Senate leaders averted a showdown over judicial nominations Wednesday, surprising onlookers with an unexpected deal that kept the Senate from expending hours on votes doomed to fail. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had planned to force procedural votes on 17 judicial nominees that he and fellow Dems said were being blocked needlessly by Republicans, all in a campaign year effort to highlight GOP obstruction.  Republicans have blocked some of the 17, though four were only recently confirmed by the Judiciary Committee. 

The Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, accused his Dem counterparts of "a political stunt" and said the chamber should be focused on the crises of the moment: sky-high gas prices and jobs. 

The 11th-hour deal, described by leadership aides, will result in 12 federal district court and two appellate court nominees receiving votes by May. McConnell has already said most of the 17 will easily be confirmed by the chamber. 

"What the Majority should do is work with us to move these lifetime appointments in an orderly manner, like we did 62 times last year, and like we've already done seven times this year," McConnell said Wednesday morning, before the deal was in place. "While we're working on a bill to help get people back to work, we can make progress on other judicial nominations." (read more)

As diplomats attend a critical meeting in Tunisia to pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down in the wake of attacks by his regime forces on his own people, a key group of U.S. senators suggested Friday that unmanned drones be used to document the reported atrocities.

"It has been reported that unmanned aerial vehicles are now being flown over Syria to monitor sites containing weapons of mass destruction and related materials. This is appropriate, but unmanned aerial vehicles should also be tasked to document attacks on Syrian civilians by Assad's forces and to enable the Syrian opposition to defend against them," said Sens.  John McCain, R-Ariz., Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Lindsey Graham, R-SC.  "We should rule out no option that could help save lives." (read more)

UPDATE 2:00pm ET:  Senate Sergeant at Arms Terrance Gainer has just sent an updated e-mail to all Senate offices confirming that three total congressional offices have received threatening mails containing a powdery substance that has initially tested negative for containing a bio-agent and more letters could be on the way.  

But the Gainer warning, obtained by Fox, makes clear, "The author of these letters has indicated that additional letters containing a powdery substance will be arriving at more Senate offices and that some of these letters may contain an actual harmful material. Although all letters received thus far have proved harmless, it is essential that we treat every piece of suspicious mail as if it may, in fact, be harmful." 

A Senate state office and a House district office received the threatening letters Tuesday, and Gainer says an additional Senate state office received a letter Wednesday.  The Sergeant at Arms does not indicate which office received the correspondence, but Gainer repeats the earlier call for members to be on the lookout for a particular Portland, Oregon address previously reported by Fox. 

Gainer says his staff is "working closely with federal and local law enforcement in this ongoing investigation."

Congressional security officials, police, and staff often work with outside law enforcement. Recently, a joint investigation thwarted a would-be suicide bomber who was intent on attacking the U.S. Capitol.  (read more)

UPDATE: Sen. Ben Cardin signed the conference report to allow the payroll tax deal and unemployment benefits extension to go to a vote.

In the end, the deal requires new hires to pay 2.3 percent of their salary to their pensions to pay for the tax cut. Cardin's vote was critical as the three Senate Republicans conferring on the deal said they would oppose it. Since a majority of Senate conferees was needed, and there were four Democrats on the seven-member panel, Cardin was the tie-breaker.

EARLIER:

It's not often the President of the United States calls your home phone, so one could forgive the wife of Sen Ben Cardin, D-Md, for thinking it was some kind of hoax last night when an Administration official dialed up the couple's Baltimore home line.

"At first my wife didn't believe it was the president," Cardin laughed, as he recounted to a handful of reporters the presidential phone call. "No one has that number," the senator said of a second, rarely-used phone line.

The senator was actually still at work, Myrna Cardin had to tell her V.I.P. caller.
Indeed, Cardin was burning the midnight oil, locked in high-stakes talks over extending the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance benefits. House-Senate negotiators had originally designed a revenue-raising measure that would have required all federal workers to contribute more to their pensions. (read more)

Several senior Senate Democratic aides have confirmed Democrats have laid aside, for now, their attempt to pay for any extension of a package of benefits - including the payroll tax cut, jobless benefits, and a Medicare "doc fix" -- with a surtax on millionaires, a cornerstone of President Obama's fight against Republicans.

"To be sure, it will live to see another day," said one senior Senate Dem leadership aide.

The fight over how to offset another payroll tax holiday has roiled bipartisan House-Senate negotiations. But House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and his GOP leadership team diffused that fight Monday by offering to extend the tax break with NO offset, and by doing so, they side-lined what had been a potent political weapon used against them. 

But the issue of how to pay for the remaining items in the negotiations, from unemployment insurance benefits to the "doc fix," is still preventing a breakthrough, according to multiple participants. 

Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, a payroll tax cut conferee, told Fox that though Democrats are now proposing to extend jobless benefits with no offsets, Republicans have not given in. "That's certainly not decided yet," Crapo said. (read more)

Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., led an unsuccessful, 40-59, bipartisan effort to try to permanently ban congressionally directed spending known as earmarks.

Eight Republicans from the Appropriations Committee joined all of the panel’s Democrats to oppose the measure. The conservative Club for Growth said they consider this a "key vote."

