Senate to debate immigration bill
Breaking a weeks-long partisan deadlock, Senate leaders announced an agreement Thursday to resume debate on legislation that would provide legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants, create a guest-worker program and bolster border security.
The agreement gives new momentum to a bill that seemed on the verge of Senate approval before collapsing in early April amid partisan bickering. Senate leaders said debate would start Monday, with the Senate aiming to pass legislation by Memorial Day.
Still, prospects for the bill are uncertain because a large group of House Republicans opposes a guest-worker plan and enhanced legal status for illegal immigrants.
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., one of the main authors of the legislation at the center of the immigration bill, called on President Bush to get involved. The president has backed a guest-worker program and legal changes that allow undocumented immigrants to gain citizenship, as long as they are not processed before legal immigrants.
But the greatest critics of the president’s vision are within his own party. “It would make a good deal of difference if we could get the president involved,” Kennedy said.
Washington
One juror blocked death penalty
A single holdout kept the jury from handing a death sentence to Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person charged in this country in the 9/11 attacks.
But that juror never explained his vote, said the foreman of the jury that sentenced the confessed al-Qaida conspirator to life in prison last week.
The foreman, a math teacher in Northern Virginia, told the Washington Post that jurors voted three times – 11-1, 10-2 and 10-2 – in favor of the death penalty on the three terrorism charges that each qualified Moussaoui for execution.
On April 26, the third day of deliberations, the jury’s frustrations reached a critical point because of several 11-1 votes on one charge. But no one could figure out who was casting the dissenting vote, the foreman said, because that person didn’t identify himself during any discussion – and each of the votes were done using anonymous ballots.