Day: June 12, 2008

Democrats are dividing into camps as they debate a new course for education policy after President Bush leaves office.

Gen. Peter Pace is among those who will receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award.

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman said that he would propose to ban large institutional investors, including index funds, from the nation’s booming commodity markets.

Loopholes that lobbyists for foreign clients sometimes use to keep their activities under wraps would be closed under legislation that two Democratic senators are expected to offer.

The House has voted 251 to 166 to send articles of impeachment against President Bush to the Judiciary Committee, which is not likely to hold hearings before the end of his term. Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, Democrat of Ohio, who ran for president, spent more than four hours on Monday reading his 35 articles of impeachment into the record.

The Census Bureau said that it would fingerprint and conduct background checks on more than a half million temporary workers who will go door to door for the 2010 count, at a cost that could exceed $300 million. The bureau’s director, Steven H. Murdock, told a Congressional committee that the measures were necessary to ensure that the federal government did not send criminals into homes.

The Food and Drug Administration has failed to carry out much of its own plan to protect the nation’s food supply, Congressional investigators say in a report.

A majority of lawmakers favored the idea but not by a big enough margin, and President Bush has promised a veto.

Critics and small-business groups say the Small Business Administration’s problems are particularly troublesome in a weakened economy.

The S.E.C. proposed new rules intended to stem conflicts of interest, expand disclosure for Wall Street’s credit rating industry and flag the ratings of more complex securities.