Voters appear to lean against abortion ban

SIOUX FALLS -- South Dakota voters are leaning against the state's tough new ban on abortions, a poll released yesterday shows. The statewide survey of 800 registered voters found 47 percent opposed the strict ban, while 39 percent favored it. The remaining 14 percent were undecided. The Legislature voted overwhelmingly earlier this year to make abortion illegal in all cases -- including rape and incest -- unless the procedure was necessary to save the woman's life. It was to become law on July 1, but opponents gathered enough signatures to delay it and to let voters decide in November whether the ban should take effect. (AP)

Colorado

DENVER -- The Colorado Supreme Court yesterday upheld a state law that prohibits convicted felons from voting while they are on parole, a ruling that will keep some 6,000 people from casting ballots this year. Colorado law denies felons the right to vote while they are serving their sentences, and the justices said that parole must be considered part of a sentence. The ruling affirmed a lower court's interpretation of a 1995 state law. The American Civil Liberties Union's Colorado chapter challenged the law . (AP)

Washington, D.C.

At the urging of Democrats, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has put off a vote until September on whether to keep John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations, committee aides said yesterday. Democrats want to use that time to press the White House for documents they had sought last year during the dispute over Bolton's nomination to be UN envoy. They contend he bullied intelligence analysts to conform to his hawkish views in his last job as top US arms control negotiator. Republicans, citing the need for a strong hand at the United Nations during the Middle East crisis, had pushed for quick confirmation. Bolton has served in the post for a year after the president appointed him in a congressional recess. (Reuters)

After months of struggling to forge a unified stance on the Iraq war, top congressional Democrats joined yesterday to call on President Bush to begin withdrawing US troops by year's end and to ``transition to a more limited mission" in the war-torn nation. With midterm elections three months away, and Democrats seeing public discontent over Iraq as their best chance for retaking the House or Senate, a dozen key House and Senate members told Bush in a letter: ``In the interests of American national security, our troops and our taxpayers, the open-ended commitment in Iraq that you have embraced cannot and should not be sustained. . . . We need to take a new direction." (Washington Post)