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House vote quashes rumor of a draft

WASHINGTON - House Republicans sought to quash a persistent Internet rumor that President Bush wants to reinstate the draft if he is re-elected, engineering an overwhelming vote Tuesday killing legislation that would do just that.

Republicans accused Democrats of feeding the rumor mill to scare young voters and their parents into voting against Bush.

"This campaign is a baseless, malevolent concoction of the Democratic Party and everyone in this chamber knows it," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas.

The House voted 402-2 to defeat the draft bill offered last year by Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y.

Even he urged Democrats to vote against the bill, and charged Republicans were cynically trying to use the measure to escape election-season questions about the war in Iraq.

Speaking to Iowa voters Monday, Bush said, "We will not have a draft so long as I am president of the United States."

Bush said he was pleased the measure died.

"If this bill were presented to me, I would veto it," Bush said in a prepared statement Tuesday.

WASHINGTON - President Bush asked Congress Tuesday for an additional $691-million to aid victims of hurricanes and other natural disasters as the price tag for recent emergencies surged toward $13-billion.

Congress has already approved $2-billion for hurricane victims, but had yet to act on two other requests totaling $10.2-billion that Bush made last month.

Leaders believe lawmakers will approve the remaining $10.9-billion - including Tuesday's request - before they adjourn for the November elections later this week.

On a separate but politically related track, Republican lawmakers and administration officials continued exploring whether they could shrink a Senate-passed $3-billion package of assistance for farmers and ranchers hit by drought, floods or other weather problems.

Democrats sought to capitalize on what could be a risky effort by Republicans - trimming disaster aid for farmers in political battleground states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, even as hurricane aid grows ever larger.

TEXAS EXECUTION: Condemned killer Edward Green III was executed Tuesday despite his attorneys' pleas to halt the execution, citing problems at the Houston police crime lab. Green, convicted of killing two people in a 1992 robbery, apologized to families of the victims before he was executed by injection.

LACI PETERSON CASE: Prosecutors rested their murder case against Scott Peterson on Tuesday, having presented 174 witnesses trying to convince jurors he was a cheating husband who killed his pregnant wife and lied to police and family alike to try to cover his tracks.

NISSAN RECALL: Nissan Motor Co. said it would recall a total of 26,077 cars including about 100 in the United States to fix defective brake lights and faulty bolts used in the vehicles' propellor shaft. There were no reports of injuries due to the defects. The models subject to the recall in the United States were the M45 and 945 made in Japan between December 2000 and June 2004.