Battle lines over new Senate legislation to defend the country against cyberattacks are forming on the issue of regulation, with some experts testifying on Thursday that the bill goes too easy on industry and others saying it is too tough.

The 207-page bill introduced this week would cover only those critical systems that the department secretary determines could lead to “mass” casualties, catastrophic economic damage or “severe degradation” of national security.

Software companies, for instance, would not be covered. Those that are would have to meet security requirements set by the secretary and the companies. The bill also allows for the two-way sharing of technical threat data between the government and the private sector.

“This bill includes significant loopholes that would keep our nation at risk,” said James A. Lewis, a cyber-expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, referring to software and other companies not covered.

Sen. Carl Levin, center, with Sen. Joseph Lieberman, left, and Sen. John McCain at a hearing of the Armed Services Committee. (J. Scott Applewhite — Associated Press) Washington has long been a partisan town, but to Sen. Carl Levin, it might just be worse than it’s ever been before, even when it comes to issues of national security.

Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, offered up a not-so-subtle critique of the news media and the more partisan of his congressional colleagues in remarks Wednesday night, as he received the distinguished service award from the nonpartisan Center for the National Interest.

Having just begun hearings on the administration’s fiscal 2013 defense bill, which includes proposals for controversial cuts, and facing the looming threat of sequestration, Levin said he worried that “rough, contentious public discussion” about the nation’s serious budgetary problems may result in “the best policy for our nation” being drowned out by “partisan vitriol.”

An “increasingly fragmented media, scrambling to hold onto readers, viewers and advertisers” have become more and more focused in highlighting the extremes of our public discourse, Levin said.

He said that a limited number of national newspapers and radio and television networks have been replaced with “200 cable channels, thousands of blogs and Web sites and millions of people on Twitter, all in a 24/7 battle for a slice of audience.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, right, and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before Congress on the Pentagon’s budget on Tuesday. Their testimony was lighter on the acronyms than the briefings by Pentagon officials on Monday. (Mark Wilson — Getty Images) Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a rarity in the Pentagon: He’s professionally trained in the English language, with a master’s degree from Duke University to certify his literacy.

But Gen. Dempsey, who took office in September, is probably finding that his graduate education is worthless when it comes to communicating in the Pentagon’s lingua franca, a peculiar mix of acronyms and bureaucratese that is utterly incomprehensible to outsiders.

On Monday, a parade of military brass and civil servants marched into the Pentagon Briefing Room to explain to reporters the details of the Obama administration’s proposed budget for the Defense Department next year. Even in a building that is world-renowned for gobbledygook and doubletalk, the official briefers set a new standard for heroic obfuscation in the line of duty.

Here are some of the more breathtaking examples, from the official Department of Defense transcript:

REPORTER: And can you say a word about UUVs?

REAR ADM JOSEPH P. MULLOY, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Budget: Oh, yes, sir. Once again, taking out 58 billion, is hard to not have some adjustments. But the bottom line, we maintain our BAMS. The MRUAS program was terminated, because as we looked at what we have to provide to ground forces, support to SOF, and naval needs -- the B2AV, as it moves from the B to the C model, and supporting the SOF requirements for that -- was felt that was enough in terms of what we need there.

Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping waves to Thai students during a visit to Bangkok in December. (Pairoj — AFP/Getty Images) Details of the high-profile visit of China’s vice president have been so zealously guarded that even the time of his arrival was unclear to many until his plane actually touched down in Washington Monday afternoon.

Xi Jinping’s trip to the United States is seen as critical to his expected ascension next year as China’s next president. As a result, his U.S. tour has been the subject of frenzied work for months by staff at the Chinese Embassy in Washington and its consulates in Chicago and Los Angeles.

Planners have kept the details of who he will meet and where under wraps for weeks. Even now, elements of his agenda, including during his last stop in Los Angeles on Friday, have not been released publicly.

News of Xi’s arrival around 3 p.m. Monday was confirmed in an official statement by Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, which carried a written statement from the vice president: “I have brought with me the sincere greetings of President Hu Jintao and the Chinese people to the American people,” he said.

U.S. officials, seeking to respect Chinese protocol, would only confirm his arrival off the record.

(Joshua Roberts — Bloomberg ) Gabrielle Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman who survived an assassination attempt one year ago, is getting a Navy vessel named in her honor.

The Navy said Friday that its newest Littoral Combat Ship, a small, agile surface vessel, will be known as the USS Gabrielle Giffords. The ship’s “sponsor” will be Roxanna Green, the mother of Christina-Taylor Green, the 9-year-old girl who was killed in the Tucson shooting that wounded Giffords in January 2011.

In a statement, the secretary of the navy, Ray Mabus, described Giffords and Roxanna Green as “sources of great inspiration” who “represent the Navy and Marine Corps qualities of overcoming, adapting and coming out victoriously despite great challenges.”

The future USS Gabrielle Giffords will be the 17^th ship to be named for a woman and the 13^th to be named after a living person, according to the Defense Department.