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Behind the scenes, federal agents in charge of stopping gun trafficking to Mexico have quietly advanced a plan to help stem the smuggling of high-powered AK-47s and AR-15s to the bloody drug war south of the border.

The conservative tea party groups that helped elect dozens of new candidates to Congress on Nov. 2 are now delivering a warning to them: We're watching you.

Second, it would be erroneous to consider the loss of an election by any individual member, related perhaps to one overriding issue, a repudiation of the Congress as a whole on all other matters coming before it.

And the ethics charges? The questions about financial improprieties? The alleged misuse of rent-controlled apartments? The Caribbean villa? "So what, you got a Caribbean villa. You like to enjoy life," Vincent Morales said. He put a hand on Rangel's shoulder. "We don't believe anything they say. They lie."

Republican leaders, though, were only too happy to cast cap and trade as “cap and tax.” In the process, they helped scare away senators who had long supported this very idea, like Lindsey Graham. The sad paradox is that cap and trade — which trusts in the efficiency of markets — was originally a Republican policy, signed by the first President Bush to reduce acid rain, and disliked at the time by many liberals.

OVERSIGHT — A 10-member council of regulators led by the Treasury secretary would monitor threats to the financial system. It would decide which companies were so big or interconnected that their failures could upend the financial system. Those companies would be subject to tougher regulation. If such a company teetered, the government could liquidate it. The costs of taking such a company down would be borne by its industry peers.

For example, on Dec. 10, one of the lawmakers under investigation, Representative Joseph Crowley, a New York Democrat who sits on the Ways and Means Committee, left the Capitol during the House debate to attend a fund-raising event for him hosted by a lobbyist at her nearby Capitol Hill town house that featured financial firms, along with other donors. After collecting thousands of dollars in checks, Mr. Crowley returned to the floor of the House just in time to vote against a series of amendments that would have imposed tougher restrictions on Wall Street.

CONGRESS has proven adept at placing blame for the gulf oil spill — depending on whom you listen to on Capitol Hill, BP bears the bulk of the responsibility, or the Interior Department and its increasingly inadequate regulations, or both.

WASHINGTON — Despite a new requirement for disclosure, some members of the Massachusetts congressional delegation have tucked lists of requests for special appropriations, known as earmarks, in obscure corners of their official websites, making the proposals more difficult for the public to find.

TOLEDO, Ohio — Just one day after leaders of the House of Representatives announced a ban on earmarks to profit-making companies, Victoria Kurtz, the vice president for marketing of a small Ohio defense contracting firm, hit on a creative way around it.