• Reid confident immigration reform bill will pass the Senate

    Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) said passage of the immigration bill will be relatively easy, and that he believes the bill will be supported by at least eight Republican, in addition to votes from nearly all Democratic members.

  • Bloomberg group presses lawmakers to close FBI’s gun “terror gap”

    New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, has turned its attention to Senators Kelly Ayotte (R-New Hampshire), Jeff Flake (R-Arizona), and Max Baucus (D-Montana)  to gain their support for a gun bill which would prevent people on the U.S. terrorist watch list from passing background checks for guns.

  • House panel cuts DHS chemical plant monitoring program’s budget

    Budget authors in the House proposed cutting almost $9 million from what DHS had requested for high-risk chemical tracking in the 2014 fiscal year. The House Appropriations Committee, indicating its lack of confidence in DHS’s oversight of fertilizer plants like Texas’s West Fertilizer Company, which exploded earlier this year, also withheld $20 million from the program until DHS responded in detail to questions the committee sent the department.

  • What we keep forgetting about immigration reform

    By Robert Lee Maril

    Next month, when the Senate debates immigration reform, our elected politicians should be reminded of their responsibility to negotiate new immigration laws which finally bring sanity and fairness to all Americans and, as well, to those who would choose to become new Americans.

  • GOP lawmakers urge Obama not to link Keystone decision to climate policies

    Democrats who are uncomfortable with the Keystone XL pipeline have urged President Obama to consider attaching policies requiring cuts in greenhouse gases emissions to his approval of the project. Republican lawmakers are urging the president not to link approval of Keystone to climate change policies.

  • Immigration bill more acceptable to Senate Republicans

    The immigration bill passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee is picking up Republican support. Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont) removed a major obstacle to the bill’s passing the Senate by withdrawing his own amendment to it, an amendment which would have given the American spouse in a gay relationship the right to sponsor the non-American partner for legal status in the United States. The bill also added provisions conditioning the beginning of the path-to-citizenship process on proven bolstering of border security. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) told reporters he will not block the measure from reaching the senate floor.

  • AFL-CIO vows to fight Hatch’s amendments to immigration bill

    Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee will try to persuade skeptical Democrats that Hatch’s changes to the immigration bill, which brought it closer to the preferences of the high-tech industry, are not necessarily bad for U.S. labor. The AFL-CIO does not agree, and vows to fight Hatch’s amendments

  • House will see floor battle today over Keystone XL pipeline

    Republican and Democrats lawmakers are set to engage in a fierce battle on the House floor over the fate of the Keystone XL project. Representative Lee Terry’s (R-Nebraska) proposed legislation to allow TransCanada to start construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which runs from Hardisty, Canada through seven states to Houston, Texas. The bill will come to the House floor today.

  • Senate panel reaches compromise on foreign workers

    The Senate Judiciary Committee reached a compromise which would make it much easier for American tech companies to hire foreign workers. Most U.S. high-tech companies would not be required to offer tech jobs to Americans before they are able to hire foreign workers. The only companies required to do so are companies which depend on foreign workers for more than 15 percent of their workforce.

  • Senator Hatch champions tech industry’s priorities in immigration reform

    As the Senate Judiciary Committee continues to consider the bipartisan immigration reform bill, both supporters and opponents of the bill agree that one senator has emerged as a key voice on the issue: the 79-year old Orrin Hatch (R-Utah). Hatch has emerged as a champion of the U.S. technology industry, and while he supports the broad goal of immigration reform, he insists on shaping the legislation so it addresses the priorities and preferences of the tech industry, priorities and preferences which he sees as essential not only for the health of the industry, but for the health of the U.S. economy more generally.

  • U.S. technology industry working hard to shape immigration bill

    The U.S. technology industry is generally happy with the Senate immigration reform bill which is currently under review, but some of provisions in the bill are not to the liking of the industry, and lobbyists working on its behalf are now trying to remove them.

  • Senate passes water resources bill, funding flood control projects

    Several projects for the Army Corps of Engineers will now be expedited under a bi-partisan Senate legislation passed last Wednesday. The authors of the bill hope the legislation will move the Morganza-to-the-Gulf hurricane protection project forward. The project goal is to install a series of levees, locks, and other systems through the Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes, which will protect about 200,000 people from storm surges like the ones Hurricane Katrina caused.

  • Leak exposed valuable informant, jeopardized counter-terrorism efforts

    Discussing the Justice Department’s effort to obtain telephone records of several AP journalists, sources close to the case say that the leak was deemed exceedingly egregious because it exposed an informant working for the U.K. and U.S. intelligence services, and who was able to achieve what other informants had not: the trust of the terrorists.

  • Senate panel considering, and voting on, nearly 300 amendments to immigration bill

    The Senate Judiciary Committee is considering, and voting on, each of the nearly 300 amendments to the immigration overhaul bill. An amendment offered by Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), which would require DHS to transfer all student visa information to border patrol agents at all 329 ports of entry into the United States, was approved unanimously.

  • Panel's draft bill shields DHS funds

    A house panel introduced a bill last week that will protect DHS from budget cuts facing other domestic agencies under the house’s budget plan. This will allow the department to hire 1,600 new agents at Customs and Border Patrol agency, replace cuts to local and state governments, boost spending on cybersecurity, and abandon cuts to the Coast Guard.