforcement officials to spy on U.S. residents for up to 90 days without a court order in the period after a terrorist attack. The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), a civil liberties and privacy advocacy group, said it was happy to see the surveillance and broadband bills stall. Republicans supporting the surveillance bill were pushing it as a way to show they were focused on national security during the last weeks of the congressional campaign, said Nancy Libin, a staff counsel at CDT. "Now that they've gone home, I'm not sure what kind of priority it will be when they come back," she said. Several civil liberties groups had opposed the broadband bill as it lacked protections for so-called net neutrality. Net neutrality advocates want a law that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing service to Web sites offering competing content, and they have successfully halted the Senate version of the broadband bill, despiteÂ heavy lobbying from large broadband providers.
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Three congressmen are asking the General Accounting Office to investigate irregularities with voting machines during the presidential election, but they don't anticipate a change in election outcome. By Kim Zetter.
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A series of tactical errors, with peculiarities in the voting process, prevented democracy advocates here from winning as many seats as expected in Sunday&#39;s legislative
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Republican lawmakers yesterday blocked the Senate from taking up the D.C. vote bill, a potentially fatal setback for the District's most promising effort in years to get a full member of Congress.
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After missing a crucial deadline in  congressional talks to revamp U.S. spy agencies in order to  address failures exposed by the Sept. 11 attacks, lawmakers  held out hope on Friday of reaching an agreement that can pass  Congress after the Nov. 2 elections.
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Republicans are in jeopardy of losing their grip on Congress in November. With less than four months to the midterm elections, the latest Associated Press-Ipsos poll found that Americans by an almost 3-to-1 margin hold the GOP-controlled Congress in low regard and profess a desire to see Democrats wrest control after a dozen years of Republican rule.
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Congress on Thursday began its  formal certification of President Bush's victory in November's  election but a handful of Democrats objected and temporarily  stalled the count because of alleged irregularities in Ohio.
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The House of Representatives was scheduled to reconvene today without any sign of compromise on an intelligence-overhaul bill sought by President Bush that is being blocked from a final vote
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Congress' Republican leaders are postponing politically thorny votes on overtime, imported prescription drugs and other issues until after the November elections.
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Government fails to meet vast majority of political and military goals laid out by congress
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WASHINGTON - Ending weeks of stalemate, Congress is preparing to ship nearly $15 billion to states battered by hurricane and drought as lawmakers plow through a final pile of pre-election bills that would cut taxes and revamp the intelligence community.    The House was expected to approve the hurricane and drought aid Saturday...
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The bitter battle for seats in Congress headed into its final showdown last night, with Republicans struggling to hang onto their threadbare
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The U.S. House of Representatives on  Tuesday moved closer to a vote on a wide-ranging package of  trade legislation, as lawmakers scrambled to finish their work  for the year.
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The U.S. House of Representatives  failed on Thursday to muster the two-thirds majority needed to  pass a proposed constitutional amendment backed by President  Bush to ban gay marriage.
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Democratic lawmakers vow to come roaring out of the blocks when they assume control of the next Congress, passing several top-priority bills in the first 100 hours. Absent from that list, however, are the knottiest problems that bedeviled the outgoing Congress, including immigration, domestic surveillance and the war in Iraq....
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Congress dithers, and investors should beware.