House votes against censure for Stark

October 24, 2007

Republicans failed in an effort yesterday to have the House censure Representative Pete Stark, Democrat of California, who said in a congressional speech last week that US troops are being sent to Iraq "to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement." Without debate, the House voted 196 to 173 to kill the proposal to censure Stark for "his despicable conduct." The vote was mostly along party lines, with all 168 Republicans on hand supporting the measure offered by minority leader John Boehner, Republican of Ohio. Five Democrats joined them. (AP)

In a policy reversal, federal regulators said yesterday that they won't drop phone numbers off the popular Do Not Call registry while Congress considers whether to make the list permanent. When the Do Not Call registry was launched in June 2003, the Federal Trade Commission, which administers the program, planned to remove phone numbers after five years. That means individuals who added their numbers early on would have to reregister by June. But Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC's bureau of consumer protection, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that the agency will delay such steps. (AP)

The House voted yesterday to require the registration of sales and purchases of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which has been converted into the explosive of choice for terrorists ranging from those who hit the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 to those who attacked a nightclub in Bali, Indonesia, in 2002. The bill, passed by voice vote, orders producers, sellers, and some purchasers of ammonium nitrate to register with the Department of Homeland Security, and makes producers and sellers maintain sales records. (AP)

NEW YORK - The "Preppy Killer," who served 15 years in prison for strangling a woman in Central Park in 1986 during what he said was rough sex, has been arrested on charges of selling drugs and resisting arrest. Robert Chambers's arrest stemmed from an undercover operation in which drugs, including cocaine, were purchased from him at his residence in Manhattan's Upper East Side, police said. Chambers, 41, put up a fight during the raid late Monday, police said, and two officers sustained minor injuries. (AP)