The House on Thursday joined the Senate in voting to explicitly prohibit members of Congress and other top officials from making investments on insider information. But an effort to bridle purveyors of Capitol Hill political intelligence could delay the bill's enactment.

House-Senate negotiations on extending jobless benefits and a two percentage point cut in the payroll tax remained stalled Thursday, despite a proposal in which Democrats urged a modest six-week cut in the maximum time unemployed workers can receive jobless benefits.

The House has passed a bill to ban members of Congress and executive branch officials from insider trading. But critics from both parties accuse House Republican leaders of caving in to investment firms by eliminating a proposal to regulate people who try to pry financial information from Congress.

Facing domestic political pressures, the Bush and Obama administrations released or transferred 600 terror suspects deemed an acceptable threat from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, only to face the challenge that 27 percent re-engaged in terrorist or insurgent activities, according to a report by Republicans on a House Armed Services subcommittee.

Sen. John McCain says the United States should find ways to help the Syrian people under siege from President Bashar Assad, without putting American "boots on the ground." McCain tells "CBS This Morning" there are several options available, ranging from medical care and technical assistance to safe havens for refugees of the violence.

Republicans vowed Wednesday to reverse President Barack Obama's new policy on birth control, lambasting the rule that religious schools and hospitals must provide contraceptive coverage for their employees as an "unambiguous attack on religious freedom in our country.

Federal policing of oil and natural gas drilling on public lands is lax and inconsistent, with only 6 percent of violations resulting in monetary fines over 13 years, House Democrats said in a report Wednesday. Fines over that time totaled less than $275,000, an amount that the Democratic staff of the House Natural Resources Committee characterized as little more than "pocket change" for oil and gas companies.

Republicans are looking to deny child tax credits to illegal immigrants — refund checks averaging $1,800 a family — in an effort that has roused anger among Hispanics and some Democratic lawmakers. The proposal, which would require people who claim the federal credit to have Social Security numbers to prove they're legal workers, is being offered as a way to help pay for extending the Social Security tax cut for most American wage-earners.

Federal employees would pay more toward their pensions and new employees would receive less generous retirement benefits under a House Republican plan to pay for highway programs. The proposal, posted online Wednesday by the House Rules Committee, is intended to help make up a shortfall between federal gasoline tax revenues and the $260 billion that Republicans want to spend on highway construction and transit programs over the next four and a half years.

The 254-173 roll call Wednesday by which the House passed a bill that gives the president the line-item veto, or authority to pick out specific items in spending bills for elimination. A "yes" vote is a vote to pass the bill. Voting yes were 57 Democrats and 197 Republicans.

A federal judge on Wednesday rejected arguments from four attorneys who prosecuted the late Sen. Ted Stevens to keep private a report that reveals details of their mishandling of the case, but said he will not hold them criminally responsible for their "ill-gotten verdict.

House Republicans put aside their usual antipathy toward President Barack Obama on Wednesday to give the president, and his successors, the line-item veto, a constitutionally questionable power over the purse that long has been sought by presidents of both parties.

A Democratic member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Wednesday that he, like the public, is being kept in the dark about Justice Department legal advice on when the U.S. may kill American citizens abroad who are suspected terrorists.

House Republicans have rejected from a Senate measure a requirement that people who collect information from Congress for investors register like lobbyists. The provision had been included in a bill the Senate passed last week to specifically ban insider trading by members of Congress, their senior aides and other top-level officials in the government.

State-by-state listing of violations cited by Department of Interior to energy companies drilling for oil and gas on public lands, February 1998 to February. 2011. Violations FinesTotal dollar amount of fines —Alaska 2 0 $0 —Arkansas 2 0 $0 —California 37 3 $4,500 —Colorado 312 24 $59,250 —Louisiana 111 0 $0 —Mississippi 15 3 $15,000 —Montana 32 3 $10,500 —Nevada 5 0 $0 —New Mexico 438 23 $37,375 —North Dakota 55 0 $0 —Ohio 7 0 $0 —Oklahoma 33 1 $2,500 —South Dakota 2 0 $0 —Texas 7 1 $250 —Utah 156 11 $24,000 —West Virginia 1 0 $0 —Wyoming 810 56 $120,500 —Total 2025 125 $273,875 Source: Democratic staff of House Natural Resources Committee ___ February 08, 2012 03:26 PM EST Copyright 2012, The Associated Press.

House Republicans have introduced their version of a bill to ban insider trading by thousands of federal officials and prevent lawmakers convicted of a crime from collecting their government pensions. Democrats complained that Majority Leader Eric Cantor wrote the bill without seeking the minority party's views.

The Senate was scheduled to take up a bill to extend federal highway and transit programs later this week even though Democrats were still struggling Tuesday to find a way to pay for the programs. The Senate Finance Committee approved a measure that raises about $10 billion to make up a shortfall between the $109 billion in spending authorized by the transportation bill and the amount of money projected to be raised by federal gasoline taxes, the principal source of highway funds.

The prospects for an extension of President Barack Obama's signature payroll tax cut, once considered a slam dunk on Capitol Hill, now seem far less certain as House-Senate talks have deadlocked over finding ways to pay for it. In a contentious negotiating session Tuesday, Democrats came out against House GOP proposals to partially pay for the two percentage point payroll tax holiday through freezing federal workers' pay and requiring more affluent seniors to pay higher Medicare premiums.

After five years of legislative struggling, 23 stopgap measures and a two-week shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration, Congress finally has passed a bill aimed at prodding the nation's aviation system into a new high-tech era in which satellites are central to air traffic control and piloted planes share the skies with unmanned drones.

A bill to speed the nation's switch from radar to an air traffic control system based on GPS technology, and to open U.S. skies to unmanned drone flights within four years, received final congressional approval Monday. The bill passed the Senate 75-20, despite labor opposition to a deal cut between the Democratic-controlled Senate and the Republican-controlled House on rules governing union organizing elections at airlines and railroads.

The leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee suggested on Monday that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta rushed a decision to develop the Marine Corps version of the next-generation strike fighter jet despite new technical problems with the troubled program.

President Barack Obama's call to shrink the military, shut bases and cancel weapons to meet the demand for budget cuts tests the resolve of lawmakers who came to Washington determined to slash the deficit. A new national security strategy reflecting an end to decade-long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan offers the opportunity to reduce defense spending and government deficits by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years — but at a cost of thousands of jobs in lawmakers' states and districts.

A developing Senate plan that would bolster the government's ability to regulate the computer security of companies that run critical industries is drawing strong opposition from businesses that say it goes too far and security experts who believe it should have even more teeth.

A four-year blueprint for aviation programs that hastens the transition to a new air traffic control system based on GPS technology was given final approval by the House on Friday despite last-minute objections from organized labor. The compromise agreement between the House and Senate authorizes $63 billion for Federal Aviation Administration programs through the 2015 federal budget year.

Legislation that would ban insider trading by lawmakers and thousands of executive branch officials headed for what could be a more contentious debate in the House after sailing through the Senate on a 96-3 vote. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.