WASHINGTON IN BRIEF
Rep. James P. Moran Jr., second from left, and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee were arrested at the Sudanese Embassy on Friday at a protest over Darfur.
(By Win Mcnamee -- Getty Images)
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Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) was among five members of Congress who were willingly arrested and led away from the Sudanese Embassy in plastic handcuffs during a protest yesterday.
Four other Democratic House members -- Tom Lantos (Calif.), Jim McGovern and John W. Olver of Massachusetts, and Sheila Jackson Lee (Texas) -- were among 11 protesters arrested on charges of disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly, a misdemeanor subject to a fine. The demonstrators said they were targeting the Sudanese government's role in atrocities in the Darfur region.
Dozens of demonstrators attended the protest, and they cheered as the House members and others were led to a white police van by U.S. Secret Service uniformed officers. The arrests were expected. Lantos's office even issued a news release about them in advance.
USDA Finds Handful Of Mad Cow Cases
Only four to seven cows in the United States are likely to have mad cow disease, according to Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.
The estimate comes from data about testing for the disease, which is medically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. Testing is likely to be scaled back after a panel of independent scientists' reviews the data, Johanns said.
"The data shows the prevalence of BSE in the United States is extraordinarily low," Johanns told reporters during a conference call.
"In other words, we have an extremely healthy herd of cattle in our country," he said.
The brain-wasting disorder infected more than 180,000 cows and was blamed for more than 150 human deaths during a European outbreak that peaked in 1993.
Judge Defends Jailing of Reporter in Leak Case
The federal judge who jailed a former New York Times reporter for refusing to name her source during the CIA leak investigation defended his decision.
Thomas F. Hogan, chief judge of Washington's U.S. District Court, told a meeting of the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association in Annapolis that he made the right call when he ruled that there was no First Amendment protection for reporters to keep sources confidential, especially in criminal matters.
The case of reporter Judith Miller began as a typical Washington political story as the White House tried to push back against critics in a brewing scandal, Hogan told the group.
"It was the perfect storm," he said, of Washington politics, the media and the law.
