NYRI Calls U.S. House Defeat of Proposed Hinchey-Wolf Amendment 'a Victory for Energy Security and Environmental Stewardship'
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To: ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS  Contact: David Kalson of RF|Binder Partners, +1-518-935-1040, +1- 212-994-7513, david.kalson@rfbinder.com, for New York Regional Interconnect Inc.   ALBANY, N.Y., June 21 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- New York Regional Interconnect Inc.
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Legislation to reform the US intelligence system after the September 11 attacks and failures in Iraq has fallen victim to partisan wrangling, endangering lawmakers' goal of sending a bill to the White House before the November 2 election.
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By Timothy C. Barmann; Journal Staff Writer  Language creating a power authority to enable renewable energy projects is stripped from a bill in the final hours of the Assembly session.
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The US Supreme Court turned down a key element of a Republican strategy to tighten the party's control of the House of Representatives, possibly setting the stage for bitter litigation over the outcome of congressional elections on November 2.
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WASHINGTON - The House on Thursday rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage but gave Republican leaders a consolation prize by putting lawmakers on record on an issue that will be used as campaign fodder in the November
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Mostly Republican lawmakers defeated a Democratic bid on Wednesday to outlaw cloning of human babies, concurring with the White House that the effort was flawed and would still permit destruction of life because it would allow embryos to be created for stem-cell research.
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The US House of Representatives today solidly defeated the Marriage Protection Amendment, formerly the Federal Marriage Amendment.
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House Republican negotiators beat back Senate efforts to more aggressively regulate tobacco and to more strictly limit tax shelters yesterday as a congressional conference committee moved
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Republican gains in the Senate from last month's elections have pumped new life into the administration-backed move to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas drilling, prompting environmentalists to mount what one of them called "the fight of our lives" to defeat the proposal.
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House leaders today overcame GOP resistance to a major bill revamping the nation&#39;s intelligence operations, scheduling a late-afternoon vote that they predicted would pass comfortably.
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WASHINGTON, June 19  /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) expressed disappointment with today's House Agriculture Subcommittee on General Farm Commodities and Risk Management markup of H.R. 2419, the 2007 Farm Bill.
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The U.S. Senate defeated on Tuesday an amendment that would take away legal immunity from telecommunications providers that helped the U.S. National Security Agency conduct surveillance on U.S. residents, earning criticism from two civil liberties groups.The Senate, by a 31-67 vote, defeated an amendment to the FISA Amendments Act, a bill that would make changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and allow the NSA program to continue. In the past, the NSA has conducted telephone and e-mail surveillance of U.S. citizens conversing with terrorist suspects overseas without court-approved warrants.The Senate was scheduled to vote on the full FISA bill late Tuesday.The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) slammed the Senate vote. &quot;Immunity for telecom giants that secretly assisted in the NSA&#39;s warrantless surveillance undermines the rule of law and the privacy of every American,&quot; said EFF senior staff attorney Kevin Bankston. &quot;Congress should let the courts do their job instead of helping the administration and the phone companies avoid accountability for a half decade of illegal domestic spying.&quot;It doesn&#39;t make sense for Congress to work hard on the FISA bill when the NSA and telecom providers can circumvent the law, added Greg Nojeim, CDT&#39;s senior counsel. &quot;The telecom immunity provision sends a message that it&#39;s OK for a telecom to assist with unlawful surveillance when secretly asked to do so by the government,&quot; he said.Democratic Senators Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Russ Feingold of Wisconsin had sponsored the amendment to get rid of legal immunity for the telecom providers. AT&amp;T and other telecom carriers are being sued in U.S. court in San Francisco for their participation in the surveillance program, which many civil liberties groups say is illegal.Last month, U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney said in a speech that it is &quot;entirely appropriate&quot; for U.S. intelligence agencies to seek help from private companies like telecom providers, because agencies don&#39;t have all the resources they need to keep the U.S. safe from terrorism.&quot;Some providers are facing dozens of lawsuits right now,&quot; Cheney said then. &quot;Why? Because they are believed to have aided the U.S. government in the effort to intercept international communications of al Qaeda-related individuals.&quot;A House bill, passed in November, does not include legal immunity for telecom providers that participated in the NSA program. The House and Senate would have negotiate the differences in the two bills before sending the legislation to U.S. President George Bush to sign. Bush has threatened to veto a surveillance bill that does not include legal immunity for telecom providers, but congressional authorization for the surveillance program expires Feb. 15.It would be counterproductive for Bush to veto a bill that extends surveillance programs that he says are critical, Bankston said. &quot;The only way they can [get legal immunity] is by fallaciously tying it to something critical,&quot; he said.The EFF will push hard to have House negotiators keep the telecom immunity provisions out of the bill that goes to Bush, Bankston added.The EFF and CDT both prefer the House FISA bill, called the Restore Act. Unlike the Senate bill, the House bill would require court approval of surveillance, and the House version would expire in two years, as opposed to six years in the Senate version. The CDT has produced a chart comparing the two bills.
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A law urging more human rights in North Korea passed unanimously by the U.S. Congress showed nuclear talks were meaningless because America was "hell-bent" on toppling the communist state, the North's foreign ministry said.
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Former Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo easily won the Democratic nomination for New York attorney general Tuesday, defeating a former New York City public advocate in the race to succeed incumbent Eliot Spitzer.
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By JIM MYERS World Washington Bureau  The measure, which encourages wildlife projects on private land, advances to the president's desk.   WASHINGTON -- The U.S. House of Representatives gave final legislative approval Wednesday to a bill by Sen.
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The Republican-controlled House emphatically defeated a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage Thursday, the latest in a string of conservative pet causes pushed to a vote by GOP leaders in the run-up to Election Day.
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The U.S. House of Representatives defied the White House on Wednesday by easily backing a measure that supporters say will make Mexican trucks operating on U.S. roads safer.