Congress

WASHINGTON - They returned home to a politically traumatized nation that treated them with indifference and scorn. Now, veterans' advocates fear the country will again miss an opportunity to recognize the toil and torment of the 3 million service members sent to fight the Vietnam War. The Pentagon's plans to celebrate the veterans - five years in the making - are sputtering. This Memorial Day is supposed to be the curtain-raiser for a series of gatherings to mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of US involvement in the decade-plus war and to honor those who served.

Donna Summer 's hit "I Feel Love" is one of the songs being preserved for posterity. The 1977 hit by the Boston-bred disco star, who died last week of cancer, is among 25 inductees announced Wednesday by the Library of Congress. (AP)

Polls show that frustration with Washington has never been higher — and who could argue? Most Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. Most lawmakers openly concede that nothing will get done before the November elections. The leaders of both parties are already trading threats over the possibility of a national debt default next year. Barack Obama got elected by promising to change the tone in Washington, but clearly he's failed, as George W. Bush did before him. That should be a clue that the partisan animosity consuming the political system doesn't originate in the White House.

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney says that if he is elected Congress should wait until he takes office to block automatic spending cuts and to keep tax cuts from expiring. In an interview with Time magazine Wednesday, the Republican presidential candidate said he wants Congress to deal with major issues to keep the nation from going over a "fiscal cliff" after the January swearing-in. Romney said he wants permanent legislation to deal with those problems instead of a temporary effort.

Barney Frank is in love. This is not exactly news — he's getting married in July — but it's still striking, the way a congressman who has cultivated a reputation for prickliness can be so publicly, sweetly sentimental. "It's funny," Frank said last week, musing about his relationship with his fiance, Jim Ready. "I used to listen to these songs about love and . . . they didn't mean anything to me. I would almost be kind of annoyed by them, you know — it's like I was left out. The whole thing takes on a meaning it didn't have.

Basic standards of fairness require immigration cases involving married gay couples to be treated the same as heterosexual couples. But so far, the Defense of Marriage Act prevents the federal government from recognizing such marriages. As a result, legally married same-sex couples can't petition for a green card for their foreign spouses. Sometimes, those spouses are deported. Since the Obama administration announced in 2011 that it would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, same-sex couples in this situation have been in limbo.

Political strategists say that women are critical to the Democrats' strategy for retaining control of the Senate. But now, more than ever, women of both parties have a good reasonto run — not for cover, but for office — because huge majorities of Americans say we'd be better off with more women in the political system. Women seem to be heeding this call, with a record number of female Democrats running for US Senate this year, in part because their relative absence from the halls of power has been so noticeable.

The Obama administration ordered federal, state and local officials Thursday to adopt zero tolerance for prison rape as it issued mandatory screening, enforcement and prevention regulations designed to reduce the number of inmates who suffer sexual victimization at the hands of other prisoners and prison staff. Anti-rape advocates and victims of prison rape, while saying the standards are not perfect, cheered the new regulations. The rules have been under development since Congress passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003 to fight rape and sexual victimization in the nation's...

Since the Export-Import Bank was founded in 1934, Congress has methodically renewed its charter two dozen times with little or no controversy, attesting to the independent federal agency's low-key, generally well-regarded mission of helping finance American companies' overseas sales. This year, however, with Congress at its dysfunctional worst, it's different. In the Senate, reauthorization of the Ex-Im Bank enjoys wide bipartisan support, but Democrats and Republicans can't agree on a voting process.

WASHINGTON - Representative William Delahunt says it's high time to start thinking about the next war. Even as Congress wrestles with attempts to bring home US troops from Iraq, the Massachusetts Democrat is teaming up with some Republican colleagues on legislation to give Congress a stronger say in when the country should go to war. Delahunt recently joined Republican Representatives Walter Jones of North Carolina, Wayne Gilchrest of...

WASHINGTON — Facebook rode more than enthusiasm to its $100 billion stock offering Friday, children's advocates say. A crucial propellent was investors' belief that lawmakers will not ban such social networks from selling troves of excruciatingly private details from the lives of teenagers. For months, legislative attempts to expand and refine a children's online protection law have moved at the speed of a dial-up connection. The law — itself a teenager, passed before the advent of Facebook, app-enhanced smartphones, and the vast apparatus of data-collection technologies — demands...

WASHINGTON - A federal appeals court upheld a key provision of the Voting Rights Act on Friday, rejecting an Alabama county's challenge to the landmark civil rights law. The provision requires state, county, and local governments with a history of discrimination to obtain advance approval from the Justice Department, or from a federal court in Washington, for any changes to election procedures. It now applies to all or parts of 16 states. In a 2-1 decision, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that Congress developed extensive evidence of continuing racial...

Political strategists say that women are critical to the Democrats' strategy for retaining control of the Senate. But now, more than ever, women of both parties have a good reasonto run — not for cover, but for office — because huge majorities of Americans say we'd be better off with more women in the political system. Women seem to be heeding this call, with a record number of female Democrats running for US Senate this year, in part because their relative absence from the halls of power has been so noticeable.

WASHINGTON - Commercial air travel is at risk from terrorists who quietly get jobs at airports so that they can attack sensitive areas from within, a senior Homeland Security Department official told lawmakers. There has never been such an incident, but a security supervisor at Newark Liberty Airport is facing criminal charges that nearly 20 years ago he took the identity of a New York man who was later killed. This case raised questions of whether the Transportation Security Administration knows the true identities of those who work in airports.

President Barack Obama pushes his legislative "to-do list" on Wednesday. He'll start with a visit to a company in the Washington area where he'll stress the need to invest in small business and increase new hiring. He wants Congress to pass a bill that would give a 10 percent tax credit to companies that create new jobs or increase wages this year. The president also will press the list when he has lunch with the congressional leadership. Following a meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, he'll award the Medal of Honor to Army Spc. Leslie Sabo Jr. posthumously.

During 2010, the Tea Party got the attention, but the election revolt against bailouts, subsidies, and spending came from all sides. Voter sentiment hasn't changed much — but you wouldn't know that from the action last week on the US House floor, where renewing Export-Import Bank subsidies for big business was the order of the day. Compared with big-spending Democrats, Republicans still have a long way to go before losing the mantle of...

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Joan Vennochi is right to call out Congress for failing to respond to the tragic BP oil spill. Unfortunately, rather than simply failing to act, Congress is considering actions that could make things far worse (" The BP aftermath? Nothing ," Op-ed, May 3). The BP spill was a stark example of the need for a better way to manage our oceans. Currently more than 20 federal agencies manage the ocean, often with conflicting agendas, limited scientific understanding, and poor coordination with each other and ocean users.