STAND-OUT VOTES:

Yes:

Bill Nelson, D-Fla. 

Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.

Mark Udall, D-Colo.

Mark Warner, D-Va.

Kay Hagan, D-N.C. 

Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., Senate Republican leader, Appropriations Committee member

No:

Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., Appropriations Committee member

Roy Blunt, R-Mo., Appropriations Committee member

Thad Cochran, R-Mo., Appropriations Committee member

Susan Collins, R-Maine, Appropriations Committee member

John Hoeven, R-N.D., Appropriations Committee member

Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, Appropriations Committee member

James Inhofe, R-Okla. (read more)

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threatened to move his own payroll tax cut extension bill Thursday, as Democrats across the Capitol decried what they said was GOP obstruction, this as the deadline fast approaches for the tax break to expire.

A House-Senate conference met for the third time Thursday morning to try to hammer out a compromise on not only the payroll tax holiday, but also unemployment insurance benefits and a fix to keep Medicare doctors from seeing a cut to their federal reimbursement.

It was always expected there would be disagreement on how to offset the $100 billion measure, with Democrats pushing a surtax on millionaires and Republicans doggedly in opposition. It was that very issue that blew up negotiations last year, leading to a short-term extension which expires February 29.

Reid blasted Republicans for bogging down the payroll tax conversation Thursday morning with a debate about Boiler MACT rules, regulations designed to rein in toxic emissions from boilers that the GOP and some Democrats say are overly-burdensome on small businesses and could kill thousands of American jobs as currently written.

"I want everyone put on notice - we're not going to walk away without some tough votes. If they can't do something, we'll do it," Reid threatened. A senior Senate Democratic leadership aide tells Fox a bill is not yet being crafted, though.

An aide to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., told Fox's Chad Pergram, "I would not have characterized (the meeting) as 'bogged down'. You had Senate conferees speak in support of Boiler Mact and a few of the Dems criticize it as not being a job creating measure - but there are varying data points that make it clear that if you are spending on regulatory costs and compliance then you don't have those resources to create jobs."

A measure to delay implementation of new Boiler MACT rules out of the EPA was included in a House-passed bill related to the payroll tax cut extension, but the Senate included no such provision in its version. The National Association of Manufacturers, along with a vast assortment of businesses, are pushing members to include a delay in this version of the payroll tax measure. (read more)

As promised, a group of senior Republican senators influential on defense policy unveiled a bill Thursday to divert a portion of the $1.2 trillion in mandatory cuts set to take effect in January 2013.

"I believe the cuts are a threat to national security," said lead bill sponsor John McCain of Arizona, top Republican on the Armed Services Committee.

The "Down Payment to Protect National Security Act," whose ultimate goal is to unwind the full reduction, achieves $127 billion in savings over 10 years, to cover $110 billion in scheduled cuts to defense and certain domestic programs in 2013 alone, by continuing a freeze on federal government worker pay as well as by slicing the workforce by 5 percent through attrition.

The $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts, falling equally on defense and domestic budgets, came about as part of a bipartisan compromise to raise the nation's debt ceiling.  The failure of the deficit reduction super committee triggered the cuts, called a "sequestration." 

"You don't eat a steak in one bite. You try to do it in bite size pieces," said the Senate's No. 2 Republican, Jon Kyl of Arizona, who worked with McCain and four other GOP senators on the plan, which would buy time for lawmakers to find the remaining offsets, an Olympic-caliber task which members have, to date, failed.

The measure also contains a national emergency and national security waiver. (read more)

Another September 11th-related funding clash is poised to erupt in Congress, as one fiscal hawk senator blocks a bill that would see $20 million in taxpayer funds go to the creation of the 9/11 Memorial Museum.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who proudly wears the moniker of "Dr. No" due to his opposition to deficit spending, has refused to sanction the legislation in the wake of trillion dollar deficits that are now projected to continue through the current fiscal year and possibly beyond.

"Dr. Coburn believes we can best honor the heroism and sacrifices of 9/11 by making hard choices and reducing spending on less vital priorities rather than borrowing money," Coburn spokesman John Hart tells Fox. "This funding dispute could be solved in minutes if the sponsors would look at the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and duplication in the federal government that has been identified by the Government Accountability Office and others. Finding $20 million in savings is the least we can do to demonstrate that Congress also understands the value of service and sacrifice." (read more)

Chances are, if you have been at an U.S. airport lately, you've been inside a tubular body scanning machine called a "backscatter," named for the way it scatters electrons. On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation to determine whether the scanners emit harmful levels of cancer-causing radiation, as some experts believe.

The bill would also require signs at airports to clearly alert travelers of alternative screening options available in lieu of the X-ray devices.

Primary bill sponsor Sen. Susan Collins, top Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, told of a once-pregnant constituent who believes she miscarried after unknowingly entering a backscatter machine.

"Time and time again I have expressed my concern over their use, particularly since there is an alternative screening technology available," she said. "While the (Transportation Security Administration) has repeatedly told the public that the amount of radiation emitted from these machines is extremely small, passengers and some scientific experts have raised legitimate questions about the impact of repeated exposure to this radiation." (read more)